Rabid (Kingdom of Wolves #6) - Ivy Asher Page 0,68

attack it until I’m a broken mess beneath his feet. I’m already tipping to my breaking point, and we both know he won, so I ready myself for another crushing blow. Because that’s what monsters do. They destroy.

But to my utter shock, Tyran’s expression softens. “Okay, Vicious,” he says quietly, using a tone I wouldn’t have ever guessed he was even capable of. “Second door to the right will get you to a bathroom. There’s clothes that should fit you in the attached bedroom.”

I turn on my heel and stalk to the door, more than ready to scrub his scent from my body and get away from his domineering presence so I can steel myself once more. But just as I open the door, his hand is there, slamming it closed. I gasp, head whipping to the side, finding his face just an inch from mine. Without warning, he shoves his shirt back over my head, so hard that the collar practically chokes me.

I’m ruffled with hair in my face, cheeks hot with irritation, he gets right up close and personal, his nose nearly touching mine. “Go ahead and try to wash me off you, see how well that works out for you and your wolf,” he says in a clear taunt. “But if I see you unnecessarily walking around naked in front of any of my pack members again, I will take it as a sign that you want to be fucked in front of them. To which I will happily oblige, and then I’ll bend you over my knees and spank you raw.”

I gape at him. “What? I’m a shifter. Shifters shift. It’s not like my wolf can walk around wearing a damn dress!”

He’s already sauntering back to his desk, sitting down again and paying me no mind whatsoever. A frustrated growl clambers from my throat, and I yank open the door, slamming it behind me as hard as I can, hoping it rattles his stupid walls.

Fucking wolves.

Fucking alpha prick.

Chapter Thirteen

Hot water rains down on me as I sit on the tile floor of the shower. My knees are to my chest, my head resting on top, my thoughts far away and overwhelming. The steady stream of scalding water has made my skin turn even pinker than it was as I scrubbed all traces of what happened last night off of me. I watched dirt, leaves, and blood wind down the drain as I scoured my skin before shampooing and conditioning my hair and scalp raw.

I should probably get out. I think I’ve been in here for over an hour. I’m surprised the water hasn’t become ice-cold at this point, but this small, tiled space feels like the safest option for me right now, and I’m not ready to abandon it to discover what’s on the other side of the connecting doors. My throat is thick with emotion, but no matter how long I sit here and think about every awful thing that’s happened to me recently, I still don’t cry.

My heart aches as though someone put it through a shredder and then did a shit job of trying to tape it back together. Nothing in me works the way it’s supposed to. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out what can be done about that, but I still have no idea. All I want is to talk to my mom. She would know exactly what to say, know exactly how to help me fix my broken. But she’s not here. And the wrongness of that feels like a grater against my insides.

I’ve never felt so lost, so utterly foolish in my entire life. How am I going to survive being claimed by the crudest, most savage alpha my kind has ever seen? How am I going to subsist on a shattered soul? What’s been done to me and my wolf since the Flux...I don’t know if there’s any coming back from that.

Presley’s words ring in my mind, joining with Burke’s and the shouts of my old pack. Is it really only a matter of time before I’m just as volatile and vicious as my wolf seems to be?

So many questions pick at me like starving crows at carrion. Yet it doesn’t matter how long I sit here and stew, hoping the answers will come to me, none do.

I’ve spent the last three years being hunted by an alpha, but I never thought through what to do if I was caught by one. I was stupid to