Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“I didn’t have any choice. This place is sacred to our kind.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there’s power here. This is where my ancestors have lived for hundreds of years. This isn’t just a bit of damp forest and rancid river. This place matters.”
“Places don’t matter, Ellie. They’re not special. They don’t hold meaning. That’s just sentimental bullshit.”
“What does matter?
He pauses for a minute before pushing me down on the bed and loosening his belt. “Nothing,” he says, his voice a dark void.
He scares me. I knew he wasn’t a good person. I knew he was the only person who could help me. And I knew it was a risk. But he is a monster with no feeling besides the urge to fuck. I don’t know that he really even cares about breeding me. I doubt he wants a baby. He just wants a hole. My hole.
“You’re scaring me,” I whimper.
“Good. You abducted me. You treated me like a weak little bitch to be tied up and used like a fucking…” He grits his teeth and wrestles his temper under control. “I didn’t like it, Ellie. And you’re going to pay for it.”
“I treated you the way you treat other people.”
“No. You didn’t. Because what I do is put a bullet in people. This captive shit is for idiots.”
“You’re going to put a bullet in me?”
Karl
I see fear in her face, and for the first time in my life, I don’t like seeing that expression in someone’s eyes.
“I am not going to kill you,” I tell her.
“Oh, good to know,” she says, sarcastic even though there’s still plenty of fear in her gaze.
None of my usual methods or even desires work with this woman. I’ve always wanted one thing. Power, at all costs, and cruelty because I enjoyed it. I’m not enjoying it now. I feel like a piece of shit.
I feel guilt.
Haven’t felt that before. Not in a long time, anyway.
I step back, give her some space. She doesn’t deserve it, but I need to work out what I am going to do with these feelings that aren’t remotely sensible. She has done something so audacious and out of line she must be punished for it.
“Where are my brothers? Did you kill my brothers? That’s what you do, right? You kill?”
“They’re not dead. I tied ‘em up and put them in one of the outhouses.”
“I thought captive shit was for idiots.”
I am about to tell her she needs to be more appreciative for the mercy I am offering her, but I don’t get to say that, because that is when I get shot.
The bullet enters through the back of my shoulder and passes clean through in a spray of blood. I guess I’m not the only one who can get out of a captive situation.
“Tim! No!”
“Son of a bitch thought he could tie us up and take our fucking sister?”
Tim slams the butt of the gun into my face. There’s stupid fury in his eyes, the kind of anger that makes a man dumb. Most times, shooting someone and hitting them with a gun is a pretty decent way to disable them, but I am not someone. I am a wolf alpha, and I am not silvered.
I shift.
He shifts.
In an instant, the room is full of wolves. His brothers come through the same window, both in their wolf forms. Three wolves on one is a rough ratio at the best of times, but it’s harder when you can’t just cut loose and go absolutely feral because there are some creatures here I do not want to harm.
Ellie is somewhere in the mix. I can’t see her because there’s one set of jaws on my throat trying to rip it out, and another set of jaws at my belly.
They’re trying to kill me.
I’m trying to kill them—well, some of them. Not the baby. He’s in the mix, though, and his teeth still have some of that needle sharpness to them.
Ellie
What an absolute fucking mess. I knew my brothers might get a little rough with him, but I thought that would be an advantage. I thought he’d be outnumbered and do what we said. In under a minute, the entire interior of the cabin has been smashed to pieces by their fighting. We don’t have much, and what we do have, we need to preserve.
They are fighting viciously, their snarls and growls almost deafening me along with the sounds of furniture being splintered.
This fucking guy.
All he needs to do is make a fucking call.
Why can’t he just make a fucking call?
I know how to stop this fight. It’s not going to be pleasant, but they’ve brought it on themselves. I grab a bucket, dip it into the nearby river, and then I dump the full contents of a bottle of colloidal silver into the bucket of water and throw it at them.