Dead of Winter (Battle of the Bulls #2) - T. S. Joyce Page 0,39
man, but I’m not judgmental, sooo…”
“Jump off a cliff,” Quickdraw muttered to him in a bored voice.
“Look, my animal isn’t like yours,” she whispered.
“Good. I’m bored of seeing the same old shit. Go surprise us, Raven. I’ll make it okay. I’ll keep her in the arena.”
“We all will,” Two Shots called from down by the gate. “Come on, girl, let us see what you got.”
She looked up at Cheyenne, who was sitting just a few feet away from her. Could she tell how scared Raven was? Could she tell?
Cheyenne nodded supportively, but her tone was stern. “Go show them boys what you’re made of.”
She swallowed hard. Would she regret it ten miles down the road? If she chickened out with all of them watching, would she lay awake thinking about it tonight? Dead was probably right. She probably would.
Just get it over with.
Inside of her, the animal stirred, and her skin began to tingle.
Slow and steady, she made her way to the ladder and climbed down. Eyes averted, she made her way to the gate where Two Shots was holding it open.
“You got this. Bucking is easy. Just don’t think about anything. Just get pissed and let it out.”
Dead appeared beside her, a rope in his hand as they walked across the arena toward a holding pen on the other side where she could change. “Think of someone you hate.”
“I don’t hate anyone,” she murmured.
“Your cow? Does she hate?”
“Oh. The animal is different.”
“She hates everyone, doesn’t she?”
Jerkily, Raven nodded. “Hates everything. That fence?” she asked, pointing to the tall panels. “She’ll hate it. That fly? She’ll hate it. This dirt?” She kicked some with the toe of her boot. “She’ll hate it. You?” She couldn’t finish that part. The words got stuck in her throat because they didn’t feel right.
He finished it for her. “She’ll hate me. That’s okay. It won’t be like that forever. She just has to get to know me and figure out I won’t ever hurt her. When you’re changed, think of someone or something you hate and imagine that someone or something clinging to your back. Using you. Heckling you. Gonna benefit off holding on. This is your arena,” he growled. “Don’t let anything stay on your back.”
“I’m not a bull though, Dead,” she whispered.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Cows don’t buck.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s because nobody ever asked a cow to do it.” He gave her a swift smack on the ass. “Own your wild.”
Own her wild? She wasn’t wild. She had pet plants and a steady bedtime.
That’s not how she changed into her animal. Changing was a careful process with planning and safety measures involved. Owning her wild was out of the question. If he knew her animal, he wouldn’t put that dare on the table. To keep everyone safe, she had to change in a big barn on her parent’s property that had been reinforced at every wall.
This was a bad idea. It was a stupid, irresponsible, no-good, awful, bad idea. But if ever she was going to try a bad idea, then she supposed this was the place to do it. Surely, three mature bulls could get her animal in line.
Maybe.
****
Dead closed her into the holding pen and gave her his back. “Everything will be great, Raven. You’ll see. No one’s even looking over here, so you can change in peac—”
A ground-shaking bawl sounded from behind him and startled him so bad he hunched his shoulders and pressed his hands to his ears as he spun. It sounded like a damn foghorn and rattled his chest with the power of it.
And what stood behind that gate was the likes of which he’d never seen before.
Raven wasn’t Raven any longer. The fury…the rage, the hatred that wafted from that animal, clogged his throat and made it hard to breath. She stared at him through the metal slats. He couldn’t see much of her body with the gate between them. All he knew was she was black as pitch, and her eyes matched. Her horns stretched straight out to the side and curved up, with twists at the sharp ends like handlebars. They were white with black tips.
Dead had never been scared of anything in his adult life, but Raven’s animal was conjured straight from hell. She bellowed low, and then in a flash, she slammed her head against the gate of the holding pen with such force, the metal bent toward him.
“Dead!” Two Shots yelled. “Get her into