I feel sick.
“Did they pass you around like their own little human toy?”
Once again, I can’t speak. Can’t move. Can’t do anything other than lie there and feel the terror rise inside of me.
“No?” Birch’s eyes narrow. “Maybe Harper kept you all for himself. He looks like a selfish fucker.” He glances back over his shoulder at the other three with him, then back at me. “We share everything.”
Oh fuck, no.
That gets me moving. My flight response kicks in, and I scramble backwards to get out of my sleeping bag.
A massive hand clamps down on my leg. “Going somewhere?”
Before I can answer, he yanks me towards him like I weigh nothing. Material tears where his claws sink in. I freeze as he leans in and runs his nose up the side of my throat. My arms are pinned at my sides, so there’s nothing I can do but lie there and take it.
“You really do smell like him.” The words are soft but there’s something new in his voice that sends a cold lick of fear down my spine.
As if I wasn’t already terrified enough.
“Change of plan,” Birch says as he rips the front of my sleeping bag open wide. “We’re going to leave Harper a little gift.”
I don’t have time to think what that could mean before I’m hauled to my feet and slammed into the nearest tree. Breathwhooshes out of me, and bark scrapes my back through my T-shirt, but I barely feel it over the pain of fucking claws digging into the base of my throat.
It hurts.
Like five tiny, sharp-as-fuck knives sliding into my skin. Birch licks a stripe up the side of my neck, and I flinch, making his claws sink in further.
“Now, now,” he whispers. “I thought you liked playing with wolves.”
Fuck.
A small part of me was happily in denial about what I’ve seen, but he has to go say it out loud. “Let me go.” My voice cracks as he tightens his grip. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Who would believe you?”
You’d be surprised.
I keep that to myself. “Please.”
There’s a beat of silence when I think maybe he’s considering it, but then he lifts his head and looks me right in the eyes. All hope vanishes at the cold viciousness I find there.
“No.”
White-hot pain erupts across my belly, my scream cut off by a rough hand slapped across my mouth. Wetness coats my fingers when I wrap them round my stomach.
Blood.
So much blood.
Teeth sink into my shoulder, then the side of my neck before I’m thrown to the ground. I barely manage to brace my hands on the forest floor before they start in on me. Claws rake across my back like fire, then along the length of my thighs. I can’t catch my breath.
Pain. So. Much. Pain.
Oh god, I’m going to die.
And no one knows where I am.
I’m going to be lost forever in this fucking forest because pride wouldn’t let me go home.
