My door slammed shut as one wolf started to shudder, to shake and growl like his body had been hit with seizures. A painful cry tore from deep within the animal as I watched the claws retract into a paw that seemed to meld slowly into a hand.
As Lex picked me up, brought me to my feet and pushed me behind him, I saw a naked man, face contorted in pain and anger, stand up. The other two remained wolves. Flanking him on both sides. I felt every muscle in Lex tighten as he stood there in only unbuttoned jeans.
“So, the protector has become the lover,” the man grunted. “Will make it all the more of a win when we take her from you. Imagine me screwing her, impregnating her, forcing her magic, which I will nurture in my own barbaric way into our bloodline. We know a twisted sorcerer or two now ourselves that has promised to help us with her, to relieve us with her ancient magic of the torment our curse bears. You screwed up royally in your screwing her. ” He grinned at his own play on words, knowing just how they would play off of Lex, I was sure.
“You’ll never take her,” Lex growled as he magically transitioned into a wolf. A welcome distraction, I felt the swirl of power around him stir a tornado of energy in my own body. I swore, at that moment, I could shoot those white streaks of power from my fingertips like you see witches do in the movies.
In a more painful, laborious process, the man turned back into a black wolf himself. He cried out as it sounded like every bone in his body broke to contort into his beast. I got quick glimpses of skin tearing, muscles and bone revealed, before a thick pelt of hair covered him. Swallowing down the nausea that rose up in my throat, I turned to the commotion at my right.
Lex, as my wolf protector, had leapt onto the multi-colored wolf, having turned him over on his back as he bit into his neck. With a real animal squeal of pain, paws batted at the air. Seconds later, both the brown and black wolf landed on my wolf’s back as I stumbled back, only to find myself grappling for the arm of the couch that I’d hit. Off balance, I found myself free-falling to the floor, only to feel paws land on my shoulders. My world went black.
Chapter Seven
When I came to, I opened my eyes to the blurry vision of a wolf’s muzzle. Not my wolf, mind you; the teeth snarled, dripped with saliva and making me move to avoid getting slobbered on before my head had been ready. Stars swam before my eyes in accordance with the sudden, sharp, shooting throb in my head. Blinking, my wolf, Lex, in fur from head to toe, or paw to paw, stood on stiff legs, snarling as well. The two other wolves laid bloody on my carpet, lifeless on their sides.
While I knew in my heart it had been kill or be killed, they looked like overgrown dogs, like the ones that break your heart in those support-my-animal-rescue-cause commercials they play late nights on woman’s channels with a marketing brilliance. New to all of this werewolf fighting, or mauling I should say, I cut myself some slack. Besides, stupid me, what did I really know about the age old fight between these factions, other than what Lex had told me in the last few days?
My worn and dingy carpet, that had gone from a speckled cream to mostly brown in places, was now soaked a crimson that turned a shade of black around the edges of the puddles of blood that seeped from the dead wolves. Bunches of hair in matted and bloody balls, one just a foot from me, moved the acid from my stomach up into my throat. It burned, and I blinked in reaction as much as in an attempt to see something different. No fluttering of my lashes did a damned thing to change the horror, the gore that had taken up residence in my living room. So much for the safe haven of home.
The gnarling and gnashing of teeth grew in intensity until the floor beneath me literally shook. Stalemate or threatening, maybe even a bit of bullying, I couldn’t tell from the emotions that washed over me from my wolf. In this stance, in this situation, ready to defend me no matter what the cost, I supposed, I didn’t fully comprehend his feelings. Reading him when he was in human form wasn’t so hard. In fact, we often felt the same things. So, his emotions merely intensified my own, or when different, washed through me in gentle waves. Yet, when Lex appeared as my wolf, I didn’t really get the harshness of his anger, his need for blood or vengeance. Maybe just the thoughts of one spelled to be a protector, they were still foreign enough to me to exist only as a shivering, harsh and jagged, as each emotion of his beast ripped through my soul.