Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
I don’t think they’re going to kill me. I think if they wanted me dead, I’d be dead. I have just enough sense about me to realize that, and for that realization to make me submit just a little.
I’m too mentally fucked up. That’s the problem. When I’ve got an adrenaline rush, I can protect myself. But I can’t sustain it while outnumbered.
I feel my resistance fade, and that gives them the chance to drag me out of bed, throw me over one of their broad shoulders, and carry me out the fucking window.
I have climbed out this window probably hundreds of times. I never thought I’d be dragged out of it. It’s scary. It seems higher than before. They’re working their way down a ladder, and there’s nothing more precarious than being slung over someone’s shoulder while they climb down a rickety construction of old steel.
I start asking questions. Fast, panicked questions.
“What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Is it the duel? You want to do the duel?”
There’s a little snort at my mention of that.
“This isn’t about the duel. We need to talk to you.”
“This is a funny way of talking. Let me go, or I’ll scream, and you’ll have several hundred cadets coming for you.”
“Just stop,” one of them growls at me in the dark.
“Don’t argue with her. Just handle her.”
I try to scream, but that cry is cut off by a rubber gag being pushed between my teeth. How are these guys inside the academy walls? Where the fuck are the guards? There should be alarms and shots fired. I used to think I could sneak out of this place because I’m very good at being sneaky. Now I’m considering that the guards just suck at guarding.
“That should quieten you down.”
The one called Rafe looks at me with some satisfaction. I can see them more clearly now that we’re all on the ground. Einar must have me over his shoulder, and I’m guessing Rafe gagged me.
They take me out of the academy through the same passage I use that goes out under the wall, enlarged for their use. Okay, these men have been here before. They were probably cadets at some point before this. I wonder what went wrong, because they’re definitely not King’s Guard now.
They carry me down the riverbank and along the same route I take when I sneak out, all the way to a van. I don’t have a van. The sight of it freaks me out. They’re going to take me away to God knows where and do fuck knows what to me. This might be the last fucking time I see myself alive.
I start kicking again, hard enough to almost fall off Einar’s shoulders. I’m grabbing at his back to try to leverage myself off him, and it works. I kick him somewhere near the balls and take advantage of the moment of pain to roll over his back and onto my feet. I rip the gag out of my mouth and stare all three of them down. They’re still surrounding me. I know if I run, they’ll chase. I can’t shift again this soon.
Einar gives me a stern look, like I’m being silly. He has the absolute nerve to act as though I am inconveniencing their kidnap attempt.
“Calm down and let us talk.”
“No. Fuck you.”
He reaches for me. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. I kick him in the face. His head snaps back, and he falls against the wall of the van. It’s very fucking satisfying, but it doesn’t get the others off me. I am straining for the door so fucking hard.
They all start laughing as Einar starts bleeding profusely from his nose. I wonder if I broke it. I kind of hope so. I don’t like the way he speaks to me. He talks to me like he owns me, like there’s no reason I shouldn’t listen to him, even though the first time I met him he threatened to kill me, and the second time I killed someone in front of him.
“Let me fucking go. I’m not going to be some good little captive. I’ve been trained to fight my whole life.”
“Oh, we know,” Rafe says. “We’ve seen you fight. Very impressive.”
“But that’s not why you’re here,” Pretty Boy says. “You’re here because of how you ran.”
“Fuck you,” I curse at him too, as shame immediately overcomes me. I know what I did was shameful. I ran instead of staying to finish the fight. I committed a crime and I tried to distance myself from it. I should have known there’d be no way out, not really.
“You have wolf blood,” Einar says, his voice somewhat muffled because he is holding his nose to stop the bleeding. I think he’s going to need to get it reset. “Do you know how many female wolves are left in Eclipse outside the palace?”