Page 60 of Wolf Trial

Panic charged through my heart like a gunshot. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was getting Elix away from this place. I had two people left that I could trust, maybe three if I counted Rogue. But I couldn’t fully trust the vampire when I didn’t know her motives.

“Is that Paige?” I asked, guilt gnawing at my stomach when Elix turned without question. “Shouting for us?”

The moment her back was turned, I took off running for that shadow I sensed watching me in the forest. There were full-blooded vampires in the academy, capable of taking down a killer; it would have been more sensible to raise the alarm. But I was a wolf now, and it was time to find out what these claws and teeth could do.

I was angry enough for my rage to override common sense. I’d never been much of a hero before, and I couldn’t say that I went after the killer out of selflessness. All I was thinking was that I couldn’t lose the last people in any world that cared about me. I had people who gave a shit whether I lived or died, and this killer was a threat to that. How long before the next victim was Paige or Elix?

I wasn’t thinking straight, and I knew that, even though I couldn’t stop myself. As I went across the boundary, slipping into the shadow between trunks before anyone could spot me, I realised why my common sense had suddenly taken a knock to the head.

It wasn’t the killer watching me from the trees. It wasn’t even Leander, come to beg my understanding for him murdering Oona.

Cold blue eyes met mine in the darkness, as I snarled, “What the fuck are you doing here, Lainsz?”

CHAPTER 34

SADIE

Lainsz’s eyes were chips of ice, cold enough to burn as he glared at me. “What am I doing here? What do you think I’m doing here? Keeping an eye on my enemies.”

His tone made it clear I fit firmly in the enemy category, the fact that we were both pack irrelevant. It didn’t matter that Verne had made me into a wolf; I would always be a slayer, a killer, in his eyes.

I arched an eyebrow, allowing a judgemental stare to sweep from the messy fall of dark hair, down his bare shoulders to his shirtless chest.

“Often hunt your enemies while half naked, do you?” I asked sarcastically. I patted myself on the back for returning my attention to his harsh face, when that expanse of muscle and abs was right there.

“When one of those enemies has wormed its way into the beds of my pack mates, and it’s easily distracted by my being half naked,” he snarled, “yes. I’ll use every weapon in my arsenal.”

It’s? Did he just call me it?

Good thing I was known for my calm temper and rational bearing, for responding to insults with dignity and composure. Ha, just kidding. There was a knife strapped to my thigh beneath the diaphanous silver-blue dress; the handle was in my palm in an instant.

Before the sneer had even left Lainsz’s face, I had the sharp tip of the dagger against his throat, and I used it to walk him backwards until he bumped into a jagged rock. When he lost balance, falling backwards, I kept the knife to his throat and crushed him into the stone, enjoying the flare of surprise in his cold eyes. Enjoying the feel of having the prick at my mercy.

From the moment I’d come back from the brink of death, all he’d given me was hatred. I felt good to reclaim some of that, to hurt him. Even if I would never be able to pierce that icy exterior, it was satisfying to see a bead of blood drip down his neck.

“Go on then,” he challenged, tilting his head up. “Make your tutors proud. Kill me.”

My upper lip curled, a bit of my wolf coming out as it bared a sharp canine. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

I pushed the sharp edge against his skin, not enough to draw more blood, but to make him aware of how delicate his position was. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to prove all your twisted little theories right, to prove all I am is a killer, not a woman, or a victim.”

I saw it then. It was in the way his Adam’s apple bobbed, his pulse rapid against the tip of my dagger. It was in the way it took him a second to reply, that momentary pause speaking volumes.

My breath hitched. Inside, my wolf began doing laps of victory.

“You are a killer,” he hissed. “That’s all you are.”

“You’re a liar, Lainsz,” I breathed, not quite believing my own words. But it wasn’t just the nervousness I watched to replace the hatred in his expression. It was the way he gripped the stone beneath him, fingertips digging into the jagged edges in a way that must’ve hurt. “You may hate me, but you also want me.”

He should’ve laughed. He should’ve sneered. At the very least, he should have pushed me off him, because where I’d fallen onto the rock, determined to keep my knife at his throat, I’d ended up straddling him. And he was hard.

“An involuntary reaction,” he said roughly.

Yet, when he grabbed my waist to push me off him, probably to shove me onto the ground and leave me there in the dirt, his hands flexed. His grip tightened, palms glued to my hips as if he couldn’t release me.

Time slowed. I felt every single fingertip press into my hips, the heat of his hands through my dress scorching. And suddenly my wolf was deathly silent, the only sound that reached my ears the frantic pump of blood through my veins. No noise from the Hunter’s Ball, no music, no ringing of bells from the strips worn on ladies’ ankles. Only the panicked, drumming beat of my pulse.

“You should let go of me,” I breathed, and swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.