Page 4 of Never Tamed
She’s gotten her second wind. I hold out against her as long as I’m able, but with the punctures in my side, I’m losing steam. Mental strength is all well and good but if your body fails you—
My wolf rises and bends my back, strengthening muscle and bone.
This bitch won’t back down no matter how I hold my ground. To show her I'm not afraid, to show her I’m here to stay, I grin. If she suspects I’m fibbing—
We circle each other again, lost in our own world while her pack snaps their teeth around us. The howling intensifies and the noise digs under my skin to set my nerves on fire.
My mouth opens for a taunt just as another wolf slams into my back like a wall of stone. I don’t have time to figure out my next move. I stumble forward and Catarina lunges for me with a snarl.
Between her and the other, I had no room to pivot. Catarina smashes into me, her teeth bared. Taking us down.
Swallowing my scream, I roll sideways to avoid her hands on my throat again. The wolf behind grabs me by the hair.
“You’re not getting away this time.” He drags his nose against the side of my face. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
Mathis’s fury erupts inside of me in a roar. Noble is silent, distant, too far for me to touch, and the screeching pain in my side blots out the rest of the room for a second. The world goes black, then white.
And Torin—
Torin is the inferno I don’t expect. His anger, the anger of alphas, twines together into this terrible volcanic pressure inside of me. The wolf holding me yelps, dropping my hair, and I surge up to grab him by the wrist.
Then snap them.
His bones crack in my hands like two pieces of stale bread and he screeches. Then things go sideways, like they weren’t already.
Catarina barrels up behind me and rakes her nails down my spine, shredding toward the holes in my side. Both fabric and skin split as she tears. The agony blinds me, and I go down on my knees, bone cracking against the stone floor.
The ache tastes like grit on my tongue. It tastes like black winter nights and other hopeless things you don’t come back from.
Catarina whispers something against my ear, pressing her cheek to mine, our faces level for a heartbeat. Then my own stutters.
I feel the second it skips and all the subsequent skips when my heart trips over itself. My lungs clench and seize and the tiny molecules of air I gulp can’t make it inside me.
Then she’s gone, and I fall on my stomach, straining to breathe while the church goes black.
Chapter 2
Torin
Ismell blood before I see her fall.
The scent shouldn’t exist in this place, something sacred, something wrong.
Ren. Our mate bond ignites like a flare in my chest and pulls everything I am toward her. I’ve never felt anything like it. Not with Catarina. Not even when I thought I could one day love her.
We convince ourselves of all kinds of shit in the name of obligation, to ourselves and the people we care about.
I said I would one day feel something for the woman who was supposed to meet me on this altar.
Now, Ren is on her knees. Until she’s not.
She crumples like her body simply gives up, like her bones can’t hold her up any longer, falling flat on her stomach with her head tilted away from me. And something inside of mesnaps.
My mate is hurt, blood leaching from the tears in her back and torso.
I roar.
The unrecognizable sound tears from my throat with enough force to shake the rafters above. Dust and debris rain down on the rest of the wolves butchering the sanctuary and stained glass trembles in the church’s iron window casings.
