Page 27 of Bitten By Bloodmoon
I see the dark of their fur blending together as I land against both of their bodies. The impact is hard, rattling me all the way down to my bones. I’m going to hurt for days after this. But the pain of the impact isn’t the only thing I feel. Something sharp swipes at my side, and I cry out in agony.
With a whoosh, I’m pulled hard in one direction—into a strong male’s arms. The fighting has stopped. But the question is,whose arms are these?
My head is spinning, and I can’t see anything in front of my face. I’m biting down on my bottom lip so hard that I taste blood, but I can’t stop. It’s the only thing keeping me from screaming in pain.
“Lumi, gods, Lumi!” I hear Ambrose screaming, and I know exactly whose arms are holding me.
Nyx.
His hand is pressed against my side, where my wound is.
“I’m fine,” I strain, getting the words out before clenching my teeth together again to keep the pain from escaping in a scream.
“You’re not fine, love,” Nyx whispers in my ear.
I growl at him. “Let me go!”
“If I remove my hand from where it currently rests, you’ll die.”
I frown, looking down to see that he is, in fact, correct. His hand is holding firm against the gash on my side, stopping the blood from spilling out in all directions.
“Let her go. I’ll do anything. Let her go,” Ambrose says firmly and calmly.
I shake my head. “No. Go. I’ll be fine. Nyx won’t hurt me. He thinks we’re mates. He wants to break the curse as badly as we all do. He won’t hurt me,” I say the words even though I’m not sure I believe them. But I say the only thing that comes to mind to get Ambrose to leave. To be safe again.
“I’m not leaving you,” Ambrose says through clenched teeth.
“Please,” I beg him, but as I speak, a cry comes out as well from the pain.
“If you believe she’s your mate, let her go, Nyx. She’ll die if she stays with you. I’m the only one who can heal her,” Ambrose says.
Nyx just shakes his head. “If you love her, you’ll heal her regardless of whether I let her go or not.”
Love—there’s that word. Nyx doesn’t realize that if Ambrose admits to loving me, it all but assures that I’ll die anyway, whether he heals me or not.
I stiffen in Nyx’s hold, and I can feel his cold stare on me.
“Let her go,” Ambrose says again.
Nyx sighs and then whispers to me. “It seems that your ‘mate’ isn’t willing to use his magic to heal you, so how about you shift? Your wolf will help you heal. You don’t need him.”
“I can’t,” my voice is shaky.
“Shift,” Ambrose says. His words are gentle and yet firm.An alpha command?
Within a heartbeat, I can feel my body changing. It feels like I’m being flayed alive from the inside out. My organs twist and burn, taking a different form as my bones bend, my back arching. Long claws shift where my fingers were, sharp caninescut through my gums, and long, thick, white fur springs up, shining bright with the golden marks of the Moonlight pack.
Time slows. I don’t know if it takes seconds, minutes, or hours for me to shift. The world seems to have stopped entirely around me as my body slowly transforms. The pain seems to linger just as long before completely trumping the pain I had felt in my side. For a second, I wish I would just die to stop the pain from consuming me, but as quickly as I think it, the pain stops.
I shifted into my wolf form.
I’m standing on the ground on my four paws between Ambrose and Nyx. I’m much closer to Nyx, and I know with his speed, I can’t take a step toward Ambrose without him stopping me, so in a way, he might as well still have his arms around me, holding me in place. I’m as captured as I was before, but I shifted.
I shifted!
Ambrose’s alpha command worked. He—
I pause.
