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)
My wolf was going crazy—keening and pawing inside me for exactly that to happen. But the problem was... theirs were too.
Rapid heartbeats. Shallow breathing. Dilated pupils. Tensing muscles. My wolf senses picked it all up as easily as human eyes would’ve noticed the bulge in their pants.
Interesting. A year later and the bond incomplete, but I still have such power over them. That’ll come in handy.
One of the guys pounced, leaping over the table to get to me. Chuckles and two others tackled and wrestled him down.
And hello, weakest link. I didn’t bother to hide my smirk.
“You can wipe that fucking smile off your face because it’s never going to happen!” The only blond one in the group snatched the weak link by the arm and leg, and bodily flung him across the room.
He hit the wall with a crack that made me hiss. “Ouch.”
“This is all some fucking joke to you,” he growled, erasing the distance between us fast. “But let me tell you how this is actually going to go down. We sensed you close by and came here for one thing and one thing only. To chain your worthless ass up, and drop you in some godsforsaken pit for the rest of your short, miserable life.”
I was a reflection in his cold, icy blue eyes. Everything about him was cold and sharp from the slicked-back hair that didn’t dare to have a strand out of place; his sharp, glasscutter’s cheekbones; and his full, rosy lips twisted into a vicious snarl.
“Hmm. I bet I can guess what stopped you. One of you naughty boys was listening in. Who was it?” I sang. “Where’s my little wind wolfy?”
The barest flick of the eyes and the slightest tensing, and my gaze turned on the tallest and most ripped among them. It was hard to equate this mountain of a man with something as light and delicate as a breeze, but this had to be him.
Edric of the Wind Wolves.
Just looking at him made my wolf purr. She loved a fine specimen of a man because of the strong pups she’d have with him, and this man invoked visions of tall, strong, curly-haired warrior men with eyes as black as night; sculpted, angular faces; and beauty that would make a grown woman weep.
“Yeah, we were listening,” Chuckles said, draping an arm over Edric’s shoulder. “Seems you thought of everything. We already couldn’t kill you, but now we also can’t punish you without the whole of the mundane world finding out about werewolves and hunting us down. Clever.”
I winked. “Thank you. One of my better ideas.”
Ice Man flashed. Seizing my throat, he shoved me up against the wall—clamping down and choking out anything I could’ve thought to say. “I told you to stop fucking smiling,” he roared. “You have no idea what you did to all of us the night your psycho ass went full homicidal maniac!”
He threw out his hand, pointing to the silent, bespectacled figure with a snarling wolf cut into his coarse hair; black, fathomless eyes; a scar slashed across his cheek; and the flexing muscles of a creature waiting to pounce.
“Orion was thrown out of his clan! Their alpha said if Luame believed his true mate was a sociopath, then that’s all he amounted to as well. If he doesn’t graduate the academy top of his class and with a new mate, she’s going to cut his ears.”
Oooh. That’s bad. A wolf could be thrown out of his clan and find a home with a new one. But if their ears were cut, it meant they committed a sin that couldn’t be forgiven. They were to be shunned by all of Wolf Nation, and if they didn’t run far and fast, they’d be killed.
Ice Man wasn’t done. He hauled me around by the neck, making me trip against him. “Edric’s mother was sick before the mating ceremony. Because of you, he was forced into hiding. She died while he was trapped in that shithole, and he wasn’t able to be with her at the end.”
He hauled me to the left. A growl leaked through my throttled neck but I endured it. The big bad wolf had a point to make. I’d let him make it.
“Nyx was next in line to be alpha, but because he had to piss away his life in the middle of nowhere for a year, his younger brother completed the academy before him and stole his birthright.
“Fucking Paxton over there”—he pointed me in the direction of the guy who was flung across the room—“he was beaten within an inch of his life because his pack believed he performed some trick or stolen magic to become your fate. We had to bring him into hiding with us, or his clan was going to kill him.”
Badr, the last name to be spoken, shoved me back against the wall—trapping me between stone and rock-hard muscle.