Page 153 of Mortal Shift
I raised my arms into a guard stance, but my movements felt sluggish, and my limbs like they were made of stone. With a dark laugh, Kallan stepped in and swept my legs from under me before I could do a single thing to stop him. I hit the ground hard, and a split second later he dropped down on top of me, straddling my waist, sneering down at me.
I twisted and thrashed beneath him, but he was too heavy, too strong, and I was too weakened from the strike to my temple. Too weak at all. What had I been thinking? No human could survive at Darkveil Academy. Not living amongst the monsters as one of them. My life had been forfeit the day I set foot in these halls, and now Kallan was collecting on that debt. He lifted his hand up so that I could see it clearly in the morning haze. Dawn was only a few minutes away, but it wasn’t going to come quickly enough to save me. As I watched, Kallan’s hand shifted, wickedly curved claws gleaming inches above my eyes.
“I think I’ll start by carving up your pretty little face,” he said, lowering his claws closer to my eye. I flinched and tried to pull my head away, but there was nowhere to go. “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t damage it too badly. After all, I want Cole to be able to recognize you when he sees you. That’s half the fun. No, I’ll just make enough of a mess that he knows you died screaming.”
“Realized you’re not man enough to break me?” I taunted—though why I was taunting the crazy shifter who wanted to inflict unspeakable pain on me, I didn’t know. Anger flashed through his eyes, and then he threw his head back and laughed long and loud.
“You’ve got fire, blood whore, I’ll give you that. Fun as it would be to break you, and make you my little pet, I think it’s going to be more satisfying watching your death break Cole.”
I bucked and thrashed under him with all my strength, screaming with fury, but I may as well have been trying to move a mountain or scream the moon from the sky for all the good it did me.
“Now, let’s see...” He trailed his claw from my eyes to my cheekbone, then flicked his wrist and opened a half inch gash. Pain stung at my cheek, but I ground my teeth together and glared at him, determined not to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream.
“Tough one, aren’t you? But we’ve only just gotten started.”
And I did not like the sound of that at all.
“How about a matching pair?” He moved his hand to the other side of my face and repeated the motion, opening another cut, and this time a hiss of pain slip from my lips before I squeezed them shut—which wasn’t quickly enough to stop the glimmer of sadistic satisfaction taking root in Kallan’s eyes.
Cole. Just keep thinking of Cole. Screw Kallan if he thought my last thoughts would be of him.
His claws trailed an inch lower, and then opened a third wound right below the second, and I snarled my fury at him. He only laughed in response, the sound guttural and hate filled.
Blood leaked freely down my face and I bared my teeth, ignoring the pain. I would not let him break me. He saw the resolution on my face and his eyes tightened, lips twisting in anger. He drew back and thudded a fist into my ribcage, and I felt something snap. A split second later the pain ripped through me and burst from my mouth as a ragged gasp. Kallan’s eyes glittered with dark malice as he leaned his weight on the injury, and I bit back a whimper of pain.
I wouldnotlet him break me.
“Scream for me, and I’ll make it quick,” he crooned. “Beg me to kill you.”
“Bite…me…” I gasped around the burning in my chest. He drew back and punched me again. And again.
Cole. Cole touching me. Cole kissing me. Cole inside me, showing me things I never imagined I was capable of feeling.
“Cali!”
For a moment I thought I’d conjured his voice from my memory, but then Kallan stiffened and jerked his hand away from my face, twisting round to glare out of the tree line from where the sound came.
“Looks like playtime’s over,” Kallan said, his voice tight with frustration. “We’re going to have to wrap this up faster than I intended.”
Cole raced into the clearing, and Wes leaped to meet him. Cole threw himself into the air, shifting on the fly in a spray of fabric, and the two wolves clashed mid-air with an audible smash, and thudded to the ground in a whirlwind of teeth and claws.
Kallan wrenched his gaze from the pair and snarled down at me. “Say goodbye, blood whore.”
My heart thudded painfully in my chest. Cole was here, but he was too late to save me.
Kallan drew back, raising his partially shifted arm high above his head, and as he did, I felt his weight shift on me slightly, giving me just a fraction of wiggle room.
I wrenched my arm free from under him as his claws swiped down towards my face. Fur flash in front of my eyes as I slashed my arm across Kallan’s torso. He toppled back with a cry of pain. My eyes tracked the bloody claw marks across his chest, and then fell to my own arm. No, not arm. Paw.
What the actualfuck?
Everyone in the clearing froze, their eyes seemingly staring at the same thing as mine. Cole was the first to snap from his stupor, grabbing hold of his rival’s scruff in his huge jaws, and tossing him aside. Wes smashed into a tree trunk then hit the floor, and went still, except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
Cole turned to me, pulling his wolf back into himself, and approaching me on two legs. Across from us, Kallan clutched one hand to his bloodied chest, and started to push himself to his feet.
“Move, and I’ll rip your head from your shoulders,” Cole snarled, his voice a lethal vow. Kallan turned to stone, and Cole turned his eyes back to my hand, now fully human again. But the jagged wounds on Kallan’s chests told me I hadn’t imagined it. My arm had shifted.
“What the fuck just happened?” Cole said, his eyes flicking from my hand to my face.
