His hands tighten with bruising force on my wrists and jaw, ignoring my pitiful attempts to pull away and my pained shout. Adrenaline floods my system, drawing my skin tight and sending painful prickles across it. My thundering heartbeat slows, the sounds of Addie’s muffled sob fading away until I can think clearly, can focus.
Taking a deep breath to center myself, I draw my knee up as hard as I can. Zane releases my face with a grunt, clutching between his legs. Before he can recover, I slam my head to the side into his, ignoring the explosion of pain in my skull and neck as he tears back from my throat with a snarl.
I only make it a step back before he’s shifting, eyes wild and breathing heavily. Anticipating his next move, I have just enough time to lunge to the side, farther away from Hunter and Addie before Zane pounces. Blood covers the muzzle of the tawny puma, and taking a lesson out of Mason’s playbook, I fling my arm out to save my throat. Teeth tear into my forearm with a savage snarl, but this time, no amount of screaming will help, so I don’t bother wasting the energy.
The massive feline yowls as Hunter stabs into its shoulder, and with a curse, I try to roll to the side, keeping him out of swiping distance so he doesn’t get mauled to death. As long as my heart is still beating, I’ll heal. Eventually. But he’s human, and the only person in this room that could turn him in a bid to save his life, has lost his damn mind and would sooner bite his face off.
Zane’s heartbeat falters, and after another small eternity, he stumbles back, falling to his side in a heap. His breathing grows increasingly labored until rattling in his chest, and then there’s simply... nothing. No breaths, no heartbeats, and no feral glint to his dull, lifeless eyes.
“What in the actual fuck?”
Muffled yelling starts funneling in through my ears, pulling me out of the tunnel vision state I was in. There’s heavy thumping at the door, Hunter bracing it as best as he can, and Addie is softly crying in the corner, curled in on herself. My mind is both racing a mile a minute, and seemingly not at all, like there’s a disconnect from reality despite my subconscious desperately trying to keep me alive.
On shaky legs, eyes flitting around the room as I process, things start to click. Pulling a plan together on the fly, I hurry towards Hunter, taking the bloody knife away from him and leaving him to bar the door just a little longer.
“Addie, close your eyes, okay?” I murmur.
She nods frantically, burying her face in her knees as she wraps her arms tightly around her legs. Turning back to the dead Puma, I take a deep breath to brace myself before quickly slashing across his throat.
The only way to kill a shifter is by taking their head or heart. Anything else, they can eventually heal from.
Unless they’re bitten by something like the guys, with a venom that even supernaturals can’t recover from.
The only thing working in our favor right now is that the people outside of that door want to take me alive. If they realize that my blood is tainted, poisonous? All bets are off.
Knowing I don’t possess the strength to drive a knife through his skull, I aim for his heart instead. Twisting the knife, I try not to throw up, and I almost lose the battle as I struggle to wrench the blade free again.
The door crashes open, furniture slid out of the way as my mother shoves her way into the room. Hunter scrambles off of the ground, wrapping his arms around his sister and murmuring false promises, lying to himself as much as her. Tears streak down my face that I hastily swipe away, looking at the woman that raised me that may as well be a stranger.
Blonde hair is pulled back into a loose braid, a black mask covering the lower half of her face like Zane had the day he grabbed me. The relief of realizing that I won’t have to try and fight off five feral shifters slams into me like a freight train, though I grip the handle of the blood-slicked knife tighter. Frenzied, knowing they’re targeting my blood, I can predict their moves. But lucid? It’s all guesswork and hope, which is far more terrifying.
“You killed him?” she asks, surprised.
Swallowing, I nod, the trembling of my hand giving away my fear and anxiety, so I spin it to my favor. “I may not want to go back, but that doesn’t mean I ever wanted to be here, either. And-“ I take a shaky breath, letting the tears flow freely again as I croak, “-you’re still my mom. And he was going to kill you.”
Smug satisfaction illuminates her bright, blue eyes instead of anything that shows she actually has a heart. Control; not motherly concern, though her anger earlier seemed genuine.
Because she wants credit for all of her hard work, the time and effort she’s put in. Not because she actually cares about me.
“If you had simply talked about things with us before running off, all of this could have been avoided. We could have found a compromise that we all could live with, but instead, you’ve gotten countless people killed, Risa. You’re too dangerous to let roam free.” She may as well have slapped me, but I bite down my pride as she finishes, “So it’s time to come home. I’ll handle dealing with the children, and we can put this whole mess behind us and move on.”
“What do you mean, deal with them?”
She gives me a withering look. “I’ve no use for them. Gods know I have my hands full with you.”
Panic nearly makes me reckless, but I hold on to the small remnants of logic that have survived fear attempting to drown it.Within five miles of an incorruptible; yet she attributes it solely to me, my presence masking Adelaide’s.
“It isn’t their fault that their dad was a paranoid psycho. They’re no use to you, sure, but that doesn’t mean you have to kill them. We can just leave them behind. They can start over, too. Isn’t that what you wanted when you found me? To save me? You don’t need to do anything else; you already rescued these kids by showing up here, opening the door. They can take it from here without burdening you.”
The seconds that slowly tick by feel like years as I wait with baited breath for her to respond. Subtly, I extend my senses, nearly choking on the scent of mine and Zane’s blood permeating the air. The two men that were down here before have retreated upstairs with the others, likely my mother sending them away from the scent of my blood so she wouldn’t lose control of them, thinking one might think to steal me away from her for himself. I’ve no doubt they all have similar masks on, otherwise they’d be down here chewing on my good arm, so I readjust the direction of my plan.
“Fine. See?” She shrugs. “Compromise. You work with me, I work with you. Things don’t have to be hard, Risa, so long as you’re reasonable and stop causing me so many problems.”
Hiding my relief, I turn towards the kids to say a quick goodbye, giving my mother my back, even though it sends a chill down my spine to do so. “I’m sorry about your dad. But you’re going to be okay, because you have each other. Take care of yourselves.” Praying that they can read lips, I silently mouth for them to wait fifteen minutes, and then run.
“Let’s patch you up before taking you upstairs. Don’t want to get blood all over the car, after all,” she declares, reaching for my hand.
Taking it, I follow her to the bathroom, grabbing a new shirt on the way from my room. Rinsing off my arm and neck, I smother the wounds in ointment and bandage them before slipping on the new t-shirt. She has me walk in front of her up the staircase out of the safe house, like she assumes I’m stupid enough to try and lock her out.
