Page 2 of Forbidden Wolf

His jaw dropped and he gawked at me. He looked like he was going to say something, but pursed his lips together, his brow wrinkling.

My arm throbbed from his bite, and a whimper escaped as the pain pulsed up my arm into my shoulder. My fingers covered my injury.

His stare moved between my face and my arm. Sighing, he stepped forward.

“Hold still,” he said, taking my arm in his big hands to study the wound. “It’s deep but hasn’t hit anything major. If you clean it out, there should be no infection.”

“That bite will kill me long before infection sets in,” I said, pulling my injured arm away from him. His touch confused me and left me breathless. “You murdered me.”

His eyebrows shot up, and his lips slowly turned up into the sexiest smirk I’d seen in my entire life. Maybe the toxin was starting to affect me because my legs were trembling and my heart thudding heavily in my ears.

“You’ve got that the wrong way round, sweetheart.You’vekilled me withyourbite.” He took a threatening step forward while enunciating some of the words in an attempt to make me the villain of this story. “My buddy’s uncle was bitten by a vamp last year and died within a few hours.”

I’d never heard that before. And even if it were true, it didn’t change the certainty that the wound currently pulsing with pain on my arm was my death warrant.

“Great,” I said. “We’re both going to die because you couldn’t keep your canines to yourself.”

The world spun around me. I slid down a tree to sit at the base of it, then rested my head back. All my senses were numb, except for the pain in my arm. I should run and escape, but my legs refused to move. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere that I belonged.

His gaze followed the gesture before slowly coming back up to my face. He copied my actions, his legs tucked up toward his chest to cover his modesty.

What the hell where we doing sitting here beside each other? A voice in my head screamed that I should be running away from this wolf who bit me. Another instinctive voice whispered that I needed to stay with this wolf.

He leaned his head on his knees and stared at me. “What’s your name?”

My head canted to the side, and my forehead creased.

He exhaled heavily. “I’m Levi. Since it looks like we’re both going to die, I thought it would be nice to know my executioner’s name.”

“You just can’t stop being a dick,” I snapped. “You can tell the devil when you meet him that you killed an innocent vampire named Tasha.”

His deep chuckle should have enraged me, but it sent a shiver of awareness down my spine. “Innocent. Yeah, right.”

My claws dug into my palms. He was such an asshole! There was no way I was spending my last few hours alive with an arrogant wolf. Pushing myself to my feet, I growled and stomped in the general direction of home. The poison from the wound was already starting to make me feel dizzy and nauseous. Since I couldn’t use my arm to climb into the trees, I doubted I would make it back to the facility to say a last goodbye to my family.

My fingers clung to a tree as I stumbled, and a strong hand grabbed my uninjured arm.

“Why don’t we have a truce for the few hours we have left? Neither of us are going to make it home, so right now, we’re all each other has.” Levi’s heat permeated into my back, and I tried to suppress the tremor that rippled through me. “There’s a cave not far from here that we can sit in.”

He kept hold of my arm and led me toward his cave. In my head, I knew I should shrug him off, but I couldn’t fight the strange sensation of safety he gave me.

I wanted to scream and be angry, but the overwhelming feeling was relief that I wouldn’t be conscripted for twenty years into the army and fight in a war that I didn’t start. I would die free in nature.

Father had always complained I was too much like my mother, and that she was too soft for a vampire. She used to tell me stories from long before the war, when vampires and lycans were known as the beautiful immortals. Both species co-existed until something happened and the war began. History reported that the lycans turned against their night-time masters, wanting to seize power for themselves. In a forgotten time, this lycan and I could have been friends.

The burn from my arm leaked into the rest of my body to scorch my senses. I bit into my bottom lip in an attempt to swallow the pain. Wolves had big mouths and lots of sharp teeth that penetrated deeply. At least my bite was only two small fangs. My arm felt shredded, the flesh swelling even as I looked at it. Bile bubbled up the back of my throat when I landed on my knees to vomit the precious blood I’d drank earlier.

“Shit,” Levi said, lifting me to carry me against his chest. “I guess my bite really is poisonous to you.”

My body burned and teeth chattered as I peered up at him. “Did you think I was making up my eminent demise?”

His lips twitched. “Yeah, I did, actually.”

If I had the energy, I would have rolled my eyes at him since it made my father mad when I did that. Right now, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep. My temperature soared and perspiration beaded on my forehead and pooled at the curve at the bottom of my spine. His touch soothed me as his fingers swept across my forehead.

The cave was just big enough to fit both of us, the bushes outside hiding it from the rest of the rainforest. Our thighs touched, and I was unnervingly aware of his presence, his unnatural heat sinking into my flesh to make me burn even hotter. The night was slipping past hour at a time, every one bringing me closer to death.

I’d seen wolves out hunting in the forest, and I’d stayed far from their reaches. Occasionally, some had been brought into the research facility. They were vicious, biting and snarling at anyone who came near them. Savage beasts who couldn’t control their urges.

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