Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
She screws her face up in frustration. “It is true. I hate everything about these places. I hate everything I’ve seen. I hate how I have to hide myself, and my magic. And I hate you!”
She spits the last words with hurtful venom, but I know the tone of a child’s tantrum all too well. She’s not going to get away with this, and I have no intention of responding to the vicious little jab she just took.
“You are going back to the train cabin,” I tell her. “We all are.”
She doesn’t want to submit to this decision, but she knows we can just pick her up and carry her there if we have to.
I can almost feel her thoughts, a thousand angry little plans buzzing about in her mind like a nest of annoyed wasps. She wants to act out. She wants to run away. She wants to shift and eat all these humans, bound from one to the other, ripping their throats out.
Or maybe that’s just my fantasy, projected onto her.
Tabby
I want to bite everyone in the neck and I want them to all fucking bleed out begging for their worthless lives. I also don’t really want to hurt anyone. That doesn’t make sense, I suppose. It’s not these people’s fault that they suck so very much.
We go back past the restaurant, which is still serving customers. They’ve put a big board of wood up over the window where Krall and Skor came through like wild beasts. They stayed in their people forms though. Disappointing.
I have only seen my mates’ wild forms once, when they hunted me down in the mountains. They were larger than most of the mountain wolves, better fed, and much more powerful. I want to see them again. I want to take my own form. I want to be free.
I think they want to be free as well, underneath it all. They say they want to take me to some awful city, but they were attracted to the wild thing in the mountains. They came to a terrible place, and they have to expect to have picked up a terrible creature.
Maybe I haven’t been bad enough yet? A petty little whine about some noisy human is nothing. I dropped some drink on hum. I could have hit him with a thunderbolt. I could have set his hair on fire. I could have…
“I can feel your vicious little thoughts, and I like them,” Skor murmurs in my ear as we climb back into the train.
“What?”
“I can hear them,” he repeats, flickering a wink at me.
I am inclined to take that statement literally.
“Then get out of my head. Creep.”
“Oh, she’s feisty tonight,” he grins. “Coming out of your shell? Careful. You might be coming out just to get smacked into line.”
He says that just as we step into the cabin. And I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s his tone. Maybe I’m still hungry. Maybe I know I need to give these guys a demonstration that will make them let me go. Whatever it is, it’s the final straw.
Krall
I have seen many shifters take their wolf forms in the past. Usually it is a smooth physical transition. When my brothers and I take our wolf shapes, it is silent and it is clean.
Blam!
Tabby mutters a word and a thunderclap issues from some unseen storm. There is a thick cloudy haze in the air around Tabby. When it clears, a silver and white wolf with incredible phosphorescent green eyes is staring at us.
“That was amazing!” Thorn claps his hands approvingly. We really need to start working all together when it comes to handling this girl. We cannot be undermining one another over and over again. She’s smart enough to take advantage of any little fractures in our alliance.
“Back into your human form,” I say. “Now. If someone sees you, there’s a real chance we will be discovered, and that could make the journey very dangerous.”
She lunges at me, jaws open and snapping at my face in an aggressive display. She’s much larger and heavier as a wolf, so she is able to knock me back against the cabin door. If I were to shift as well, I could easily dominate and pin her, but I don’t want to do that. We are remaining civilized and under cover. That’s a decision I made a while ago, and I want it respected.
She comes at me again, this time knocking me to the floor. She gets her jaws around her neck, threatening me, knowing that she will suffer for this soon enough. I do not move.
But Skor does. He strips off his clothing and he shifts. In an instant, there are two wolves in the cabin. He sinks his teeth into the back of Tabby’s neck, and I feel her jaws loosen as he bites harder than she expects, forcing her to yelp and whimper.