Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
The betas on my side tried to help but were quickly overwhelmed by the betas on Orion’s and Badr’s side. Their powers of persuasion didn’t work on each other, but their claws did.
Davis bellowed as Lucy opened deep, weeping wounds across his chest.
“How about me for your harem?” Lucy taunted, fangs piercing her bottom lip. “Traitor.”
“Please. An ugly bitch like you? I’ve got standards.”
“Argh!” Lucy kicked in his chest, throwing him off his feet.
I cried out as he crashed onto the dining table, and flipped it, the plates, foods, and utensils onto himself. Good comeback, but Davis paid for it dearly.
Metal wolves incased their skin in steel, protecting themselves as they fled for the jam-packed exit. All of them including Zarina Bankole, my metal wolf ally and secret friend who asked me to protect her identity so she wouldn’t become a target and get thrown out of the pack like both her parents were.
I promised her that protection—
A sun wolf skidded in front of her, blasting her full in the face before she could blink.
Zarina went down screaming, clutching the ruined, burnt-out eye sockets where her eyes used to be.
—and I failed.
Chains rattled.
Snapping my head up, I got out a single shout in time for Orion to fall on my head—crashing down on top of me and pinning me to the floor.
“Look what we have here.”
“Get off of me!”
Orion laughed out loud as he hauled me to my feet, his grip like iron around my arm and neck.
“Get off!”
He spun me around as Badr hit the deck, falling gracefully on his shifted hindlegs, and not breaking a single bone in his rotten, worthless body.
“Bring her.”
Orion obeyed.
My fated mate, chosen by the goddess herself to be my soulmate, dragged me off the dais and through the baying mob. Every solid, unphasing inch of me.
They tore at me.
Ripped my braids off my head. Spit on me. Doused me in scalding hot coffee. Punched me in the face, stomach, nose, mouth. Burned me with flames. Blinded me with sun. Forced water down my throat. Stabbed sharpened bamboo shoots through my stomach. And laughed.
The worst part as they beat me so easily and so quickly... was how loud and vilely they laughed.
Deep down, I screamed at my wolf to come out, wake up, take over, protect us, FIGHT!
She didn’t even stir.
I was a bloody, broken doll by the time we closed the short distance to Badr. Orion long since stopped holding me up and just clamped my wrist, wrenching it as he dragged me across the floor—collecting vicious kicks.
“Lift her.”
Orion propped me on my knees, then grabbed me under the chin—holding me and my head up.
Because I couldn’t do either.
“Daciana Volana, queen of nothing and no one, you’ve escaped justice not once, not twice, but three times.”
A shadow fell over me, looming large through my blurry, swollen eyes.
Badr shifted into a magnificent, tawny alpha wolf, bearing both unique and pretty black markings between his eyes. Lifting his massive head high, it was Badr who looked the king right then—as naturally as if Luame herself came down and placed a crown on his head.
Badr grunted and barked. Wolf speak, but I knew it better than English.
“This is for my brother.”
I knew even before Orion tipped my head all the way back. Before Badr opened his maw and roared. So many times I threatened to rip a throat out, and one horrible day, I did so.
That day, I would find out what it felt like... before I joined Castor.
“Edric, Paxton,” I whispered through any bonds that remained. “Take care of her.”
Badr lunged, fangs sinking into my neck and—
“Ungh!”
—and nothing.
I cracked my eye open, peering through the blood.
Badr’s eyes rolled in their sockets—bugged and panicking as writhing, green snakes wound through his open mouth, between his fangs, around his jaw and priiiiied it open, wrenching it further than it was supposed to go.
I gasped when I heard it snap.
Badr yelped, whimpering piteously as the snakes lashed around his stomach and limbs... and squeezed.
“Wait! No— Aghhh!” Orion’s grip suddenly disappeared, dropping me flat on my face.
Screams and shouts sounded all around me, battering my burnt ears. I strained to lift my head and managed only to shift it to one side. The cool hardwood soothed my ruined left ear while I struggled to make sense of a sideways world. All around me, the snakes were everywhere.
No... not snakes.
Vines. Thick, rope-like vines slithered across the floor, through the windows, and down the walls—going after every alpha in sight.
Johnson shifted as four heavy vines wrapped around his limbs. His wolf snapped at the threat, chomping through a vine, until the vines snapped back.
They slammed him against the wall once—twice—five—eight times until he stopped moving for good.
Megan ran screaming past me, tearing for the door much like the metal wolves she terrorized. A vine swept her leg out from under her. Her head bounced off the floor as it yanked her into the air, suspending her screeching from the ceiling.