It was a bloodcurdling sound—the kind that raises all the short hairs along your arms and the back of your neck. My heart rate skyrocketed again and I began to find it hard to breathe as fear crept down my throat like bitter medicine.
If the sound had been intended to make me run, it didn’t work. I froze, gripping the rough tree trunk even tighter, not daring to make a move.
But it didn’t matter if I moved or not—McCain’s wolf had found my scent. He dropped his head to the ground again and made a line straight for the tree I was standing in, at the edge of the clearing.
As I said before, I was standing on a thick branch about eight feet up—but that turned out not to be high enough. When the monstrous Werewolf got up on his hind legs, his snout was level with my ankles. He let out a growl when he found me and started snapping at me with razor-sharp teeth.
Finding my breath at last, I screamed and stamped downward, landing a hard kick with my heel, right on the wolf’s sensitive nose.
He shook his head and barked sharply. I almost thought I could hear words in the sound.
“Bitch! Get! You!” was what it sounded like, though it might just have been my imagination playing tricks on my already terrified mind.
“Get away from me! Get away!” I screamed down at the enormous Werewolf, who was already circling the tree trunk and growling again. Apparently even a kick in the nose wasn’t enough to dissuade him of the idea that I was easy prey. A real animal—a natural wolf that had no human in it—would have given up at that point and left. But not McCain. He was determined to claim me as his own and breed me and he wasn’t about to back down now.
He reared up on his hind legs again, claws scrabbling at the bark and leaving long grooves in the trunk of the tree. I screamed as he snapped at my bare feet and ankles, trying to grab me and pull me down out of the tree, I was sure.
“Leave me alone! Go away!” I shouted down at him. I was dancing on the tree branch, looking for a way to go higher when he finally sank those long yellow teeth into my right ankle.
There’s not a lot of meat in that area—not even on a curvy girl like me. I felt his fangs sink all the way to the bone and it hurt worse than anything I’d ever experienced.
I threw back my head and shrieked as a wave of fear and agony rolled over me. The enormous Werewolf tightened his grip and jerked his head, intent on yanking me out of the tree and slamming me to the ground.
He would have succeeded if two things hadn’t happened at once. First, I threw both arms around the tree and grabbed on tight. I didn’t care that I could feel the rough bark scraping the tender skin of my breasts and belly—I was determined to stay in the damn tree even if McCain’s wolf bit my entire foot off!
Which he really might have done if the second thing hadn’t happened. That was a shotgun blast that came out of the forest behind me.
I gasped at the earsplitting roar and gripped the trunk even tighter but McCain in his Werewolf form yelped and abruptly opened his jaws, releasing my mangled ankle. Another shot sounded and the wolf howled and jumped away from the tree as though he’d been stung.
“Go on—get!” a deep masculine voice shouted. “Unless you want a bellyful of lead, get the hell out of here and leave the girl alone!” A third gunshot punctuated the threat. Clearly he’d reloaded and meant what he said.
The enormous Werewolf gave me a final baleful glare from glowing yellow eyes and then finally limped away.
I was glad he was gone but I wasn’t sure if I might not be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Who was the unknown assailant with the gun?
I was standing on one leg, holding my wounded foot out in front of me, naked and literally treed—I had never felt more vulnerable in my life. Then a familiar voice said,
“Hey, Kira, is that you? Come on, darlin’—come down why don’t you?”
Looking down, I saw a familiar face peering up through the leaves at me—Nick Callahan. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen him Shift to his Fur Form earlier or breed any of the willing girls in his human form either. What did that mean? Had he abstained from the Open Breeding? And where had he been all this time? Had he slipped off into the woods, the same way I had?
I didn’t have answers for any of those questions. All I knew was that I was hurting and I saw a possible source of safety below. But Nick had betrayed me once—could I trust him again?