This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,26

suddenly trust this witch, no matter what she says. Time will prove her intentions one way or another.

Helen doesn’t seem to require a response. “Goodnight, Tessa.”

She leaves me in tranquil silence.

Ella barely stirs in her chair. The rise and fall of her chest is the only movement around me. Everything else is still.

Slipping off my ankle-high boots and placing them beside the bed, I freeze to see the drops of blood dried on the top of them. My own blood.

I need to shower.

Maybe throw up.

Scream. Cry.

Hurrying across to the door in the tree, I wrench it open, half-expecting that I’ll find nothing behind it.

I step into a large bathroom, just as tranquil as the forest I left behind. On the opposite wall is a long, mahogany bench with a white porcelain sink. To the right is an alcove with a bath sitting on a bed of pebbles, wood paneling surrounding the pebbles on the floor as well as decorating the wall behind the bath.

On the left, a shower space with an enormous square showerhead is surrounded by earthy-colored tiles. The room is lit with soft lights positioned at intervals along the walls, but moonlight pours through an opening in the ceiling directly above the showerhead.

It’s like something out of a magazine.

The moment I step into the room, the bath begins to fill with water. As I veer in the other direction toward the shower, the showerhead turns on. The warm water pouring on either side of me quickly steams up the whole space as I wrench off my borrowed shirt and broken bra and peel off my bloody jeans.

I avoid looking in the mirror as I step under the shower.

The water is gentle, but it drives me to the tiled floor where I curl up, naked except for the waterproof patches covering my wounds.

I finally allow my tears to fall, succumbing to the wrenching sobs. I want to deny that my father is dead. I want to believe that he’s coming for me, that tonight never happened.

Flashes return to me as I press against the warm tiling at the bottom of the shower. Baxter Griffin’s claws. My father’s final shout. Cody Griffin’s eyes boring into me. The tilt of his head when he tried to mark me, the power pouring off him when he came after me. Even the crack of his father’s backhand across his face. All of it is like oxygen to my grief, pulling tears from me for such a long time that my skin is already wrinkled by the time I drag myself out of the shower and over to the bath to immerse myself in the water.

I’m emotionally spent. Empty.

Or I think I am.

As I sink below the surface of the full bath, the memory of the brightest flame suddenly returns to me, fed by the sensation of Tristan’s power washing across me, a dizzying wave that burns out every other emotion inside me.

I return to the surface of the water, gasping for air, feeling like flames suddenly rippled from my head to my toes.

The woman I mark will be mine forever, Tristan said.

I hate that that statement twists my insides more than his prediction that I won’t live longer than another year.

Even if Cody had succeeded in marking me, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. Tristan Masters himself could bite me and it wouldn’t mean a damn thing.

I will never bond.

All a mark will do is make it clear to every other shifter that I am claimed.

I will never feel the loyalty that other shifters feel for each other.

When I finally climb out of the bath, I find myself facing the full-length mirror.

My body is an unwanted beat-up sight. Bruises extend across my cheeks, jaw, shoulders, breasts, ribs, hips, and thighs.

Every part of my body should belong to me and not to a man’s fists.

My future should belong to me.

Right now, I see my path extending before me with a giant fork in it.

Tristan brought me here for his own purposes. He brought me here to mold me into a woman who will destroy his enemies. I can walk the path he wants me to walk—as his pawn, doing whatever he wants me to do, allowing him to dictate my actions until the day he sends me to an early death.

Or…

I can take whatever I learn here, take whatever he gives me, gain control over my thoughts and my scent, become strong, work within his rules, and then… when the time is