4

Out of nowhere, without waiting for his nod of approval, Haisley Byrne saunters to the dais, steps up to Killian, wraps her arms around his neck, and shoves her boobs into his side. Then she rises up on her tiptoes and kisses him full on the mouth. He goes rigid.

He doesn’t avert his eyes. He’s looking at me while she sucks his face. No.

Ours.

An inhuman wail—both a yowl and a roar—fills my ears from inside my skull.

My spine rips out of my skin.

Pain cascades through me, bursting from the inside out, an explosion of splintering bone and shredding muscle. I’m dying. I’m being torn apart.

I scream, collapsing to the ground. My joints break with a sick pop, and I lay powerless against the contortions, staring unblinking at the dais. Haisley’s jaw has dropped. Killian’s—holding himself back?

His fists are clenched, his teeth gritted, as if he’s straining to control himself.

My vision is like a camera focusing. Everything is small and far away, and then it’s close and bright and too vivid. I can see the cracks in the linoleum. Dust motes suspended in the air. The golden rings around Killian’s pupils blow wide and then contract into pure black.

In the kitchen, a dish shatters. Everyone’s heart is beating in an uneven rhythm. It’s a roar filling the room, a wave beating against a shore.

I can smell everything. Meat. Blood. That bitch. Her coconut shampoo and her vanilla lotion mixed with sweat. She’s touching my mate, rubbing her scent on him.

A faint, panicked voice, far away, pleads to stop, think, wait a minute, but she—I—don’t listen. I am the wolf, and she’s encroaching on our mate.

I leap, baring my fangs, snarling, every movement an agony as my body tries to reknit mid-motion, joints and sinews mending as I simultaneously rip them anew. I mean to lunge, attack, but there’s something wrong with my back leg, so I have to drag the useless limb as I go for that bitch, snapping my teeth.

I can’t stop. Everything’s in the wrong place, the wrong proportion, and there’s no color, but scents swirl and speak.

I’m weak—I know I am—but she can’t touch him. He’s mine.

I raise my muzzle and howl.

There are hoots and catcalls behind me. She says human words from her fake red mouth.

I bark at her. Shift, bitch. Fight me. Let him go and come. I’ll tear your pelt from your hide. I’ll destroy you for touching my mate.

Through sheer determination, I drag my aching carcass close enough to take a swipe at her. She laughs and toes me in the ribs with her high-heeled boot. Compared to all the other pains, it’s nothing. I manage to nip her calf and get a taste of denim.

Not what I want. I lick my muzzle. I want blood.

She snarls. Someone snaps, “No!” But in a moment, she’s gone, and in her place, a snow white she-wolf is looming over me.

She’s big. Three times my size, at least.

She doesn’t hesitate. She goes for my throat. Her fangs sink into my collarbone, a new, searing pain exploding through my already reeling brain, and I struggle, I fight like hell, but she’s so much stronger, and I’m a mess.

She rips a hunk of flesh from the bone, and I scream. She doesn’t let go, flinging me side to side, slamming me against the floor.

I snap my teeth, but my mouth closes on air. My claws glance off her thick coat and tough hide.

I’m losing blood, fading by the second. The stink of copper is everywhere. My pack is going to let me die. They’re going to watch me bleed out while they sop their dinner plates clean with bread I baked.

I’m cold. And tired. I let myself go lax. I can’t win, and there’s no sense in giving them a show.

“Enough,” Killian roars.

Haisley tears her fangs out of my flesh and straddles my limp body, drooling on my side, the strings of her saliva pink with my blood.

“Shift,” he commands.

My bones instantly obey, cracking again, even the broken ones, snapping back into place. For a few seconds, the pain dims everything.

Am I going to pass out? Oh, please, let me just fade away. Too soon, my shifter healing kicks in, and I’m snatched back from darkness. I can’t escape.

I try to curl into a ball, but I can only raise a knee a few inches. I still have an unobstructed view of the dais, so I can watch, collapsed and naked on the floor, as Haisley accepts a T-shirt from her mother Cheryl, our alpha female.

Haisley smirks, licking blood from her lips. Her mother fusses over her while she glares at me, lip snarled.

I’m on the ground in a pool of blood. Scraps of my red-soaked shirt and pants litter the floor. I’m shaking hard, my teeth clattering. I struggle to sit, but I can’t get my muscles to contract. Nothing’s attached right, and I’m so weak. I huddle, my knees as close to my chest as I can raise them, trembling arms wound around my calves.

No one offers me a shirt. They’ve backed far away from me as if I’m contagious.

Moon mad.

I dare to peek up at Killian. His angular face is stone, chin lifted slightly as he glares down his sharp nose.

Somehow, despite the stench of blood, I can still catch his scent—a mix of sweet, soothing things. Sugar cubes. Bubbling hot butterscotch. A drop of caramel on the tip of your tongue.

My wolf mewls for him.

Help.

His lip curls in disgust, but his eyes flicker blue to gold.

“Stand up,” he snarls.

I can’t. I don’t have the strength, and everyone will see everything.

“Stand up, or I’ll drag you up.”

My gaze careens around the great room. Males leer and smirk. Some of the females, too. The elders are tutting behind their hands, scandalized and disapproving. Old Noreen and my girls are crowded in the kitchen door, horror on their faces. They don’t dare come out.

No one is going to help me.

Killian growls a warning. It’s a question. You dare defy me?

Summoning every scrap of energy I have left, I roll to my stomach and push up on my good knee. I can’t just stand; my bad leg won’t let me.

I stagger to my feet, exposing my butt, my belly, the wicked scars on my thighs and calves. The shame scalds as hot as fire.

There’s a lump lodged in my throat. I wish it would choke me out. I wish I would lose consciousness right now and wake up yesterday or tomorrow or in the middle of the ocean.

What did I do to deserve this?

I do what I’m supposed to do. I keep my head down, follow all of the stupid rules—mostly. I get my work done, and I don’t make trouble. How am I here? How is this happening?

Why did I do something so ever-loving stupid? There’s no planet or alternate reality where my runt of a wolf could beat Haisley Byrne’s she-beast.

I can’t live through this moment. The humiliation blisters every inch of my skin, but my heart keeps beating, and so I have to. Ghosts from the past pluck at the edges of my awareness. You’ve survived worse, they murmur. Just hold on.

“What the fuck?” Killian finally bites out, his voice dripping scorn.

I open my mouth, but no words come out. My wolf wails, pacing her confines. Why isn’t he helping?

She doesn’t understand, so she cries, piteously, and Killian’s face shifts from disdain to anger. I try to swallow the sound down, but it’s coming from my chest. I can’t even muffle it.

“Why attack Haisley?” he demands.

He knows why. Mates know each other instantly. Females go into their first heat, and it triggers some kind of magical chemical reaction. The male recognizes his fated mate, and then she recognizes him, and they fall in love and have young and live happily ever after. Or something like that.

Most of the mated females say they’re happy. They don’t smile much more than us lone females. You kind of have to take them at their word.

The point is—if I recognize Killian as my mate, he recognizes me now, too. He gets why I attacked Haisley.