Page 37 of The Fated Hunter Wolf
“I’m going to fucking rip your throat out,” I rasped. My arms shook while I held her wrists down.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Eve said with her hands up, like I was a live wire. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“Oh, I’m thinking straight,” I snapped. “I’m in her head. Or she’s in mine.”
“Rhys,” Logan barked again, stepping closer but staying out of range. “You feel them like I do. They aren’t dead.” His voice pushed into my head through our bond.You’re on the edge, brother. I can smell the feral on you. You can’t break the bond with her, or you’ll?—
“This bond must end,” I said, and felt the shift starting again—claws fully out, holding her down as my teeth lengthened, body bending forward.
Sable didn’t fight. Didn’t beg. She just stared, as if she wanted this. Like she was daring me to do it.
Welcoming whatever I did next.
The noise in my head became unbearable. Wind and magic and bond and guilt andhate, all tangled together. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
My vision split.
One eye saw her face—cool, cruel words still hanging on her lips like a challenge. The other saw nothing but red.
My spine arched, bones snapping in and out of place as the shift rippled down my back. My hands crushed the floor, claws punching through wood, digging deep. My jaw cracked wide, teeth growing, muzzle pushing forward before snapping back as I fought it.
I wasn’t man. Wasn’t wolf.
I was something in between. And it was killing me from the inside out.
They all just stood there, caught in the storm of me. Because they knew. They knew I was seconds from going feral. Seconds from becoming exactly what the curse wanted.
And Sable still didn’t move.
With her sandy-brown hair tangled against the floor and silver clinging to her lashes, she stared at me without fear. She’d planned this. Wanted me to break.
My wolf whimpered. Mourning what we were about to lose.
A scream built in my throat—raw, feral—tearing through the wall between man and beast. My body locked mid-shift, the bond stretching tight across my chest, trying to strangle me.
“You think you can carve me up from the inside out, and I’ll let this continue? You’remessed up. Something is fundamentallywrongwith you,” I growled as the bond burned like acid in me. “I’d rather rip my own heart out than be bonded to you.”
The words I had to say dropped into the air like a guillotine.
“I sever this bond. I choose death over being mated to a sick freak of fate.I reject you.”
Everything went silent.
Then…
Thunder.
It started in my chest, a brutal quake that began at my sternum and roared outward like a bomb going off. I staggered back from Sable, my body shaking. Sable lurched forward onto her hands and knees, gasping. Around us, the others cried out. Eve clutched her head. Logan dropped to one knee.
A blast wave ripped outward, silent and deafening. The bond tore itself apart in real time, like a living thing being shredded.
Between us, something visible sparked—electricity trying to fry us both, tangled threads of silver and black arcing from me to her and back, vibrating harder and harder until it screamed. The world warped.
Outside, I could see wolves howling and collapsing, limbs twitching. Some turned away while others held each other, shielding pups as the broken bond sent shockwaves through the pack. A pup started crying somewhere in the distance.
My wolf was screaming. Sable’s scent was poison in my head. That venomous mouth had delivered the one truth I’d never survive.
A rope around my neck, pulling tight, tighter…
