Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
New Orleans is busy, and the expectations there are civilized. I’m glad my brothers are there. I know they’ll turn out better for it, even if I get salty when I see it happening in front of me. The problem is I already turned out. I’m done in a way they’re not. I’m a wild thing. I’m a wolf.
I hunt for my food, slinking through the woods in my wolf form, enjoying the rich and alive scents of the world. I have a lingering pang of guilt for just running away from Karl, but I never promised I’d stay at his house, and it’s true that I don’t owe him my body or anything else. We had a deal that involved me getting my territory restored, and I didn’t get that.
Rainer gets his fucking mall and loses his son. He paid in blood for those car parks and the future buildings, and the houses that will inevitably fucking flood when the swamp reasserts itself periodically. I guess, when I really think about it, my territory hasn’t gone anywhere. Paving over nature doesn’t really destroy nature; it just pisses it off and makes it come back twice as hard.
I’m trying to come to terms with the loss, and accepting the fact that the loss is a gain for everybody besides me. There’s not a person who has suffered in this more than me, unless you count Patrick, but I don’t count him.
These are my human thoughts. My animal thoughts are so much easier.
I snatch a fish from the water and chew it whole, my sharp jaws working at the living flesh. It’s cruel, but nature is. I am too. I don’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.
I find myself looking for something. I don’t know what, exactly. The house I found to hole up in is okay, but when I am in my wolf form, I want something more made of earth and stone. I want to be surrounded by the solid world, nothing made by man, nothing that smells of sugar and sweat and alcohol.
I’m looking for a den. Somewhere to curl up and feel protected, somewhere I can defend against anyone or anything that might try to get in. The house won’t work for that. It is all windows and doors and thin panels that any creature of strength could break through if it wanted to. I used to be happy in a human built home, but suddenly the very notion of living in something constructed feels deeply wrong.
I can’t find what I am looking for. The ground is too wet. I need to move up into the hills, I think. I need to track north a long way, up toward Shreveport. There will be other packs there, but that’s not a bad thing, I guess. My instincts are screaming at me wordlessly.
In the meantime, I sleep in the house I am less than comfortable in, slipping into my naked human form when I sleep, because as much as I want to avoid human feelings, I can’t do it forever. My body won’t allow it.
Days pass like this. When I’m awake, I take refuge in my animal self, I seek a den. When I sleep, I do so in one of the houses, because I can’t seem to find a place I trust. Now and then I try to dig, but it’s not exactly right.
As time passes, every now and then, I catch a scent on the wind. Something male is following me. Another wolf. I only really smell him when I am in my animal form, and my instincts tell me to steer clear of him. Males represent danger.
I try not to think of men when I am in my human form. I push the memory of the only male who ever mattered to me out of my mind. By being human only when I sleep, I can avoid thinking. And by being animal while awake, I can fulfill the simple needs I can never seem to as a human.
This works until a massive man bursts through the ramshackle door of the hut I am sleeping in late one night, pins me to the mattress of leaves and moss I put together myself, and starts lashing my ass with a leather paddle he must have bought for the occasion.
I have no clothes to protect me, and I am so startled I don’t even really react at first. I just lie there being taken and punished by my furious mate.
“I told you if you ran, I’d come for you, and I told you I’d make it the worst it’s ever been. Didn’t I?”
I screech as he spanks me so fucking hard I can barely move, one hand pinning me in place as he thrashes me so intensely, it has to be the hardest he’s ever done this to me.