to Hess.
Heavy footfall sounds behind me, and I can feel the moment Tyran reaches out to stop me from taking another step. I immediately drop to the ground, my instincts guiding my body like I’ve handed control of it to violence itself, and I kick out. Tyran tries to dodge the strike, but he’s a second too slow, and I manage to sweep his legs out from underneath him. I leap back as he goes down hard, ready for him to roar up and meet my fight head-on.
He doesn’t disappoint, but I’m on him before he can even spring to his feet. He lets me get a solid hit in, no question that he allows my fist to connect with his jaw, but it doesn’t strip the satisfaction I feel as his face snaps to the right from my blow.
Thank you, wolf strength.
I leap to the left as he tries to wrap his big hands around my waist, and my body shifts seamlessly. In less time than it takes to breathe, my wolf is standing in my place, her lips pulled back and her snarl aimed at the male who claimed her. Tyran looks pissed, but I don’t care. He did this to himself. He wants to see me trust my wolf more? Fine. I’ll trust her to fuck him up just like she wants to right now.
“Shift,” he growls, wiping at the blood seeping out from the split he’s now sporting in his bottom lip. My wolf growls her objection, and it lights a fire in Tyran’s eyes. “I said shift,” he bellows, only this time, the command is laced with so much power that my wolf can’t hold out against it.
Shock ripples through me as my body starts to pull the fur and fangs back in despite our efforts to resist. We’ve been here before, up against Tyran and his commands. My wolf and I thought our power was close to equal, but as he releases the full force of his unwavering authority, I’m stunned by how all-consuming it really is.
No sooner has my wolf retreated inside of me than I’m being thrown over Tyran’s shoulder and carried away. He lopes through the center of the pack’s gathering area, like what’s happening is no big deal, but the motion, the movement, the theft of my will, it sets off an explosion of memories in me.
Suddenly, I’m not in the middle of Ruin Falls pack land. I’m not safe, having some ridiculous shifter domestic dispute with an asshole alpha. I’m back in Twin Rivers. I’m chained, weak, and vulnerable, slung over the shoulder of a beta as Burke walks behind me, his eyes trained on parts of me I’d rather die than let him touch.
My breathing changes, and a panicked snarl rips itself from my throat as a new, desperate, and terrified fight consumes me. “Put me down!” I demand, but when he keeps walking, my panic spreads. Claws tear out of the tips of my fingers, my blood pounding in my ears. “Put me down now!” I repeat shrilly, and this time, Tyran detects the alarm and distress boiling over in my tone, telling him that I’m not fucking around.
He drops me back to my feet immediately, dipping down until his eyes are level with mine. His gaze searches, looking for hints in my eyes about whatever just happened. Tears come for me, but I give them the fight I never could give to Burke’s betas that day. I stomp out their existence, refusing to let the pain take root. Memories swirl in my mind of the brutality, the taunting, the drugging, the sound of my old pack as they blamed me for all of it.
“I didn’t know, Seneca,” Tyran offers, worried eyes surveying the dead, broken mien that’s dripped down over me and stalled my emotions, cracking my ability to cope. “I didn’t know that you’d just had your Flux,” he tells me. “I heard what you said about what happened to you and how you ended up here. I thought it happened over time, I didn’t realize…”
“They carried me like that, slung over their shoulders,” I blurt, ignoring his words and hating how hollow my voice sounds. “They chained me, locked me up. I was naked and defenseless, and they carried me like that,” I say again, as though I’m reminding myself that it’s not happening now. I look down at my hands, claws still out and ready like I wish they could’ve been then.
“My pack