Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,98
had to save herself.
“I did not!” Quentin Lloyd shouted, but even she could hear the quaver of deceit cloaked in his indignation.
She seized on it and faced Lee again. “I told him you were his alpha. I said you knew what was best. And if he didn’t agree, and he was man enough, then he should challenge you to your face instead of going behind your back.”
Gasps arose from the onlookers.
Lies. And more lies.
Life-saving lies.
“I didn’t say that, alpha,” Quentin Lloyd protested. “She said I should . . .” He backed away.
Lee Fenner pivoted on his boots, eyes blazing brighter, and locked his sights on Quentin Lloyd. “You dare, boy? We got more than one traitor in this pack?”
“No! That’s not — not what I . . .” Quentin Lloyd stammered, taking a step back and lifting his hands as though to defend himself. “Alpha, I, please!” The last word burst from deep in his chest, an anguished cry that just seemed to infuriate Lee more. “She’s lying to you. She’s just an uppity bitch, don’t know her place—”
Lee Fenner changed into a wolf, the transformation swifter than Katelyn would have thought possible. He was completely white, like an albino, a huge, monstrous beast with his glowing eyes, and he leaped onto Quentin Lloyd like a whirlwind.
Quentin Lloyd slammed backwards against the ground, the wolf on top of him. Then he himself began to change, and she could hear the snapping of his bones.
“Quentin Lloyd!” someone screamed.
Howls filled the air, like screaming, and disbelief, and cheers. Blood sprayed in all directions. It splattered Katelyn’s face, hot and thick, and she clapped her hand over it and staggered backwards, falling to the ground.
Now she could hear a horrible, gurgling sound. The white werewolf alpha tossed his head, jaws dripping blood. And slowly he changed back until he was Mr. Fenner again, half naked in tattered, bloody rags.
Quentin Lloyd lay on the ground, eyes wide, mouth open. Blood pooled around his head and streamed along the ground, steaming in the cold.
Katelyn let loose with a scream that echoed off the mountains. She kept on screaming.
Everyone else went silent.
“Shut up,” Mr. Fenner ordered her.
She pressed both hands across her mouth, forcing herself to stop. Then she vomited all over herself.
In a mirror action, Mr. Fenner wiped his hand across his lips. Then he leaned over the corpse and spat on it.
“Anybody else got anything to say?” he yelled. “Well?”
The pack shrank backwards. Shoulders hunched. Somewhere in the part of her that still functioned, Katelyn heard whining, groveling. She clutched her sides with her hands and cried silently, rocking herself.
Lee Fenner walked imperiously away. A moment later, Justin crouched down next to her and grabbed her hand. He squeezed it.
“Kat, you have to calm down,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Now.”
“I knew,” she wept. “I knew he would take it out on him, but I said it anyway. I — I just . . . he killed him.”
“You had to. Or it’d be you lying there.” Justin was whispering, but his words sounded so terribly loud to her ears. “It was rage,” he said. “It’s what we feel.”
“It was him or me, and I knew it. I’m a monster.”
“No, darlin’, you’re not. You’re a werewolf.”
And the fact that Justin made a distinction between the two made her want to laugh hysterically. Instead she just cried harder.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” Justin said, firmly hoisting her to her feet. She dangled in his grasp, and he peered into her face. “You’ve got to stop. Right now.”
He practically dragged her out of the clearing and into the forest. Her feet felt like lead weights and she was freezing. The images played over and over. Mr. Fenner. The spray of blood. The blood that was on her now. The screams.
How much she had hated Quentin Lloyd. The fury inside her, barely banked even now, like a separate, wild creature. Her terrible, terrible remorse.
And finally, a realization, and she stopped short.
“Kat, what?” Justin asked, tugging on her.
“It wasn’t Mr. Fenner.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The wolf who bit me. It wasn’t Mr. Fenner.”
Justin cupped her chin and bent his knees so that he was at her eye level. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, feeling the wetness of the blood on her cheek and wiping it off with the back of her hand. Quentin Lloyd’s blood. The blood of a dead man. Her stomach protested, but she forced down the bile in her mouth.