Page 266 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

My hands curl at my sides.

"I've had her. I know what she looks like when she's underneath an alpha. I know the sounds she makes. And I'm trying to imagine her making those sounds while looking up at—" He gestures vaguely at my face. "—that. And I don't think she is."

The marker snaps in my hand. Black ink bleeds across my palm.

"I think she closes her eyes," he says. "Doesn't she."

Stop.

"It's okay. When she gets tired of playing house with a bunch of freaks, I'll take her back. I'll clean her up. I always do."

The ringing in my ears drowns out the beep from the heart monitor as the room disappears.

There is nothing except the sound of this man's voice describing Ivy like she belongs to him, and the feral beast in my chest that has been sitting quietly through every insult about me is no longer sitting quietly.

It's standing up, teeth bared.

My vision narrows to a single point. Wade Kelly. Pinned. Immobile. His throat right there above the hospital gown, pale and exposed, and all I can see is his pulse hammering in the hollow of his neck.

I already know what his blood tastes like.

I take a step toward the bed.

Wade's mouth is still running. I can't hear what he's saying anymore. There's a sound in my ears like wind through a canyon, the way it always sounds right before I go away and the feral thing comes forward. The thing that bit him on the ice and didn't want to stop.

My hand closes around the bed rail.

The metal groans.

Wade finally realizes what's happening. His face changes. The smugness cracks like ice over black water and what's underneath is the same animal terror I saw on the ice when my teeth were in his neck.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, three times. The pattern I set for just one person.

I stop and the canyon sound fades. The room reassembles itself around me, the beeping monitors and my hand denting the bed rail. Wade is pressed as far back into his pillow as physics allows.

I let go of the rail. The metal is imprinted with the shape of my grip.

Fuck.

I pull out my phone.

IVY

hey

did you get lost?

Whiskey's about to kick off a jello fight and I need you to rescue me from getting covered in green goop

I stare at the screen, her name bringing me back to myself. Because she wouldn't want me to do what I really want to do right now.

The feral beast inside me drifts back to sleep.

WRAITH

on my way

hide if you have to