“I’m already sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for all of this and for what happened to Jake. I…I’m sorry, so sorry he’s dead.” My voice trembled on the last word and I had to take a deep breath. “But I’m not sorry enough to let some stranger take me off in the woods and rape me to death,” I told Anubis. “I’d rather die first.”
I reversed the gun, no longer pointing it at his chest. Instead, I put the cold metal barrel to my temple.
“No!” Anubis shouted. Reaching up, he caught the mask he was wearing by its stiff, pointed ears and ripped it off.
My mouth opened into an O of surprise and the gun sagged in my hand.
“Jake?” I whispered. “What…how…?”
“It’s the Heir! The Royal Heir!” Curly bellowed in that megaphone voice of his. “What the Hell are you doin’ here, boy? I thought you was executed for sleeping with your sister!”
“I’m not dead, as you can see,” Jake said grimly. “And I won the fight—she’s mine to take.” He strode over to me and looped an arm around my waist. From the corner of his mouth he muttered, “Get ready to run!”
“What?” I asked stupidly. I was still in a daze—still disbelieving that he was standing here beside me, not dead in a pool of his own blood somewhere.
“They’re not going to like this,” Jake murmured.
And sure enough, a moment later, the Weres in the clearing began to mutter amongst themselves.
“Wait a minute—if he’s the Alpha’s Heir and she’s the Second Omega then she’s his little sister!” somebody shouted.
“And he’s her big brother!” someone else proclaimed.
Great—it took a minute for the regular Weres to get it but once they did, they didn’t like it a bit.
“I thought the whole reason he was getting executed and she was getting punished was because they broke the Unbreakable Laws together!” someone shouted—I think it was Mr. Mustache. He might have a broken hand, but there was nothing wrong with his mouth. “You can’t let them leave together, Curly!” he shouted. “They’ll just commit more incest! You can’t let him have her!”
“But he won her!” Curly had a helpless look on his face and I still had his gun, which I now pointed at him again.
“We’re going,” I said. “We’re walking out of here and you’re going to let us.”
“Ani is mine,” Jake growled, his eyes flashing. “Nobody is going to stop me from taking her—nobody!”
And then, before anyone could say anything else, he began to Shift.
I gasped as I saw him rip out of the tight black jeans and turn into the enormous black wolf I remembered from that night in the attic. Everyone else was staring too and I remembered one of the Weres saying that no one could change until the full moon. Well, apparently that didn’t apply to Royal Weres.
“Lookit him—I always heard the Royals were bigger in fur form but he’s fuckin’ huge!” I heard one of the other Were’s whisper in awe as they all stared up at Jake’s Wolf.
“Fuckin’ big as a horse,” someone else agreed and I saw they were spellbound, staring that the enormous black wolf. But how long would that last?
Then the Wolf crouched low beside me and I heard Jake’s voice in my head.
“Get on my back,” he said. “We’re getting the Hell out of here!”
FORTY
When I was younger, my mom got me a scholarship to a horse-riding camp several summers in a row. I loved the horses and tried to ignore the rich kids the camp catered to. But it was worth putting up with the bullying and teasing I got about my sometimes ragged clothes, just to be able to swing up on a horse’s back and feel like I was one with the animal as it cantered and trotted and sometimes even galloped.
Well, riding a horse-sized wolf is nothing like riding a horse. A horse has a solid, steady pace—a kind of rhythm you can learn and understand. With Jake’s Wolf, I felt less like I was riding and more like I was flying.
I wrapped my arms around his shaggy neck, (I left the gun behind—I was afraid I would shoot either him or myself)—and held on to his lean flanks with my knees. Then, after making sure I was centered and secure, Jake took a running leap off the stage.
He sailed over the heads of the men nearest the stage and landed lightly on the ground in an open spot in the clearing. The Weres all around him just stared at us for a moment—clearly shocked to see this. I was pretty sure that none of them turned into Wolves anywhere near as huge as Jake’s.
But then Curly bellowed—“they’re getting away! Get them!”—and the spell they’d all been under was broken.
Hands reached out for me, trying to grab my hair…my dress. I gasped and pressed closer to Jake who took off again, with another giant leap into the forest. Then another and another until I really felt like I was flying as I tried to hold on to his shaggy fur and not fall off.