AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, his daddy did that long before that human-loving momma of his found a rich husband.” Faris shoved his face into mine. “Your father finally found a use for you.”
“I’m really sick of these stupid rumors,” I said, although—did Faris not know about the paternity test? Damn. The Elder Council had hushed that up tight. Dang crabpot.
He smirked and laughed. “Oh, I get it now. So that’s what your father is up to. That’s Rodero’s master plan. Couldn’t tame him, so he gave the dog his daughter. Done your job yet? Get your pretty little lips around his cock and have him eating out of your palm?”
Oh, my father had had a master plan, except something had killed him before he could execute it. “Ask my father how that worked out for him.”
Faris’s huge arm swung outwards. He grabbed the little table and whipped it towards me. I flung myself forward onto the floor. The edge grazed my hair, and it shattered against the wall. Splinters sprayed Spring and myself and rattled down onto the floor. Doughnuts rolled around.
Whatever calm I’d had shattered. I scrambled to my feet and towards the door. “Are you insane?!”
Spring stood, white as the snow outside, my mother’s eyes staring at me in bright, betrayed horror, like I’d ripped off some mask and eaten a baby, then picked my teeth with its little femur. Her voice cracked. “I thought you came here to help your pack!”
I inched my way in the general direction of the door. Faris loomed and paced, shoulders bunched and hulking. Absolutely time to head for the door but no sudden movements, no eye contact, no aggression. “I did come here to do that. We’re on the same side, Spring. We all want the same thing—”
“Liar!” she snarled even as her eyes reddened with tears. “I thought you had written me for something else!”
Bewildered, I asked, “What else could I have come for?”
She sobbed once and turned tearful eyes to her mate, who nodded his agreement that my stupidity was a grand tragedy.
Questions crowded into my brain like a bunch of kindergarteners wanting cookies. The scent of hostility and violence hung thick in the air—I needed to get out of there, now, or else I was going to end up as a wall hanging.
Faris, breathing hard, his breath so hot it steamed in the warm air of the building, snarled, “The Unwanted becomes the Luna. Rodero’s fucking games. Now you just made things bad for that hybrid.”
“He’s not a hybrid and I’m not Unwanted!” My mind spun around like a carousel. “My mate doesn’t want your territory! He didn’t even know you were here. We’re fighting over nothing!”
The bartender flung the mug he’d been holding. It crashed into the wall by my head.
Faris sneered at me. “Look at you. A feral eating out of a human dish. You should understand how territory works. How we bleed for it and no wolf takes it without a fight! BlizzardFall, EarthSpine, NorthBend. Any day that husband of yours could show up here with earthmovers and concrete pourers. It’s bad enough when a human does it. No wolf gets to hang that axe over our necks!”
The rough wood of the wall grabbed at my sweater and hair. Another ten feet to the door, sneak, sneak, sneak…. “Sterling and his father want to prevent that sort of—”
Faris loomed larger and larger, each breath like bellows increasing his anger, and all the wolves around him smoldered brighter and hotter too. “Don’t come back here, Unwanted whore.”
“I’m the Luna of SnowFang and I’m not Unwanted and I’m no whore!” I shouted.
He yanked me across the floor towards the door. He stopped, yanked his elbow back, and my body slammed into his. Then his arm snapped forward. His fist smashed into my sternum, pushed up, and forced all the air out of my lungs. The impact launched me through the door. The fragile metal latch and hinges and fiberglass shattered. Cold air smashed my skin. Splinters tore at my hair and dug through my sweater.
I flew through the shards, above the snow. Instinctively, I twisted, and the slow motion shattered as I smashed into the packed snow hip first. White-hot pain exploded into my brain, overwhelmed everything else for half a second as I slid backwards into a snowdrift.
Ice always looks so smooth and beautiful until you hit it and your skin discovers every pebble and ridge.
Move, move, move!
My lungs inhaled a rush of painful air and I choked.
Move, move, move!
A few seconds later, the signals got from my brain to my shocked body. I flipped over onto my back and braced myself on my elbows, uncoordinated as my nerves burned, my lungs tried to inhale air, and everything reoriented itself from impact. Faris burst through the ruined doorway, leapt off the stairs and pounced on me as Spring shouted. Another door slammed on its hinges and heavy footsteps as Hamid plowed his way through the snow, and the pilot followed with slower, cautious steps.
Move, damnit! Move or he’ll kill you!
Faris grabbed my sweater and yanked me up to his face. I dangled in his grip like a ragdoll. “Whore. Whore.”
My nervous system finished its reboot process. Whore. That’s what my father had tried to turn me into. His pawn. His whore. Sell me right to Sterling if Gaia hadn’t had other plans. Hybrid or not, I didn’t care. He was still a better male than this stupid over-stuffed warrior.
I grabbed at his wrists instinctively, but they were iron and I couldn’t get a grip around his coat. Cold stole the dexterity and strength from my skin. I squirmed and tried to buck my hips to swing my legs over his arm, but the cold weighed me down. Somewhere in a little corner room of my brain I calculated how long I’d have in this cold with exposed skin. According to my vague grasp of those equations, I had about seven minutes before the frostbite and hypothermia settled in.
