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)
This, of course, means he is going to kill me. Or he should, if he is smart. Or maybe he’ll do what everybody says, lock me away in a harem I cannot escape, make it so I can never say anything to anybody.
I am the biggest idiot I have ever met. I should have listened to my mates. I should have listened to the director. I should have… I don’t know. I’ve just been so arrogant, always thinking I knew better even though I wasn’t really thinking at all. I don’t know when I decided I knew anything. Or why. I just know that almost everything I have ever done is a mistake, and I’ve worked that out in the last seconds of my life as the pretender king lunges at me.
I shift and dip underneath his flying body. Fortunately I have been doing a lot of stupid things lately. That has kept me limber. And I’ve been in training to fight quite literally my entire life. I don’t think this guy has ever had a real fight. He leaves himself open on the way past and doesn’t protect his weak spots. I get a real good grip on the ruff of his neck and just start yanking hard enough to make him yelp.
If I was in my human form, I’d laugh. Pathetic.
All that shit he was talking about owning me and he doesn’t know how to take a bite. If people at the academy could see this they’d be laughing their asses off.
Any wolf of his size with any level of fighting ability would be able to hurt me. Einar had no trouble dropping me when we tussled. It wasn’t even a contest. The only thing the king has on his side is the fact that he is bigger than me, but even his weight is easy to use against him. He has momentum and the hold I now have on him makes him cartwheel head over heels.
The king’s yelp does make me tense slightly, in case his guards come rushing in. When they don’t, I realize why, and it makes me bite even harder. They’re used to pitiful sounds coming from this room. They’re used to hearing females in pain—and right now, this so-called king sounds like a little bitch. I have him right up under his jaw, so he can’t bite me back as much as he’d like to.
We roll around together, slamming into the furniture as he tries to shake me loose. Still the guards don’t come. What hellish nightmares has he put women through that this does not alert them?
I taste blood, and that blood makes me even more feral. When the threats he made flash through my animal brain, when I imagine that he threatened my potential child, told me he owned me, wanted to fuck me the same way he’s fucked dozens of other women, none of whom had the choice.
The moment I open his artery, it is over. I am suddenly bathed in hot red blood. It covers my fur in a cascade of sanguine justice, and finally, the king makes a howl so pained, and so disturbing, the guards peek their heads in.
They look at the dying king, and then at me.
“Get her!”
I know these will not be weak and ineffectual wolves. These are trained wolves. These two will tear me to pieces.
I run, bounding through the window in a torrent of fur, blood, and glass. The roofs of the various gardens act as a path over which I can run—and I do run, at full speed, knowing I am quite literally fleeing for my life.
When I am not tackled off the roof and onto the ground below, I realize that the guards must have stayed back to try to save the king. The alarm has not been raised yet. I don’t know if anybody saw me come out that window. If they did, they might still be in the process of reporting it.
It doesn’t take that long to escape the palace. It is very well defended, but that’s from people who are trying to get in, not people who are trying to get out.
I leap from the garden roof line to the wall and then down the other side into the street.
Now the alarms are starting to sound. I hear them in the distance as I flee down toward the river, taking cover in the dense bushes that grow thickly along the edges.
And that’s when I see a van.
I know that van. Well, not that van, because I am pretty sure that one is still impounded, but I know in my gut that my mates are in that completely-conspicuous-for-the-area lump of metal.
I approach it somewhat cautiously, keeping an ear out, just in case it’s not who I think it is.
I hear voices though, and the closer I get, the more I hear. My mates have come for me, and are simultaneously planning a rescue and blaming themselves. I don’t know which one is sweeter.