Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
I run back to the bathroom and shift immediately. It hurts like hell. The ache goes right into my bones. Tears run down my face as I take deep, gasping breaths. I don’t know if I’m crying because of the physical pain, the emotional pain, or if this is because taking my wolf form, if only for a few minutes, made me crave Cain so deeply, I think I might be going mad.
I get my clothes back on, planning to limp out to the fields behind the house. I just want to be alone. There’s something so wrong with me that even the worst people in the world are laughing at me for how deficient I am on the inside. Being laughed at for my wolf form is humiliating. It’s like having the very core of myself on show, and having it be mocked.
Before I can slink outside, my aunt comes and grabs me, dragging me from the bathroom by the arm. I wish I had the will or strength to resist her, but I never did have that, and I think I never will.
“This is perfect,” she says. “I always thought your slut mother ran off in heat and got herself mated by a wolf who discarded her like the trash she was, but she didn’t even wait for a wolf. She mated with some white trash waste of DNA and this is what she made.”
This is now the second time I have been mocked for my appearance.
“You’re perfect,” my aunt says unexpectedly. “Colton looks like a wild creature, but you pass as a domestic stray. You’re going to be able to get into all sorts of places he never could without being shot. We’re going to make so much money.”
“I don’t think I want to do that.”
She slaps me. Hard. Right across the face. Pain bursts through my ear. Everything goes high pitched and fuzzy as my body responds to the blow.
“What you want to do and what you’re going to do are two different things. What you want to do doesn’t matter. And what you’re going to do is what I am goddamn well telling you to do.”
I cringe away from her, my inner animal and the much smaller, sadder, more scared part of me all aligned with the fear of her. I will do what she says, because there is no room in my body or brain for dissent.
“You see those houses? People come from big cities, like the one you went to, and then they move out here and they buy up the land and build ridiculous houses on it. Then they sit empty half the year. We’ve been hitting a lot of those places for copper. Some of them have it as a decoration. Anyway. You can go up there in your dog form, and you can sniff out anything worth taking.”
I don’t think this is going to go well.
CHAPTER 11
Kira
It didn’t go well.
I am where Colton has been a hundred times before, sitting behind bars, waiting for my aunt to post bail. It’s not even the biggest bail, just two thousand or so. We got a lot more than that in the last haul, so it shouldn’t be long before I see her or Colton. Probably Colton. He’ll want to gloat.
Days pass. A lot of days. More days than Colton has ever spent in a cell, that’s for sure. I think the police are feeling sorry for me. Sometimes they bring me takeaways from the local diner.
I’m numb.
Like a kenneled dog, I feel my will slipping away hour by hour. When I thought I was entirely human, I was stronger. I didn’t need anybody. I could go out and take care of myself because this animal inside me was asleep. But it’s different now. I crave companionship and leadership.
“How are you doing today, young lady?” A kindly officer is at my door with a grease-soaked bag that I already know contains a burger and some half cold fries.
Officer Brady is sixty-five years old. Old enough to retire, but the police pension won’t cover his lifestyle, which in his case, is one official family, and one secret family. I can smell the scent of two women on him from time to time—a side effect from my shifting. My senses are much sharper than they used to be, which isn’t really an advantage when you consider I’m stuck in a cell that hasn’t been properly sterilized in years.
“I’m okay, thank you.” I force a polite smile. I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have to let this situation bring me down. I can keep myself in check and be a good person. I have to try.
He lets out a sad sigh, as if he doesn’t want to say what he is about to say.
“Kira, you’ve got twenty-four hours before we formally charge you. We can’t keep holding you like this.”