Evelyn was strapped to a chair, her snarled black hair spilling over her hunched shoulders. My eyesight narrowed as I took in her legs hooked to the chair rungs with duct tape, her arms taut and stretched backward, her hands bound with a zip tie. I tried to see her chest, see if it still rose and fell, but she was angled away from me.
The desire to sink my fangs into flesh and spill blood seized me so hard my muscles jerked.
One of Evelyn’s fingers twitched.
She wasn’t dead!
A voice, scratchy yet feminine, rose from within. “She didn’t go through with the trial.”
My vision blurred and sharpened.
Lucy!
I circled around my house toward the broken window pane of my bedroom. The second the crackled glass would fall against the hardwood floor, Lucy would know I was here.
My stomach seized as the scent of cigarettes and menthol blasted into my pulsing nostrils.
Now!
Glass bit into my flesh and rained over the floor.
Something thumped lightly in the living room. And then everything turned quiet-quiet. I lunged toward my open door and shoved it wide, claws skittering over wood. My aunt’s mouth rounded with a gasp as I leaped onto her, slamming her against the floor. Her skull cracked like an eggshell, or maybe it was one of the bones in her body because her eyes were still wide, still seeing. I bared my teeth and growled.
The sharp tang of urine and fear filled the room.
“Ness!” she shouted, but it sounded like static to my buzzing ears.
I barked, and she blinked wildly.
Suddenly, something collided into my side and tore me off my aunt’s heaving, urine-soaked body.
Iwas half expecting to see my cousin, but it wasn’t Everest who’d flung me off Lucy; it was Liam. He’d caged her underneath his massive furred body.
What are you doing? I hissed.
Lucy was muttering, “It’s not what you think.”
He growled at her so roughly she shut up and turned as white as the towels I’d laundered for her day after day
Liam spun his face toward me. We need to find Everest, and Jeb doesn’t know where he is, but I bet she does.
I stared at him wide-eyed. My uncle wasn’t in on it? How could he not have known? How-
The others are on their way.
I turned toward the wrap-around windows, and sure enough, vehicles were rolling up the drive. Suddenly, the room was filled with human bodies.
Frank rushed toward Evelyn, who was shaking with sobs. The second he freed her, she slung her arms around his neck. He whispered into her ear words I couldn’t pick up. And then he kissed her cheek.
And she let him.
But then Liam stepped in front of me and blocked out the rest of the room. He licked my cheek, and the warm wetness stung, and then he tried to lick my shoulder, and I realized he was trying to get the blood off me.
I shoved him aside. I’d tend to my injuries later. First, I needed to ascertain Evelyn wasn’t hurt.
Cole and Lucas were hauling Lucy up. I felt them look my way, but I didn’t look at them, utterly focused on Evelyn. She released Frank and limped toward me. Slowly, she kneeled, pain excavating each one of her wrinkles, and then she extended her arms, and I walked into her embrace
I trembled when her fingers combed through my fur.
“Querida,” she murmured croakily. “She told me you needed me, that you were here.” She took my face in her hands, then pressed her forehead to mine. “Lo siento. I am so sorry for going with her.” Evelyn swept her shaky, dry palms over my muzzle.
A bone-deep shudder raked across my body, and tears skimmed off my eyes, tangled with my bloodied fur. Fear, relief, anger, and tension swept through me in waves.
Evelyn was safe.
She was safe.
I tried to tell her I loved her but remembered I was still a wolf. She wouldn’t understand me. And then I realized this was the first time she saw me in my beast form, and I froze.
She threaded her shaky fingers through my fur again, stroking my neck over and over.
She wasn’t running off, screaming.
I relaxed into her embrace, but then a hand touched my haunches. I snatched my head out of Evelyn’s hands and snarled at the person who’d dared pet me. Frank pulled his arm back to his side, as though fearing I would bite.
I licked Evelyn’s hand. She stared at the skin my tongue had touched, then stared at me, and I felt like I’d done something wrong. But then her pallid face split with a startled smile, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and crushed me against her.
Her scent rushed through me, reaching the places her arms couldn’t, and like the petals on a limp rose, my wolf form tumbled off my spent body.
Several things happened at once. Evelyn gasped. The air turned colder. A shirt whispered over my naked backside. A loud voice rose over all the others, demanding that everyone get out. Frank’s. Large hands lifted Evelyn and helped her back to the couch, and then those same large, papery hands wrapped around my taut and trembling arms.
“Someone, get her clothes!” Frank’s frantic voice reverberated off the cracked plaster walls. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t know.”
I bobbed my head, half nod, half tremble.
Frank rose and someone else crouched in front of my huddled, naked form. Liam.
“Here,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the dusty, water-stained wooden slats my father would oil every two years. Whoever had bought our house hadn’t cared for it at all.
Liam fit a roomy t-shirt over my head, then lifted my hands one after the other and guided them through the sleeves. He tugged the hem low over my thighs. And then he crooked my chin on a finger to make me look at him.
“She’s safe, Ness. You saved her.” He smoothed my hair back, and then he collected my trembling body against his solid one, and held me.
The room swayed and then it blurred and darkened before finally vanishing completely.
Isprang awake so fast my head spun and my vision fragmented. “Evelyn!”