Page 73 of Wolf Trial

I scoffed, ignoring his narrowed blue eyes. I doubted my actions that night would be chronicled with a description so positive. The academy would paint me as a villain. Maybe they’d let people believe I was the killer instead of Beaufort to save face.

“Killer,” Lainsz said. “You’re stalling.”

“No?” I gasped. “Do you think so?”

“Open the door,” he said in a flat tone. “Or are you a coward?”

“Yes,” I agreed emphatically. “Unapologetically, yes.”

But my gaze slid to the door against my will. It was less a door than a bogey man, monster under your bed situation. Fear of the unknown, because the unknown had teeth, fangs, and glowing yellow eyes.

“Don’t make me open the fucking door,” Lainsz muttered. “They’re not gonna hurt you,” he added, strained, as if it cost him to speak the words.

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” I said under my breath, and—there was a light in Lainsz’s eyes, there and gone. As if for a moment, he understood me completely.

I liked that far less, feared that far more, than the inevitable hatred from my friends. So I hurried to the door and flung it open.

CHAPTER 43

SADIE

“I’m telling you,” Paige was in the middle of saying, harried and hectic. “They’ve killed her, and they’re keeping her body away from us so we won’t know she’s—”

She whipped around green-streaked dark hair when my shadow fell over the cottage path. I grunted when she threw herself at me, colliding hard enough to make pain explode through both stab wounds, plus some fun extras I hadn’t noticed before. Tears sprang to my eyes, the pain intense and rapid, and I blamed that for how long it took me to realise she wasn’t fighting me; she was hugging me.

By the time my mind caught up, there were two people hugging me, and I was sobbing.

“I’ll kill them,” Paige hissed, glaring over my shoulder at Lainsz. “You hear that, wolf dick? I’m going to kill you for keeping her from us, and for every bruise you’ve left on my bestie’s body.”

“I’m still your bestie?” I choked out, emotion strangling my voice, gripping my throat.

“Well, obviously,” Paige replied, as if that was a foregone conclusion. She patted my head, flattening my frizz and flyaways.

“Aren’t you scared I’m going to shift and… and… eat you?” I couldn’t think of anything else right now. I’d take it up with my frazzled, overheated brain later.

“Well, now I am,” she quipped, but didn’t stop hugging me.

Elix fumbled in her pocket for a sheet of paper that had been folded, refolded, and folded again. She turned it to a side that said, have they hurt you?

Only when Verne refused to bite me, was my automatic response. I gave Wolfie Sadie my middle finger. She had to get over that already.

“No,” I begrudgingly admitted. “They helped me, actually. I’d be dead without them.”

“Twice,” Lainsz remarked behind me.

“Yes, thank you,” I huffed. Paige met my eyes.

Elix hurriedly scribbled, Are you sure that one didn’t hurt you?

“He’s a dick,” I said with a shrug. Air hissed through my teeth at the sudden tear of pain through my middle.1 “But I’m starting to think his bark is worse than his bite.”2

Paige hugged me tighter, but drew back at my next grunt, her eyes teary. “The serious one said you were stabbed twice. We should never have left.”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically. But these women had waited outside this door for days. They were true friends, not whatever temporary bonds I’d had before. “Okay, I’m not fine. I’m in so much pain, I want to cry.”

“What happened to pain relief, asshole?” Paige yelled over my shoulder. “My girl could use some morphine, or at best a fucking paracetamol—”

Lainsz’s eyebrow was arched on his head; I could sense it. Could hear it, too, when he spoke. “We’re in Lunova, slayer.”