With a scowl, she pushed past Aaron and left the apartment.
“If you’re here to fire me—” Emmett began.
“Shut the fuck up,” Aaron snapped, throwing the door closed behind him. The dogs ran under a table. “You’re on drugs?”
“Don’t overreact. It’s a clinical trial.”
“And you justforgotto mention anything about it?”
“I signed an NDA. I could’ve been sued.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Why does it even matter?”
“Why does it—?” Aaron spluttered, his eyes flashing. “You humiliated me. Do you know how many people asked me why I was with you? I told them you’d changed, that you were— Now everyone knows I’m dating a—a—”
Emmett got to his feet. “What? What am I, Aaron?”
“A fuckingmonster.”
It wasn’t the word Emmett had expected. The note it struck was dark and dissonant, triggering a response deep in Emmett’s body. Part of him welcomed it: the racing of his heart, the frenetic soda-pop fizz in his blood.
“It’s over,” Aaron said, not noticing the ripples across Emmett’s flesh. “I want you out of my life. You’re fired.”
A pressure ballooned inside Emmett, a pleasant pain stretching his skin. “I quit.”
“No,” Aaron spat, “you don’t quit shit. The only thing you know how to quit is a diet.”
Emmett’s fat undulated, expanding. His belly spilled over his waistband, drawing Aaron’s eye. “What the hell?” He stumbled back, horrified.
Emmett waded toward him, his clothes stretching tighter around his bloat. The button on his shorts went flying. “Say it again.”
“What the fuck’s happening to you!”
The seams on his clothes began to tear. “Call me a monster again.”
Aaron turned to the door. Emmett grabbed his arm and ripped it back, stronger than he realized; a pop told him he’d wrenched it out of socket.
Aaron screamed, and Emmett’s free hand flew to his throat. Terror glistened in Aaron’s eyes as Emmett crushed his windpipe, bright against the storm of puce closing over his face. His tongue flapped pathetically out of his mouth.
Suddenly ravenous, Emmett yanked Aaron toward him by the neck and chomped. Aaron bucked, screaming in pain, Emmett’s mouth filling with blood and saliva as his teeth clamped down on Aaron’s tongue. A jerk of his head, and the muscle disconnected with a snap.
Emmett tossed the appendage back like a dog, ate it down in a few good champs.
His body, sated, shrank back toward its previous size.
Aaron staggered back, collapsed against the door. He cowered before Emmett with his arms raised, blood sheeting down over his chin.
“Say it again,” Emmett repeated.
But with his ragged stump of a tongue, Aaron could do little more than bleat: not a wolf, but a sheep primed for slaughter.
CHAPTER 47
Once he’d eaten his fill, Emmett’s killer instinct receded and his logical mind regained control. The horror of what he’d done overwhelmed him, as if he were happening upon the scene for the first time. Aaron’s remains lay twisted and gnarled at the base of the door, lids half-closed over rolled-back eyes. Rib bones poked through the open trench of his torso, curved upward like skeletal hands cupping the half-eaten apple of his heart.
What the fuck, Emmett thought.WHAT THE FUCK.
