Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 140412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
“I will draft a letter from you that says that, as I cannot speak to the King of this pack that way,” Hannah reminds me. “Okay, I’ll get back to work. You have coffee and breakfast on the way to your sitting room.”
We hang up, and by the time I’m showered and dressed, the smell of bacon and pancakes is too powerful. I decide to dry my hair later, throw it up into a towel, and head downstairs.
In the sitting room, there aren’t any security thralls. Nathan really didn’t want me disturbed. My jaw tightens. The ego on the man, thinking I need some kind of recuperation time because he’s just that good.
He did make me come until I lost consciousness, but that’s beside the point.
A thrall is setting the small cafe table near the window with a plate and service for one.
“Good morning,” I say, heading over to inspect the food on the trolley. I’m absolutely famished.
But something’s off. The thrall doesn’t reply to me. I see a drop of sweat roll down his neck. I sniff the air and immediately recognize the problem. “You’re not a thrall.”
The werewolf bares his teeth and lunges.
CHAPTER 43
Werewolves only change at the full moon. Only with the ceremony.
But this one changes in my sitting room.
There aren’t any real weapons around me; I grab a fork from the breakfast table. The werewolf’s jaws snap at my face as I dodge backward. He manages to grab me, opens his mouth to roar, and I jam the fork into his mouth, into his soft palate.
And then he bites down and my arm comes away.
I stagger backward, speechless with disbelief for just a second because it’s disconcerting to see your hand detached from your body. But then the pain hits me and I’m not speechless anymore. Somehow, I manage to scream out, “guards!” Then, I can’t stop screaming it, higher and shriller as I topple the table between us to buy me time. My blood sprays in an arc across the carpet; that’s not something I can buy time for. I’m already dizzy, but I can’t turn my back on him. I have to focus. I have to concentrate.
It’s not even a nanosecond, but it feels like a lifetime before the thralls enter. The first one through the door doesn’t hesitate; she runs full speed toward the wolf, vaulting the couch to launch herself directly into his side. He staggers off his feet and she pins him. I see her draw her firearm and I shout, my voice much weaker than I feel, “Don’t! We need him alive!”
The thralls that followed behind are quick to join her, but they’re not fast enough to stop him throwing her at the fireplace. She strikes the stones and falls to the floor. The other thralls manage to overpower the werewolf twelve to one.
But only barely.
“Bailey!” I hear Nathan yelling from somewhere far off.
“Stay back, Your Majesty,” someone closer to me shouts, and if they mean me, they don’t have anything to worry about. The room keeps listing like a cruise ship in a storm and before I know it, the floor is the wall and I’m slamming into it.
My hearing is fuzzy, and I want to puke when they lift me up. Someone does something to my arm that really hurts, like a blood pressure cuff that never stops squeezing.
“Safe room, now! Go, go, get them out of here!” Charles’s voice booms.
And that’s about the time I drop out of consciousness.
One second, I don’t exist. The next, I do.
I reach up to rub my eyes and find an IV and tubes in the back of my hand. So, I lift the other arm and punch myself in the eye with a wad of tightly packed gauze. Pain electrifies down to the bone, all the way to my shoulder, and someone gently cradles my forearm and positions it on a wedge pillow at my side.
“Careful,” Nathan says. “You need to keep that elevated.”
Pieces arrange slowly in my mind. We’re in the safe room, but this time I’m the one in the bed. I don’t have nearly as many machines, though. Just an IV pump. And I’m here because… “He bit my hand off.”
“They weren’t able to reattach it,” Nathan tells me softly. “I’m so sorry.”
It’s probably the drugs—and the fact that I can still feel my hand there at the end of my arm—that make me shrug that off. Or maybe it’s just that I’m so glad to be alive after what happened. “It could be worse.”
“It could have been.” His voice is raw with emotion.
“But it wasn’t.” I sigh happily. I’m in a great mood because of whatever is dripping through the IV. “How did that guy do that? We can’t do that.”
“I don’t know. We’re trying to find out.”