Page 20

CHAPTER

TEN

Avery

A look over his shoulder is what propels Avery into moving despite the ache.

Instead of Atwood’s biped form, Avery finds himself stared down by the wild eyes of a motherfucking cassowary .

Of course. Of fucking course! The bird honks at him, the sound like rattling rocks in a tub of foul water, deep and guttural and menacing.

Avery takes off, not remembering how fast the landbird can move, but hoping it’s slow enough to outrun.

Avery staggers, yelping at the pain. When he lifts his head, the cassowary-shaped douchebag is in front of him, more of those gulping threat noises offending Avery’s ears.

Without being able to run, the only option he has is fully transforming to fight back…

if he wants to get shot through the brain by Howard Dennings himself.

By his own admission, Farmer Dennings is a great shot. Avery doesn’t want to test it because he’s pretty sure this man wouldn’t be so cocky around a farm of werecreatures if it wasn’t true.

Freeing the ursine to numb his pain responses would be a terminally bad idea, and as ready as he was to die in a drainage ditch when he got here, Avery can’t stand the thought of never seeing Sascha again.

So he chokes back the pain and forces himself into motion. Though painful, friction helps the pads harden, blood drying and flaking off. Despite this, Avery still doesn’t get very far before being overtaken by Atwood, who delivers the first punishing jab of his beak to Avery’s arm.

They’re smack in the middle of the farm, right at the front, where customers drive in to visit the store.

Avery can’t make it into the forest from here, but if he can cross under the archway leading to the main road and get off the property entirely, maybe Atwood will give up the chase.

Maybe he’ll even get hit by a car. Avery can hope.

That hope dies quickly when Avery sees exactly how fast a cassowary can run. If this particular chicken tried to cross the road, the car itself might lose, which doesn’t bode well for Avery.

No evasive maneuver Avery can think of, much less execute, seems good enough to evade Atwood’s quick, aggressive strikes.

Avery ducks and darts, slips, hobbles, and in one case, falls on his ass and yelps, but the massive bird doesn’t seem the least bit inconvenienced.

In fact, Avery suspects Atwood is playing with him.

Tormenting his prey before taking it out with those huge talons on his reptilian feet.

Avery becomes intimately acquainted with those talons when he attempts another dash, aiming to put a pallet heavy with hay bales between them.

With a surprising amount of grace, the cassowary jumps onto the hay bales and crosses over them.

He lands in front of Avery, cutting him off before delivering a kick to Avery’s leg.

It leaves a deep slice through his calf.

Inside him, the ursine awakens, enraged by the pain. Such a sensation should only herald its freedom: A ritual of agony in exchange for growth and strength .

Avery doesn’t feel strong or big right now. Sprawled on the ground, he tries to move his leg, fighting through the acid sting and gushing blood.

Behind Atwood, there’s a bright flicker that yanks Avery’s attention away. A pair of yellow eyes stares back at him, thick brows furrowed above them.

Beryl frowns. They don’t look happy to see Avery getting his ass kicked—maybe because it’s not by them? Maybe because Celeste won’t appreciate damaged goods? Fuck if he knows.

The cassowary flaps its wings, demanding Avery forget about Beryl if he means to live long enough to reject them again. A hollow note escapes the bird, one that almost sounds like amusement.

The ursine rages, demanding to be loosed, commanding that Avery cease playing the victim in a cruel game of predators.

Especially in front of Beryl. For some reason, having them as a witness makes the humiliation sting worse.

He wants Beryl to know he’s strong enough to refuse scraping the bottom of the barrel alongside them.

Avery almost gives in. It’d be easy to surrender to the haze, toxic microbes sailing through his blood, taking away his weakness and awareness with it.

What could one bullet do? Or ten? Against a werecreature such as himself, even the violent fossil of a bird would make itself scarce, much less the posturing tools of a simple man?—

No. He can’t take the risk.

If he can get to his lover, he’ll be safe. He just needs to keep going until he can find Sascha, or until Sascha can find him. Surely hurt like this cannot fester if they’re together.

Refusing the ursine infuriates it. Holding it back distracts Avery from dodging another blow, earning him a long scrape along his forearm.

A creeping itch on the back of his neck, right where his hackles would rise if he had them, alerts him of a few shifters supervising the attack. Waiting for Avery to do more to defend himself so they can justify pouncing. He’d never survive.

There are other werecreatures, too. Some stare openly, while others keep their heads down and hurry past.

One of the supervisors nudges the man standing next to him—a human with a gun. The shifter chuckles, but the man only stares.

No one twitches in his direction, not to help him. Not to stop it.

Sascha said he’d kill for him. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s not, but Sascha would protect him. He was ready to fight Beryl, three times his size and twice as deadly. This fucked up murder bird wouldn’t stand a chance.

Thinking of Sascha angers the ursine further, triggering a primal sensation Avery doesn’t have a name for. Companion . Ally , maybe. Someone who wouldn’t let this happen, unlike the chuckling onlookers doing nothing while Avery thrashes in a puddle of his own blood.

If he lets the ursine free, it’ll get him to Sascha. They’ll be together again.

No, no, no. He can’t risk it. He can’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 of both .

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 the road 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.”