Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Which meant they’d never hear me.
“Of course you have a choice! You can choose not to bury me alive!”
“I have to stop you,” he hissed, mostly to himself. “For Castor, for Wolf Nation, for everyone. You’re too dangerous. You won’t stop until you’ve taken us all down.”
There was no talking to him. Rising to my feet, I tried to shift and a sharp spike went through my brain, dropping me screaming on my ass.
“What’s going on? Why can’t... I shift?”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Badr shouted at me, but I was barely listening.
I probed my wolf, begging her to come out. But nothing. There were consequences for making promises in Luame’s name. There were even more for denying the fated mate she chose for you.
And now I knew what they were.
Blowing up the bond had done something horrible to me and my wolf. She was weak, broken... dying.
I needed to get us both help. I needed to get out of this hole!
“B-Badr,” I moaned, clutching my head. “You have to stop. You’re not thinking clearly. If you kill me, the shifter race—”
“—will be just fucking fine! You mated with Edric. That’s more than enough to ensure the shifter race doesn’t die.”
“No, this isn’t about that!” My voice rose as he dumped another shovelful of dirt on me. “This is bigger than that. It’s more important than you can possibly understand. Please, you have to stop, get me out of here, and get me some help.”
“Get you help?” Badr threw his head back laughing. I can honestly say I didn’t know what a maniacal laugh was before that frightening, unhinged sound ripped from his throat. “You must be joking! You’re done, Volana.” He tossed dirt at my feet. “You’re dead.”
Real and pure panic burst in my chest. There was a reason that everyone kept threatening me by saying they’d put me in a hole. There was nothing more dangerous to a moon wolf than a hole. Why?
For the same damn reason a big, deep hole was dangerous for a mundane. We couldn’t get out. I couldn’t use my phasing power because I’d end up lost in the cold and dark for a millennium, or until I died of thirst and starvation. I couldn’t shift unless I had room to shift, and Badr hadn’t done me the favor of giving me room. If he covered me and walked away, I was exactly what he said—dead.
“Okay, listen,” I rasped, desperation bleeding into my voice. “I know you’re scared and feeling trapped, but this isn’t the way. You don’t want to do this. I know you don’t, or you wouldn’t be trying so hard to justify yourself to your wolf right now.”
His brow twitched, hand tightening on the shovel. I struck dead-on. “My wolf will get over it,” he gritted. “You have to be stopped.”
“Badr, please, Castor wouldn’t want this—”
“Don’t you dare!” He swung the shovel at me, making me hit the ground screaming. The shovel caught on my dress and ripped it. “Don’t speak his name! You have no idea what my brother would want. You didn’t know him—”
“No one knew Castor better than me!”
Badr scoffed. “You never quit, do you? Even now you’re trying to spin more of your fairy tales about how my brother beat you and controlled you—”
“I never said that.”
“—and he made your life a living hell, but I knew him,” he roared, pounding his chest. “My father cheated on his mother with the cook and had me. That fucking hypocrite bastard hated me from the moment I was born. I was the constant proof of what a lying, honorless shit Cygnus Tahan is, and he couldn’t stand it.
“He threw me and my mother out, left us with nothing, but then one day Castor heard his parents arguing about me. Can you believe that Castor’s mother was cursing Cygnus out for ignoring and abandoning his own child? Even she thought he was a monster.” Badr kicked more dirt on me. “But Castor... When he heard he had a brother out there, he searched high and low for me.
“He brought me back into the family. He rang up the lawyers and demanded his trust fund be split half-and-half between us, and he told our father to fuck off! He said we both had a claim to the Sun clan, and we would both run it as co-alphas. Castor was a good man—”
“I know.”
“A great man! He was good and kind to everyone—”
“I know!”
“—and he never hurt you or anyone else, so—”
“I know,” I shrieked. “That’s why I loved him!”
“—don’t you—” Badr halted, nearly choking on his tongue. “What? What did you say?”
“You don’t have to tell me how wonderful Castor was, you fucking asshole!” I grabbed a fistful of dirt and threw it right back at him. “I know how amazing he was! I loved him from the first day I met him. From the first second! He was everything to me, and now he’s gone and I have nothing!”