I throw everything I have against the walls of my own skull, screaming at my body to stop, to turn around, to do literally anything except what I know is about to happen.
It never works.
My packmates are there too. I see them now, emerging from the trees around the clearing.
Rowan. Micah. Sean.
All in wolf form, all snarling, all trying to get between me and Regina.
Kill me,I beg them through the bond.Kill me before I?—
But they hesitate. Just for a second, but it’s long enough.
I’m faster than I should be. And so much stronger. The thing inside me has made me into something that isn’t quite wolf anymore, something that moves with that jerky, puppet-like wrongness I remember from the meadow.
Sean lunges for my throat and I bat him aside like he weighs nothing.
Micah goes for my legs. His teeth sink in. I feel nothing, and snap his throat in my jaws without even breaking stride.
Rowan puts himself directly in my path and refuses to move. His eyes meet mine, and I see the moment he realizes he’s going to have to either kill me or let me through.
He should take me out while he has the chance.
He fuckingshould.
But he can’t, even after what I just did to Micah.
I feel the dragging weight of his hesitation through the bond, his desperate hope that there’s another way, that if he just holds on a little longer,someonewill figure something out.
It’s the last mistake he ever makes.
My fangs sink into his neck and his blood waters my throat, a substitute for what I truly crave.
Now there’s nothing left standing between me and Regina.
She throws magic at me, everything she’s got. It washes over my fur like water. The greedy thing inside me eats it up, hungry for more.
“Killian.” She’s crying now, tears streaking down her cheeks. “Please. Don’t do this. I love you. Ilove?—“
My jaws close around her throat.
The taste of her blood.
The sound she makes.
The way her body goes limp in my grip…
Every. Fucking. Time.
I wake up screaming, except I can’t scream because my body isn’t mine anymore, and then the cold closes back in and the darkness swallows me and I wait for the dream to start all over again.
Rinse and repeat, forever.
My own personal hell.
Except this time, something’s different.
The dream starts the same as it always does. Running. Hunting. Her scent pulling me forward. But when I burst into the clearing, when I see her standing there with her hands raised and her scars showing, there’s something else.
