“Back that truck up. Who are you, and why are you in my head?”
“I am your wolf, and it’s time for us to meet our mate face to face.” The voice was like her own but fiercer. Lizzy’s wolf sounded like she could kick butt and take names at the same time. “Open your eyes,” the beast commanded.
Chapter
Eighteen
“Okay, so maybe being a hybrid isn’t going to be so bad. Remind me that I said that when things start to go to shite, as experience has told me they inevitably will.” ~Lizzy
Lizzy’s eyes snapped open. Everything was sideways. Lizzy realized she was lying on her side on the floor. At first, she lay perfectly still. Recent experiences had taught her to use caution when returning from unconsciousness. Just once, I’d like to wake up without something terribly wrong with me. No burning, no hunger, no pain. Just blissful restfulness. I wonder what that’s like.
Cautiously, she tried to raise her head a few inches. Lizzy noted a couple of things. One, her head felt enormous. Two, there were legs spread out on the floor to her side—four of them. And they were furry. Lizzy tried to move an arm. One of the legs moved instead. “Holy vampire’s balls, I’m a wolf,” she shouted in her mind. When she opened her mouth, well, her muzzle, the only sound that game out was a growl. Okay, so that was pretty cool.
“Well.” Cain sighed. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“What exactly were you expecting?” Alice snapped. “She’s got dormant werewolf DNA, and you didn’t consider that adding more supernatural blood to her body might trigger the dormant blood’s response?”
“I’m a vampire, Alice, not a damn doctor,” he hissed back.
“Why not?” Alice demanded. “You’re old enough to have a doctorate in every subject imaginable. But what have you been doing with your long life? Chomping on veins and beating your chest at the big, bad wolves. I mean, seriously, if you’ve got this so-called gift that you keep preaching to these dormants about, then why have you been wasting it by just eating people? If you didn’t want to make the world a better place, you could have at least bettered yourself.”
She’s not wrong, Lizzy tried to say. But again, only a rumble came out of her mouth when she tried to speak. She attempted to push herself up, but she still felt weak. Despite the fact that she’d managed to phase, as Finn called it, Lizzy didn’t feel any stronger. And she was still nauseous. A memory came to her mind of a dog vomiting. Ugh, is that what I’m going to look like? Then she remembered the dog licking the vomit up right after. I am NOT going to do that.
“I don’t eat people,” Cain bit out through clenched teeth. Lizzy noticed his fangs were in full view. Based on Alice’s face, the woman wasn’t intimidated.
Cain kneeled down again and pushed a bag of blood toward Lizzy. She sniffed it and then snarled at it. “That’s not the blood we need,” her wolf said.
“What do you mean?” Lizzy asked it.
“We need our mate’s blood.”
Lizzy shifted, attempting to push herself up, so she was no longer laying on her side. She managed it, but she felt wobbly. “How do you know?”
“The same way I know he is ours.” the wolf replied. “I just do.”
“Maybe a bloody steak would work.” Alice looked down at Lizzy. “Wolves are carnivores. If she’s now a wolf-vampire, maybe human blood won’t meet her body’s needs.”
Cain shook his head. “Animal blood doesn’t nourish a vampire.”
“She’s not only a vampire,” Alice said. “She’s more. You can’t simply make decisions about her based on your experience.”
“Okay, so, I probably should tell them your idea,” Lizzy said to her wolf, then she paused and realized something was missing. “Speaking of mate, where is Finn?” She could still feel him, but the sensation wasn’t as strong, and she couldn’t hear his voice.
“I’ve blocked him enough that he can’t hear us,” her wolf explained.
Lizzy frowned, or at least she thought she did. Who knew what a frown looked like on a wolf's face? “Why?”
“Without his blood, we will die. He will not remain calm once he realizes this.”
Okay then. Her wolf was just as blunt and straightforward as Finn’s. At least it wasn’t sugar-coating things. “I need to be back in my human form to tell these two yahoos what you’ve told me.”
“You’re weaker in your human form,” her wolf pointed out.
“True, but I’m less talkative in a human kind of way when I’m in your form. Sooo…”
She felt her wolf’s agitation but noted that the beast didn’t disagree. “You must make them understand how vital it is that they take you to Finn.”
“I can be persuasive when I need to be.”
