Chapter 12 #2
“Then ask me about something else. Ask me what my favorite food is. Ask me what my favorite color is. Don’t try to force me into disclosing the worst thing that ever happened to me that I can’t even remember.”
His expression softens.
“I have skipped a lot of steps with you,” he murmurs down at me, using his free hand to brush my hair out of my eyes. I liked it there. It gave me some protection from his inexorable inspection.
“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”
“My father used to kill people.”
His head jerks back slightly. “Is that one of the limited edition ones, or…”
I laugh. I didn’t mean to tell him that. I didn’t want to tell him anything. But I guess, eventually, the truth wants to be told.
“Do you want to tell me about him?”
“No,” I say. “Chocolate.”
“We are going to go and get some chocolate ice cream and we’re just going to talk like people,” he says, sitting back and pulling me up with him.
“What makes you think I want to eat ice cream with you? You put me here, under guard. You made me a captive. And you think you can come in here, remember that the past exists, and make it all better with ice cream?”
I pull back from him and sit up, knees raised defensively.
I am starting to think I should show him what the fuck he has been messing with. I have tried so hard to contain myself. To stop the shift. I tried to leave. But he wouldn’t let me go, and he is going to keep mating me and eventually this is all going to end in blood.
Why not now? Why not take the form he wants me to take so badly and just let nature take its course?
He looks at me, and something sparks between us. He can feel parts of me that are hidden to most. I think he might be able to feel the wild thing inside me shifting.
“Don’t,” he says softly.
“Why not?”
“No wolves on beds. It’s a pack rule,” he says.
“The bed would be the least of your worries,” I say.
He cocks his head at me, and a smile plays around the corners of his mouth.
“Are you threatening me?”
“You know I am.”
He laughs.
“You are so adorable. You haven’t taken your wolf form while conscious yet, but you think you are going to be, what, un-handle-able?”
I want to wipe that fucking smirk off his face. He really has no respect, no understanding of what I truly am. He really thinks I am just a female wolf who could never truly cross him.
Fuck. Him.
* * *
Rex
I’ve never seen anybody shift that fast. Nicky bursts out of her skin and into wolf form in less than a second.
The process is explosive. One moment she is glowering over her knees at me, the next she is hurling herself at me in full wolf form.
Her jaws close around my throat and she has me pinned against the bed for a dangerous moment in which neither I have time to respond, nor any of the guards have the notion that something is wrong.
She could kill me in that moment. It would be easy. This is the first time with her in conscious control of her wolf form and I know she will be operating almost entirely on instinct.
I shift as fast as I can, taking on my much larger, more powerful form. I roll onto my back, push her with both front paws and get her off me, then up and over onto my feet because now I need to subdue her.
But she is not trying to fight me anymore. She has instead pointed all her animal force at the glass windows. She leaps and crashes through the safety glass, which is not reinforced nearly enough to survive the weight and momentum of her.
It shatters into a million pieces and she is gone through the barrier. I follow as fast as I can, and the guards flow into their wolf forms at the same time. In under a minute, we have gone from sitting around calmly discussing the events of the past, to an all-out hunt of my mate.
She runs as if her life depends on it, heading straight for the road. She is going to make her escape one way or another. She’s faster than I imagined possible. Her ginger form shines gold in afternoon light through the dappled spaces between leaves.
Just as we are about to overhaul her, snapping at her paws and hinds in the effort to try to turn her away from the road, three wolves come out of the undergrowth, tossing themselves at us in what amounts to a very half-hearted assault.
It’s a distraction, of course.
I know exactly who they are. Three rangy, long-legged, generally patchy looking creatures put themselves in the way. They’re young. They’re not conditioned to shift, and they’re not functioning as anything much more or less than a roadblock.
It’s enough to give Nicky a chance to get away. She outpaces us as we are tangled in a mass of limbs and teeth and by the time we are able to disengage, she is gone.
I shift back into my human form. By this time, the young men from her pack have been subdued.
“Get the helicopter,” I order my men. “And put those three in the deepest dungeon we have.”
* * *
Nicky
I’m out. I’m free. I’ve got everything I need. Finally, after years of repressing what I really am, every part of me feels complete and correct. I run for longer than I knew was possible. Four legs propel me a very long way, far from the territory that is clearly owned by my wolf mate.
I know I’m not going to be able to run forever, but fortunately people pull over from time to time and when I find a truck parked on the side of the road, I jump in the back of the pickup and nuzzle my way under a tarp.
I don’t know where it is going, but I do know that it is going away from wherever I came from.