Page 90 of Bitten By Bloodmoon
It’s almost over. I’m strong. I can kill him.
Those words are my salvation. That string connecting us keeps me alive when I feel like dying. And another word creeps into my mind—mate.
And then the pain vanishes. I’m standing on four legs. I open my eyes and feel the weight of every gaze on me. Everyone else has shifted, probably in seconds instead of the agonizing minutes it took me.
I can easily see across the field to Ambrose, making out every expression and line of his face. His lips are in a tight line across his face.
“Do you expect me to thank you? I’m not going to. This wolf isn’t mine to control, is it? You can tell her what to do, whose side to fight on, and she’ll fight for you, won’t she?”
Nyx nuzzles up against my side in his wolf form, standing several feet taller than me.
“Be ready to run if I turn on you. I think Ambrose can control me now that I’ve shifted,”I say to Nyx.
Nyx growls in Ambrose’s direction and snaps his teeth together like he wants to take a bite of him.
“No, I don’t expect you to thank me. And I won’t control your wolf. You have free will to fight however you want to. I just wanted you to be able to protect yourself and not rely on any man—me or him,” Ambrose replies.
Warm light starts to blind me. The vampires behind us scatter to the edges of the woods, seeking refuge in the shadows. Only the shifters remain on either side of me in their wolf forms. Ambrose has both wolf shifters and witches fighting alongside him. The vampires can’t fight with us unless we drive the fight into the woods. But then I’d guess that’s why they are here at dawn instead of dusk.
“Try to lure the fight to the woods so the vampires can fight too,”I say to Nyx.
He nods his broad head.
“Isolde will attack first. She’ll hit you or me,”he says back.
He’s right. Ambrose won’t hurt me, but Isolde has no such qualms.“She’ll hit me. He’ll go after you.”
Isolde raises her hand. I dig my paws into the ground beneath my feet, preparing myself. I wish I had time to practice fighting in my wolf form. Moving every muscle in my body still feels unfamiliar, like I’m in a stranger’s body. I know I belong here, but it’s not my body, not yet. It’s like I’m borrowing a costume.
I leap just as Isolde blasts her magic in my direction, the blow missing me by millimeters. Ambrose and his pack start running in our direction at full force. The witches stay where they are, their feet remaining planted on the floor.
Cowards. They won’t get involved in a hand-to-hand fight. They’ll just blow magic our directions and let the shifters risk their lives for them.
“Stay close.”
“They can’t kill me,”I remind him.
“Yeah, but they can kidnap you.”
“Even if they do, they can’t hurt me. I’ll survive.”
“Until the next full moon, when they force you to be marked by someone you reject as your mate,”his voice shakes with anger at even the thought of that.
“It won’t happen.”
“No, it won’t,”he agrees.
Magic pours down on us as the Moonlight pack reaches us.
I hiss at the burns that strike against my fur from the witches, but otherwise, ignore the pain as the pack bounds in our direction. Ambrose leaps at Nyx, and before I can jump between them, I’m hit hard by a pack member I don’t know well. I quickly lose track of the others. Flashes of brown, black, gold, and white colored fur all become a blur around me, which makes it hard to tell who is fighting on which side. But I know to go for the wolvesmarked in the golden colors of moonlight. The blasts of magic seem to strike just as haphazardly, not always striking just the Bloodmoon pack.
A dark colored wolf with a golden stripe down his back circles me before growling, like he’s trying to get me to submit.
I growl back, my own voice sounding strange to my ears. The heaviness of my paws hitting the earth with each step is getting more familiar. I snarl, letting my lips curl back around my teeth, and then I strike, lunging for the wolf’s neck.
He side steps me easily enough before getting a bite of his own into my shoulder.
I whimper before Sylara hits the male hard enough that he runs away scared.
