vision while trying to stay upright. In my head, I know that someone shot us. I can feel the tranquilizer coursing through our adrenaline-fueled veins, but we’re only focused on the threats.
Shadowy figures surround us, and my wolf bares her teeth in a livid growl. She leaps at one of them, teeth sinking into skin with no fur. The man screams, but we’re hit from the side by a different pack monster in fur. We go down, but when my beast tries to get up, her legs no longer work. She rages, growling and snapping at anything that gets too close.
A completely feral sensation overtakes us, tainted with helplessness. No one tries to get close as the man and wolf scramble away. Everyone just stands around like weaklings with their tails tucked between their legs as they wait for the drugs they darted us with to render us unconscious.
My wolf and I try to fight it, but our vision tunnels and everything inside of us goes numb. We bite back a whimper that wants to escape, refusing to show any sign of weakness, even though fear spikes in us. I don’t know if we’ll wake up or if they’ll kill us in our forced sleep, but I feel sick satisfaction that she at least took one of them with us and fucked up Burke.
My vision splinters, everything around me doubling. My wolf and I both look out at the pack that failed us, at the alpha somewhere in the shadows who betrayed us.
And then, everything around us blurs and blinks to nothing.
Chapter Six
I wake up with claws and fangs.
My dry eyes peel open and focus on a cold, concrete floor. There is no forgetfulness, no struggle to remember what happened. I wake up as though I’d only just blinked, my consciousness snapping to immediate awareness.
I take stock of my sore and chilled body, trying to let my senses tell me where we are. I smell blood and dirt and bleach. Gooseflesh covers my body nearly as much as bruises do. I try to look around, but my vision bends, nauseatingly so, and I realize that my wolf is right here with me. I’m not shifted into my wolf, but when I look down at my naked body, I see hooked claws in place of my human fingers and feel elongated canines in my copper-tasting mouth.
The rest of me feels normal, but when I attempt to pick up my head, my vision roils again, like I’m standing on a boat in the middle of a storm. Realization strikes me that we’re both looking out of my eyes, trying to claim control over my sight. She grapples with one eye while I hook onto the other, and it’s so disorienting that I have to squeeze them shut, have to breathe out a shaken breath as a wash of seasickness sways me.
“She’s awake!”
The shout has us springing our eyes open, which only pitches us into horrible dizziness. It doesn’t pass until a pair of feet are standing in front of us, and the scent of that overly ripe, rotten fruit invades the air.
“Shift.”
The alpha order washes over me. I can feel the potency of it as it licks across my skin, but shockingly, the power doesn’t sink into me and force me to follow it. I try to look up at Burke, but this double spirit vision that’s happening is disorienting. I reach out to my anxious wolf, soothing her and reassuring her that we’re one. I ask her to give me control, but she’s wary. I make it clear that if she senses anything and needs to step forward to protect us, I won’t fight her, not like I did before.
Burke snarls above me, bellowing, “Shift,” with even more authority than before. My wolf and I ignore the command, which is something we shouldn’t even be able to do, but with a warm sensation and a small nip of warning, she backs off and gives me control.
In a painful yank, my half-shifted state retreats inside of me, my animal crouching down in wait. My claws disappear and my fangs recede, and luckily, my vision settles back to normal as she pulls away from my eyes too. I roll my sore body up to a sitting position, wrapping my arms around my knees protectively to shield my naked body as I look up at the malignant alpha.
I want to kill him, I want to taste his blood on my lips and teeth as