Page 32

No, no, no.He can’t risk it. Hecan’t.

When Avery tries to stand, Atwood kicks him in the chest, tearing his shirt and sending him flying into the side of a truck. Avery hits hard and goes down harder, a sob catching in his throat when his palms hit the gravel.

Atwood’s honks become louder as he approaches, the frequency so low it pounds in Avery’s head alongside the ursine’s furious roars.

The archway leading to the main street is in sight, and Avery has to believe that if he gets off the farm property, Atwood will let him go. He begs for the ursine’s strength, imploring it not to take over. He can’t lose his ability to reason. The curse of the werevirus is trading control for power. If only Avery could just have a bit ofboth.

All or nothing, the inner beast insists.

Unwilling to give up, Avery puts that primal sensation at the forefront of his mind—companion, ally,mate—and asks only for what he needs to see Sascha’s smile again, to gaze into those bright blue-gold eyes.

The moment the ursine yields, it’s as if a chemical reaction explodes into being. Where before there was nothing but the sick beat of pain rending his core, now unbelievable strength surges through Avery’s wounded limbs. Melding with the ursine instincts first results in a woozy double-vision, but their minds settle into place with crisp finality, an ear-popping release of pressure. The chemical reaction fizzles out, a steaming-but-peaceful whole left where two separate elements once lay. Determined to live long enough to meditate on this later, Avery pushes himself to his bleeding feet, and he runs.

This time, he puts the furious cassowary at his back, feeling his blood vessels constrict to stem the flow of blood from his injuries. His muscles flex and harden as if he’s been laboring for months instead of weeks.

Gasps from the watching crowd make his ears twitch, but he doesn’t pause. He takes the final handful of strides toward the wooden sign bidding him a good rest of his day,Thank you for visiting Dennings Farm?—

Pain explodes low in Avery’s back.

Leaving the ground entirely, Avery’s body goes sailing, hitting the road so hard it knocks the breath from his lungs. He rolls almost to the drainage ditch beside the shoulder—one of many he’d fantasized about dying within. Too close, now. Avery digs his claws into the asphalt, feeling his skin peel as he drags himself farther onto the road, away from the sloping ground.

In the near distance, a truck turns the corner. One of those old ones, rusty and choking as it drives, too fast, down theroad directly toward Avery. Maybe he should have given in to the drainage ditch after all.

Avery is bracing himself when the driver looks up from his phone just in time to swerve, narrowly avoiding crushing Avery’s hand with large, threadbare tires. The truck speeds off into the distance as if Avery was roadkill rather than a living, injured person. He’s used to that by now. The entire shifter population in this country would prefer everyone affected by the werevirus be reduced to squished intestines and flat, sun-baked fur, torn skin fused to the cracks in the road.

As it is, Avery’s blood has left uneven smears where he hit and rolled. His breath comes harsh, wheezing gasps that stretch and pull the laceration on his lower back. The ursine has retreated, leaving Avery to feel every nanosecond of agony radiating from his injuries like mini earthquakes.

Then, much to his horror, Avery watches as Atwood passes under the cheerful wooden archway. He makes that gulping sound again, but before he reaches the road, Howard Dennings comes up behind him and grabs a handful of feathers.

“Boy, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Farmer Dennings demands. “You can’t be out here spoilin’ my investments. I can’t keep you on the schedule if you won’t keep your hands off the workers, no matter what your mama says.”

Atwood’s shift dissolves into a brief mirage, the sun hot and watery over the pavement, before he reappears, fully naked and scowling. “That whore started it. Keeping secrets. Why’d you even hire it?”

After all the humiliation, Avery barely feels the prick of being called an ‘it’ rather than a man. He’s long known these people don’t see him as a person, not even enough to misgender him.

Farmer Dennings shoves his nephew by the back of hisneck away from the road, ignoring when he whines, “But Uncle Howard!” in protest. He watches Atwood retreat for a few moments before turning his attention back to Avery. His hand lands at his hip, where the telltale bulge of a gun rests ominously.

“You,” Farmer Dennings says. “Don’t come ‘round if you’re just gonna make a damn mess. I don’t feed shit like you just to have y’all causing problems for my business.”

Farmer Dennings seems to wait for a response, but when Avery provides none, he sighs in an aggrieved fashion. Then he crosses the road in several quick strides and, without prelude, kicks Avery hard in the ribs.

Avery spills down the mushy grass he tried so ardently to avoid, whimpering in disgust when he lands face-first in the muck. His hands claw for purchase, but they’re weak human hands again, scrabbling at a slippery incline, and he can’t even summon enough strength to lift his own weight. Defeated and dizzy from losing so much blood, Avery closes his eyes and succumbs to the sick realization that he’s not going to see Sascha again.

Out of everything, that’s what hurts the most.

Nearly an hour later, Avery still isn’t dead.

He’d been waiting for it, apologizing to Sascha in his head, cursing Farmer Dennings, Celeste, and Avery’s whole damn estranged family. Everyone who’s ever held power over him, including Melissa’s fucking were-fox alpha who refused him entry into the pack, punishing him for a crime he’d never even thought of committing.

All he’d ever wanted, from the moment the werevirus took hold of his system, was to be sheltered from the horrific new reality. Instead, he was spit on, kicked out, forced to run and run and run to place after place. All unwilling towelcome the alpha Avery didn’t ask to be, none open to trusting his unexplored strength to protect them. The alpha’s Catch-22: Powerful enough to violate an existing pack but too weak to care for one of his own.

Avery lifts a shaking hand to scrub at his cheek where Atwood spit on him. It’s probably gone now, washed away by tears and filthy water, but Avery scratches the spot anyway, begging his body to forget the sensation. When his arm grows too tired to continue tearing at the raw skin, Avery slumps back into the mud.

In a brief moment of clarity, Avery gets it in his head to call Sascha before remembering that his phone died overnight. He didn’t bring his wallet to the lake, choosing instead to leave it in his locker at the office, where everyone keeps their valuables if they prefer they not be stolen during work hours. He obviously can’t fetch a charger or clean clothes from his bunk. Farmer Dennings didn’t say Averycouldn’tgo back to fetch his things, but in this condition, he’d be a walking target. Best to give it a while for the excitement to die down.

Without his wallet or phone, Avery has no way to contact Sascha, and though he vaguely remembers how to get to the Madison pack lands, he doesn’t trust himself to find the Forgotten Lake entrance without Sascha to guide him.

Shock from the attack eases enough for other emotions to sink in—shame and fear and regret and sorrow andshame, twice as strong once he reviews the circumstances up close. Maybe he could have just sucked Atwood’s dick. Lowered his pride, lowered to his knees, gave the shifter what he wanted while the marks Sascha put on his neck burned. Sascha wouldn’t have blamed him, but Avery sure as fuck would have blamed himself.