Awakening (2 book series)
Awakening – Rejected Mate Chapter 22

"I know where you are, Puppy. Why don't you come out and do me a favor.... I don't want to have to drag you out from under there. It's not fun if I have to do that." There's a sneer of venomous hatred in his voice, and I imagine the way his face curls into a sadistic He drops her lifeless form on the floor fully, with a dull thud of weight, her body splaying her arms out in a star shape and I recoil, tears blurring my vision as I try and get as small as I can back here. Whimpering internally.

grin, glaring my way through the darkness. Enjoying every moment of this.

I don't know what to do, I'm terrified, and if Vanka was no match for this thing, then I'm not either. I don't know how to fight; I've never had to. I'm not a warrior or even aggressive. I'm a nothing, a reject from a farmer's family who is worth nothing to no one. I bite on my lip, fear paralyzing me, when suddenly, the entire bed is ripped from above me, the gust of the action throwing my hair around my face and he sends it crashing into the other wall effortlessly, displaying strength much like ours. I gasp and react with a shuddering splaying of arms, over my head defensively as it flies and lands over on top of mine, dramatically. The crashing, splintering noise of a wooden bed crumbling and shattering into chaos. I'm left exposed, fully accessible, prey huddled for the taking. In the smallest of corners. He comes at me, with a flash of speed, that I see coming as if in slow motion, and I gasp in horror, choking up and immobile for a second.

Move, Alora...move! Some strong inner voice hits me as I chant to myself, trying so hard to make my body work with me, to command it somehow, but nothing is happening. It's like my brain is on slow motion, and my limbs are in hibernation. I shake my head, try to dislodge this overwhelming dizziness, and focus on doing something. Anything....

It's dark, it's eerily still, and it's like time has slowed so his movements are almost paused, as instinct takes over, finally. Blood rushing and pumping at speed as he scrapes a step closer to me.

In a flash equal to his speed, if not more, I bolt from my flat-out position with a renewed lease of energy from god knows where and aim for the door. Adrenaline spiking, survival instinct kicking in and praying I turn without even knowing how to. Even though I'm stronger and faster like this in human form since turning, our wolves are way more so. I need to turn, to survive and to heal, to fight. We only heal fast when in form. We only have abilities of extreme strength, ferocious aggression and razor-sharp claws and teeth, when we turn.

I don't get far, because he catches me by the back of my hair effortlessly, snares and tugs it, and throws me backwards as though I'm a limp rag. Smashing me into the vanity with force, sending me crashing through mirror and splintering wood into a heap on the floor, as heavy objects tumble on top of me. Pain slicing at my body as I convulse at the assault and am rendered mute with the wind being knocked out of me. Completely defenseless, weak and no match.

I submit to the pain, as I feel every single one of those slicing shards pierce my skin, writhing in agony and bleeding out. I scream out loud. A blood curling wail of agony as I'm inflicted with a thousand tears and cuts and the bone crunching, splintering, of my body snapping.

Adrenalin takes over, despite my body vibrating with the sheer effort and I get up, grinding my teeth, against the crunching of broken bone and dull burning ache, clawing the walls in a bid to get purchase. My hands start changing before me and relief washes over my mind at evidence of my beginning to turn. This is what I need, but it's not fast enough, or not progressing, and he has me from behind, around my throat in an effortless maneuver before it takes effect. He throws me and sends me flying forward with a thrust, straight through the window of our third-floor bedroom with another flinching of unavoidable stabbing agony.

If I thought hitting furniture was painful, then the slicing assault of a thousand glass shards breaking on your already torn and bleeding skin, as you fly through at speed, is so much worse. There's a moment of silent still as I hit air and my body changes direction, weightless for a second. A moment of ease before realization sinks in that I'm three floors up and my stomach lurches as gravity takes hold and yanks me downwards.

I hit the ground below with a stomach-churning thud, at crazy speed, that reverberates through my every cell and pore and knocks life out of me as it shatters any unbroken pieces I may have left. It's so beyond painful, it almost doesn't hurt at all for a second, stunned, until my lungs try to stir, to recover, and I start choking on my own blood and bile. Gasping for breath, body convulsing as I try to move, but I'm bleeding out profusely that the ground around me is turning dark with the evidence.

Slashed all over, from breaking through the glass, and shattered from my fall. I'm broken all over and can literally feel my life flowing away from me, as I become woozy and useless. More so than I was. I'm dying... I know it, I can feel it, and try as I might to cling on. I just can't. I lie here like a useless piece of discarded nothing, unable to move in any way, as my body fights for dregs of energy and consciousness.

The kind of pain my turning inflicted, is the only way to describe how this feels and try as I might I don't know how to finish transforming. If I don't, I'll die for sure...we can't heal the way we can as wolves and I'm critical. Something keeping me weak enough that turning isn't happening, no matter how desperate my instincts, and the self-preservation function of my kind, seems absent. We're meant to turn without thought when we're seriously messed up. To save ourselves. It's so typical that I can't even get that right. I can feel my human body giving up on me. I'm losing so much blood the grass around me is soaking parts of my clothes that weren't wet before, and the metallic stench of my own essence is dowsing out everything else. I claw the grass around my hands, which are splayed out as I'm on my stomach, and pull myself forward painfully. Refusing to just give up completely. Trying so hard to fight this and sobbing out loud with each wincing attempt.

So slowly, painfully so, that I make little progress, only to shudder when a ground shaking thud beside each side of my head signals the landing of two feet. The impending fate, falling over me like a heavy dark cloud, and I know this is futile. He jumped from the window above, and yet landed perfectly by me, in human form. This is no wolf. This is one of them.... coming back to end what they lost so many years ago.