To Kiss A Wolf

Flames rip through my body—the pain pulsing to the beat of my erratic heart. I am not awake, but I’m certainly not asleep either. Time hangs suspended as venom burns through my torn flesh. Days, weeks, hours—I have no idea how long I lay trapped in this state. I only know that, more than once, I wish it would end even if that end means my death.
In the absence of clear thought, my mind is awash with color.
Bright red for the blood spilled on the steps of the pack house, not just from my own body but from Thiago’s as well. Black for the back-stabbing betrayal of someone I considered my closest—and only—friend.
White. Kari’s gleaming teeth as she smiled at me—SMILED AT ME—as she ripped out my heart and watched it bleed at her feet.
She played me. Captured Levi. Killed her own brother.
Betrayal is a painful poison.
Desperation is a green cloud. Not envy, exactly, but a twisted rage that coats my mind like fog. Tripp carried me away from Blackstone, and with our escape, he’s stolen any chance I might have had at taking Levi with us. I’m angry that he chose me over my mate.
That’s a betrayal too.
Eventually, I am brought back to awareness as if by a sharp slap. I wake suddenly, wincing at the blinding glow of white light that shines against my closed lids. And the pain. Vicious pangs that sing through my veins like a banshee’s song. Venom. So much venom.
“She’s coming to,” someone says.
Male. His voice is vaguely familiar, though I can’t place it.
“I can’t believe you just slapped her,” says a second voice.
Tripp. I recognize his voice immediately.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
My mother.
My muscles tighten.
Their voices, Tripp’s especially, are not a welcome sound, not after everything. Not after my failure—and theirs.
“Just keep her still.”
My mother again.
“Jadick,” she adds, and the name itself is so buried in my own psyche that I don’t recognize it. Not at first.
“Here, this should do it.” Jadick’s voice is firm, confident.
A sharpness pricks my inner arm, and my eyes fly open, sweeping the space in calculated panic.
I’m on my back. In a small room with bare walls. Three faces hover above mine. My mother, Tripp, and Jadick Clemons, alpha heir to the Black Moon pack. They look down at me with expressions full of concern. The sight of them here together fills my throat with bile. I don’t want this.
I don’t want them.
Behind them is a door.
If I can just get there, I can find Levi, put all this right again—
“Whoa, easy.” Jadick blocks my attempts to sit up.
“Dude, you don’t want to put your hands on her,” Tripp warns.
“She’ll rip her stitches if she tries to—”
I catch Jadick in the jaw with a clumsy fist. Tripp grabs him, holding him up while he gets his bearings. My mother steps in, shoving me down again with hands that are not nearly as worried about my stitches as they are about being obeyed.
“You stay right where you are, young lady,” she warns me before I can try anything stupid. Her eyes are hard, and her voice is full-on “lecture mode” as she waits for my compliance.
Not likely.