Page 80 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal

Chapter Twenty-One

Iwelcomedanescapeinto unconsciousness—the black nothingness, the void of sensation—but something wrenched me back to reality.

Starbursts exploded behind my eyes.I couldn’t scream.Couldn’t breathe.Couldn’t see.

My neck popped.My forearm felt like it was burning and bleeding, like I was swimming through a pool of broken glass.I needed to pass out.Needed to escape, but the thing locked around my arm wouldn’t let go.

Crocodile.

That’s what it had to be, a prehistoric beast slinging me around in a death roll.

Teeth hit bone.My eyes snapped open as I cried out.Two brutal gold-rimmed eyes stared back at me.Jaws still locked around my forearm, the wolf growled and moved closer as if it wanted to make a point.It had my life in its jaws.Only a few inches separated my face from its snout.Blood and saliva dripped onto my other hand, which was braced against the concrete beneath us.There was only one way I might be able to hurt the beast.

I pushed off the pavement and went for its left eye.My thumb felt the wet squish—

The wolf swung its head so abruptly it whipped me onto my back.

The pain made me scream.I brought my left arm up in a useless attempt to protect myself, but the werewolf just loomed at my side, watching me die.

Rainwater soaked the back of my shirt.I was lying in a puddle so overcome with pain and terror that I didn’t realize I was staring up at the dark, clouded sky.The wolf was gone.I was still breathing.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.My armhurt.I made the mistake of looking at it, then rolled to my side in time to throw up on the pavement.

So much blood and flesh.The wolf could have broken through bone, could have ripped my entire arm off, could have killed me…

My brain could barely hold a thought through the epic pain, but a question created space for itself.Why hadn’t the wolf done all those things?

Had my thumb damaged his eye?A hurt werewolf was more likely to kill than to run.

Had Eli scared him away?Over my labored breathing and pain-filled gasps, I heard something behind me.

I managed to brace my left arm against the ground.I pushed up to my elbow, then shakily managed to sit mostly upright, the world tilting and spinning, my stomach lurching.

I froze, hoping I wouldn’t vomit again and praying I wouldn’t pass out.It didn’t help that I was hovering over a puddle, my blood creating a red cloud that drifted over the rippling reflection of an almost-full moon.

Eli’s eerie creation groaned, its vines snapping, foliage breaking, earth shifting as it dragged something massive into a grave.I didn’t watch it swallow its prey though.My gaze was drawn back to the moon’s rippling image…

Moon.Werewolf.Bite.

Oh God.

“There was a fourth wolf.”Eli’s voice sounded distant, like he was speaking from another realm.“We didn’t sense it…”

His shoes entered my peripheral vision.I felt him staring down at me.At my arm.At my blood smearing the moon’s reflection like a sick watercolor.

He said something in a language I didn’t understand.

My heart didn’t beat.It started and it stopped.Started and stopped.

A werewolf had bitten me.

“Get to The Rain,” Eli ordered.

I was already moving, already stumbling to my feet because that was my best option, perhaps my only option, to remain human.

I made it three steps before I froze.My car keys were in my room.

A wave of dizziness swept over me when I looked toward the third-floor balcony.My right arm hung limp at my side.The amount of effort it would take to climb those steps, the time it would cost, the blood I would lose…