Page 41 of Wolf Cursed
I froze, unable to move away and damn sure not willing to go closer.
Wolves shouldn’t have stood around so casually, right? Like they were waiting for something.
But that’s how it felt.
I crouched behind the brush—entranced, horrified, afraid to move—until eventually, my legs began to cramp. I tried to gauge how long I’d been here. Or how long they’d all been standing around like they were just waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. But maybe I didn’t want to know what came next. Maybe what came next was eating me. And by then, my cramped muscles would render me immobile and helpless to flee.
Forcing myself to get the hell to safety, I turned, finally willing to retreat.
But then I stopped when I saw a figure moving through the trees on my right. If it had been another wolf, I probably wouldn’t have stopped to watch. Not when it only added to the danger of being so close to such a large pack. But it wasn’t a wolf.
It was a human.
A male human whose broad shoulders and messy hair and chiseled jawline I knew way too well already. And this time, it was no apparition.
My belly leaped at the sight of Kai Stone striding confidently through the forest—right toward the den of wolves who would surely devour him.
I didn’t think. I just…reacted.
Ignoring my cramped muscles, I took off at a sprint for Kai. If I could get to him in time, I could pull him back, and we could run before they—
Right before my eyes, Kai peeled his shirt off, and it took me a full blink to realize the rest of his clothes were already gone. In the next second, he shuddered and transformed. Then he dropped to the ground on all fours. But not hands and feet. Fourpaws. A snout that hung open revealing deadly sharp teeth. A body covered in thick, brown fur.
Holy shit.
Kai Stone was a werewolf. And when his glowing eyes landed on me still approaching him at a run, he looked just as deadly as the rest of them.
But I didn’t have time to stop myself now. I was too close. I—
A hard chest slammed into me, knocking me sideways. We both went tumbling, and the air was knocked from my lungs. A strangled scream got stuck in my throat.
When I rolled to a stop and managed to look over, I could only stare in complete surprise at the person who’d saved me.
“Oscar?” I whispered.
He jumped up, looking beyond pissed and a little desperate. “Ash! What the hell are you doing out here?”
“I—”
A wolf growled from somewhere way too close by.
I looked over and met a pair of eyes that should have belonged to Kai. If they hadn’t been looking at me from the face of a giant black wolf.
This time, the scream unstuck itself, and I opened my mouth and let it rip.
The other wolves in the clearing growled and snarled as they began to make their way closer. I imagined teeth gnashing at my flesh any moment now.
Oscar jumped up and grabbed my arm, yanking me backward fast enough that I nearly tripped. Only his iron grip on my arm kept me on my feet.
“She’s not to be touched,” he yelled.
Was he talking to the wolves? Was he insane?
Before I could decipher what was happening, he was turning me around and urging me into a dead sprint.
We took a different path than the way I’d come in. I stumbled over brush and barely avoided running into trees.
Over and over again, I looked back, but there were no wild beasts on our tails. No wolves running us down so they could eat us for dinner. Still, I didn’t slow, and by the time we reached the gravel road and Oscar’s parked pickup truck, my lungs were burning, and my vision blurred.
