Page 5 of Lost and Bound
But that part of me couldn’t overrule the pounding, insistent drive to keep my heart beating for as long as possible, no matter the cost.
“Hurt doesn’t mean kill,” I said. “Let me…get some water, okay? Use the john. You can take what you need. I don’t care if it hurts, as long as you leave me alive, after. We can—coexist.”
He stared at me. “Coexist.”
I ignored the heavy overtone of skepticism. “Yeah, why not?”
“Because rabbits don’t coexist with wolves.”
“I’m—fuck you, I’m the wolf in this cell!”
“Maybe literally, but not in the analogy. And can you even shift?”
I flinched, stung and pissed and patronized and without a good response. No, I couldn’t shift, not after whatever they’d done to me. The forced shifting episode had…burned it out of me, I guessed, and I hadn’t been able to escape my human form since.
It ached, and it burned in me, and he’d figuratively poured acid into the open wound of it.
“I may not be a wolf right now,” I gritted out, “but I’m no fucking rabbit.”
“Might as well be.” And he closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall.
Dismissing me.
Like he would’ve dismissed an actual, twitchy-nosed, cotton-tailed rabbit.
Fuck. That.
I was a werewolf, and maybe I wasn’t an alpha but I was close enough, damn it, and I needed to piss and take a drink of water, and he wasn’t going to stop me by just…sittingthere.
I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pins and needles and the stiffness by sheer force of will, and steadied myself against the door.
I crossed the room to the sink, my steps firm and my head held high.
Chapter 2
Something to Play With
With my back straight and my stance wide and confident, I took a piss and flipped the lid shut, even though my neck itched and I was almost in agony from the need to turn, to run, to escape the presence I could feel behind me.
I washed my hands. I cupped them, taking a long, deep drink, the relief instant and overwhelming. The cool of the water rushed down my esophagus, soothing everything all the way down.
He hadn’t moved. I’d have felt the motion in the room’s air currents, heard the rattle of that chain.
Like a belled cat lurking right behind a mouse.
No, I wasn’t a mouse any more than I was a rabbit, dammit.
I rubbed water on my face, my confidence growing for real, instead of being just something I was putting on for show.
Maybe he didn’t want to try to take me on. I wasn’t that much smaller than he was, right? A few inches shorter. Okay, half a foot or so. And narrower, but not like I was willowy. I was a werewolf, a fighter, a predator. People mistook me for an alpha all the time.
Sometimes, anyway, and mostly humans.
But it happened, because I had the strength of four or five humans and the resilience gifted by all the magic flowing through my blood.
I turned.
He hadn’t moved.
