Instinctive - By Cathryn Fox Page 0,51

of wills, it was the last thing he needed. He couldn’t risk it. Not with Jaclyn. All five council members raised their hands.

“Majority it is, then.” Harmony stood, unlocked the cupboard, and brought out a container with five straws. Beginning with Devon, she walked around the table and held the container out in offering, claiming that last straw as her own.

She sat down, then glanced around. “A show.” All five members held out their straws, and when Slyck saw the smirk on Vall’s face, he knew that his worst nightmare had just come true.

Oh fuck!

Slyck could feel his blood run cold as his mind raced. No fully transformed panther had ever turned into a lycan from a bite before. In the past, when they’d gone head-to-head, a lycan bite did one of two things: temporarily weakened the panther or, on a few rare occasions when the panther was too young to combat the virus, killed them. Like decapitation, a lycan bite could prematurely end all nine lives.

Slyck swallowed the bile rising up from his stomach. Without having gone through her first transformation, Jaclyn wasn’t equipped to deal with such a bite. She was still vulnerable, susceptible to turning lycan after a bite until her panther showed. He needed to speed up the process if he wanted her to stand half a chance of battling and surviving a bite from a lycan elder.

The sound of Vall’s voice pulled him back. “Looks like I’ve got some work to do,” the lycan said, gloating like the depraved bastard he really was.

“See to it that it’s taken care of before the next full moon,” Harmony added. “The sooner this is dealt with, the better.”

Despite his best efforts not to, Slyck flinched. He quickly tried to cover it up by returning his straw to the container, but he knew that action hadn’t gone unnoticed by the lycan. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to control his galloping heart rate, either. Fuck. He suspected the mongrel had heard that too. Slyck needed to get out of there, to warn Jaclyn, to put a plan together before Vall tried to leave his mark on her.

Working to keep his voice casual, he said, “So if that’s it, then, let’s wrap this up. I’m needed at Vibes.” Not that he had any intention of heading to the club. He needed to get home and keep a watchful eye over Jaclyn.

Harmony tapped the table and closed the meeting, with all five species going their separate ways. Or at least they should have all gone off on their own. As Slyck moved down Main Street, he felt Vall’s hot glare on his back. The bastard was following him.

Annoyed, Slyck had no choice but to enter his nightclub. He somehow needed to escape Vall’s watchful eye so he could figure out what the fuck he was going to do to save his mate. It’d be a cold day in hell before he let Vall touch Jaclyn. And since, according to Devon, hell was thriving quite nicely with no foreseeable freeze in the near future, that cold day would be a long time coming.

Chapter Ten

Jaclyn awoke with a splitting headache. In fact, everything ached, from the tips of her split ends right on down to the tips of her cold toes. She blinked her eyes open carefully, and cringed when the bright morning sun cut through her windowpane and burned her sensitive retinas. Much aggrieved, she rolled back over, groaned out loud, and fought off the sudden feeling of nausea.

Good Lord, she never got sick. Maybe the odd sniffle every now and then, but she’d never been down and out with the flu before. Now she felt like she’d just gone ten rounds with a transport truck. And not only had the truck won—it had backed up over her to go another round.

She swallowed and took note of her thick tongue and scratchy throat. Jesus, what the hell was the matter with her? Could this really be the flu? Who the heck came down with the flu in the middle of summer, anyway?

With her aching body damp from fever, she kicked off her light cotton covers and forced her rubbery legs to the floor. Immediately chilled, she crawled from her bed and held on to the wall as she padded across the carpet and made her way into the bathroom. After brushing her teeth, her tongue, and even the insides of her cheeks, she turned on the shower, hoping