Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Theo screamed without warning, the sound not of fear but of rage, and suddenly, Yakov went flying straight into a wall.
Chapter 43
She’ll kill someone if you don’t get her under control.
—Dr. Upashna Leslie to Councilor Marshall Hyde (27 November 2073)
YAKOV HIT THE wall hard but managed to take the impact with his side and leg for the most part. The only reason she’d even got him that badly was that he wasn’t expecting it. But he was a bear changeling, his body built for hard knocks—and while her telekinetic throw had been far more powerful than should’ve been possible for a 2.7, it hadn’t been as hard as an enraged bear could throw.
So he was only slightly winded when he got to his feet—to see that all the small objects in the room were swirling at deadly speed. A violent cyclone inside the apartment. “Theo!” He could see her in the midst of the chaos, her hands fisted before she screamed and gripped the bracelet on her wrist with the hand of her other.
The turbulence made it seem like it was sparking with electrical energy.
Wrenching apart the heavy metal as if it were plas, she threw it to smash against the bulletproof glass of the window.
Despite the fact he was shouting her name, she seemed unaware of him.
Not what he’d expect from a woman who was always aware of her surroundings. She did a good job of not making it obvious, but it was part of Yakov’s job to ensure the clan’s welfare—which meant he watched everyone without making it appear like he was doing so, unless, of course, he wanted someone to know they’d been spotted.
So he knew that Theo watched everyone and everything.
Right now, however, she appeared to have forgotten the biggest threat in the room. Whatever this was, it wasn’t an attack against Yakov. He’d just happened to get in the way of the storm. With that realization in mind, he dropped lower to the ground and crept around the side of the room so that he could come up behind her.
Bears weren’t the best creepers. In fact, they’d won the Wild Woman Award for Worst at Stealth ten years running. What an insult! Each year that stupid Award Issue came out and each year bears sat down and growled and grumped about how biased the committee was . . . until they got to the awards for Best at Parties and Biggest Hearts.
All bear. All the time.
And they forgave the award committee.
Today, Yakov didn’t have to be very good at stealth—Theo was in a world of her own. Even as he came up behind her, she screamed again and literally smashed her hand against a mug that was flying in the air. It splintered into jagged shards against the wall.
Her blood flecked the white of the paint.
Yakov clenched his jaw.
She kept on going this way and she was going to seriously hurt herself. But he couldn’t come at her full frontal—she was just powerful enough that she could disable him should she have warning that he was about to incapacitate her.
So he did the only thing he could: once he was behind her, he moved at rapid speed—because despite what the world might believe, bears could move fast when they wanted to—and took her down before she could do anything but begin to spin a little on her heel. Locking his arms around her, he pinned her own to her sides and took them both to the floor, making sure to take the brunt of the fall.
He didn’t know if a Tk needed to see their target to do damage with flying objects, but he decided to act on the side of caution and—even as she screamed and unknown objects began to hit his back—he rolled so that his back was to the closest wall.
He took a few more bruising hits before he made it, but once there, the hits stopped coming. Instead, shards from the mug zeroed toward him . . . and hovered, as if she didn’t know where to put them. Soon, they dropped to lie flat on the floor.
But this was far from over.
Theo twisted in his hold as if she’d become possessed of changeling strength, her rage a thing savage and bright. He spit out a curse when she turned her head and sank her teeth into his biceps, but his bear was also weirdly proud of her for thinking outside the box. She bit down hard as things smashed into the wall above his head, but he still didn’t let go. Instead, he avoided the objects as best he could while protecting her from them at the same time.
“Govno!” He grunted as a small and heavy cube meant to hold memo paper hit his shoulder, but made sure to twist in a way that it rolled behind him rather than onto her face. Yeah, the angular thing was uncomfortable poking into his back, but far better that than its sharp edge cut her face.