Page 24 of Ava: Part Three

"So you just stood and watched. Yes, I got that part," she muttered.

Emily's face fell, and she kept her eyes down.

"I was a little jealous of how easily you got all those Alphas running around after you. You were calling Alpha Anderson by his name and hanging out with him so casually as if it wasn't even a big deal for you," Emily said.

"Wait. Was all of this over a boy?"

She'd led her to her death over a boy?! Seriously? She had been to two of Jared's parties, so she knew if Emily had really wanted a piece of that wolf, she could have had it like several of the other girls there. Jaren didn’t discriminate when it came to sex.

Emily swallowed and remained silent.

"Just get to the part about what you saw."

Everything else was irrelevant now.

"Claire was going to kill you, and then you growled," Emily continued. "I have never heard such a threatening growl, and I think you also took Claire by surprise. The next thing I knew, you were on your feet, and you beat the crap out of all of them."

"Like in training?"

What she wanted to know was if she had shifted. She needed confirmation.

"No, it was... It was more. You were partially shifted," Emily whispered. "You chased after them and were ripping into them. Even when they were begging you to stop."

She sucked in a breath and looked down at her hands, at her fingers. And the images from her nightmares filled her head again. Her hands full of blood. Her claws, more menacing than any she had ever seen. Her claws! Shit.

"You only stopped when they stopped moving. And then you threw their bodies into the forest. One by one like trash."

She clenched her hands into fists to stop them trembling and looked up at Emily as she continued to speak.

"And through it all, I couldn't move. You saw me there, and you smiled. I thought I was next, so I ran. And every day since, I've been waiting for you to come for me, too."

"But why didn't they find the bodies when they searched? There was so much blood there," she whispered.

"I don't know. Though we took you to the edges of the village so no one could see us, I don't know why they didn't find them."

So what did it mean? Were they dead when she'd thrown them into the forest? Or was it the forest that had brought them back?

She shivered and stood.

"You should go," she said.

Emily stood, too.

"But I can help. I can—"

"I need you to go, Emily," she insisted.

If anything happened here, she would have the blood of another wolf on her hands.

Emily didn't argue as she let herself out. Then, instead of unpacking and making her bed, she lay down and looked up at the ceiling. Monster. Her wolf was a monster, and the Council would use it to kill other people. Mr Patrick was right.

That thought kept her awake most of that night. By the time she roused herself from the waking nightmare in her head, it was already time to get ready for her duties.

It was only as she was dressing that she realised she hadn't blocked the door and windows as she had planned to. Her door had been unlocked and her window unlatched all night, but no one had come to attack her.

She was late to head out for her duties, so she decided to jog, and when it took her only a short time to arrive, it distressed her. It all made sense now. The quick healing, the increased speed... Her wolf was making herself known even though she was not welcome.

The kitchen quieted down when she arrived on time for duty allocation. The Omegas kept their gazes down, and no one said a thing out of place. They seemed to be actively keeping out of her way. She would have been perfectly okay with it if she didn't know they were reacting to the monster inside her.

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