Page 78 of Scapegoat

Ned stood in the doorway of the toilet, the combined stench of unwashed male, the organic stink of piss and the less organic one of bleach, making my nostrils flare and my gut lurch. I went to jerk my hand away, but he held fast, grabbing my other arm and incapacitating that.

“Let me go!” I snapped.

“Don’t think I will,” he said, pushing me backwards, where I’d wanted to be moments before, but not now.

Ned put his body between me and the concert grounds, so anyone walking past would just see him. He tried to move me right where he wanted me, evidently not having learned his lesson last time. That was OK, I was up for repeating it. Claws formed on the ends of my fingers and I raked them across his skin, forcing him to snatch them back with a cry.

“You fucking little bitch!”

He had something on me though, experience I didn’t have. I was stronger, but that didn’t help me when he backhanded me across the face. He’d beaten down other women, other girls before, somehow I knew, and was methodical about it. While I rocked back on my heels, he went back for another smack, and another, until my head rang and my eyes spun, the whole world starting to sway before me.

And that’s when I ran into a major problem.

We lived in a human world, not a wolf shifter one, so we were taught from a young age all the elements of control. It didn’t need to come into play until we shifted for the first time, but a young shifter needed to be all the way down the road to self-discipline before his or her wolf came. So mine could only come forth when I summoned her, even as she scratched and barked and howled inside me.

I just had to let her out.

But my head was spinning, blood was trickling down my face and down the back of my throat. I was choking on that, coughing out a great splutter of it all over Ned. That earned me another smack, the pain somehow amplifying exponentially with each blow.

Something I was familiar with.

When I was much smaller, weaker, my mother had beaten me like this. Over and over, belting me before I could rally or scream out for her to stop, smacking me on and on until I had no words left. Only unholy screams, and that’s what shredded my throat right now, incoherent cries for them to stop. But just like Mum, he didn’t.

“Fucking little slut…” he snarled, his voice deepening and distorting as my heartbeat throbbed frantically. “Spread your legs for those fucks, but not me.” I fell backwards, my balance gone, my ability to determine which way was up compromised by his smashing blows. “Think you were too good for me, but look at you now.”

I clawed my way backwards, my body on high alert, my wolf bucking, scrambling to get out. Just like when Mum had beaten me, I could feel my wolf’s strength but was somehow divorced from it.

Right up until things got worse.

He grabbed my arm, smacking away my hands when I tried to claw at him and then he dragged me away from the concert grounds and into the edge of the trees. Where the grass grew long and gum trees spread their white branches towards the sky. Where the sound of the music was little other than a muffled beat. Where no one would hear me scream but the insistent, buzzing cicadas.

This was never supposed to happen again. I’d got out of Stanthorpe, run as far away as I could from that place. But the problem was that cruelty doesn’t respect borders. Ned threw me down in the bushes and then fell down upon me before I could rally, pinning my body to the ground.

Fucking in the scrub, I was OK with that, with the right man, but that’s not what this was. Ned didn’t desire me, he just wanted to obliterate all evidence of his moment of weakness. He was cruel because he carried around inside him a great big hole that no achievement, no pleasure could fill. One that widened every time he saw someone else succeed, and the moment I recognised that, something went still inside me. He caught me staring up at him, then raised his hand to belt me again.

But I caught it.

In some ways he’d done me a favour, dragging me out into a rough area filled with scrub. There were no witnesses out here, something he’d planned on. But what he hadn’t been able to anticipate was me. What made me special enough to catch the eyes of three men, which made him feel inadequate, was also what made me special enough to end him.

Thunder rolled overhead as the wolf and I moved perfectly in sync. We wrapped our legs around his waist and then threw him down on his back. A rock just happened to be under his head as we smashed him into the earth. His eyes went wide, the blow creating a sick crunch, but it didn’t make him as discombobulated as me. His eyes narrowed all too soon, his lips pulling back in a snarl.

But those flat, even, square teeth were never any match for mine.

I growled then and anyone who heard me would assume there was an angry dog in the grass, the sound partially muffled by the incoming storm. Ned went still as he stared at my fangs. My eyes were blazing bright silver, I was willing to bet, shining in the darkness as I held his gaze. And he was transfixed by them, by a girl turning from a victim to a wolf, right before I lunged forward and tore out his throat with my jaws.

She didn’t stay with me for long, my wolf. She whined and pawed at her head, but whatever damage Ned had created, it was long gone. The shift from one body eradicated the weaknesses of the other one. She sat there beside him, panting slowly as he choked and gagged, trying to work lungs, a throat, that was no longer there. It didn’t take long, the blood pooling on the cool earth, before he died. Then she licked her jaws and her paws clean and gave me back my body.

“Kai!”

My mates, my best friend, they stumbled onto the scene, stinking of fear and I yanked on my clothes as they gaped at the mess I’d made.

“Ned…” Xavier growled, his hands becoming claws, clutching at empty air.

“Kai, are you all right?” Jayden slid down beside me, grabbing my face and checking both sides of it for damage.

I just licked my lips.

The taste of blood was on my tongue and it was strangely sweet.

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