Page 158 of Whispers of Wisteria

The wolves laughed. Or maybe just one of them. I couldn’t tell.

“Shut up,Alpha,” one said. “You can’t even get down from there.”

There was a blur of movement from the far side of the cell, and a sharp crack cut through the air. It was a blur from the corner of my vision.

Gloria.

My head was spinning, and I blinked, trying to focus until I could see once more. She was still upright, but her body was limp, and her head lolled forward.

She didn’t move again.

“Gloria?” Maria shouted, rounded on the wolves. “What the hell did you just do?”

Now everything was spinning.

The men laughed. There were two of them, and the one holding me loosened his grip as his touch drifted.

It was Ada who stepped forward this time, still stuck in her cell with Maria. “She’s still alive,” she said. “Your orders were disposal only.”

“It’s close enough,” he said, squeezing the back of my thigh. “She’s basically dead already—and she will be by the time we’re done with her.”

I was thrown from the man’s shoulder, and the wind was knocked from me as I fell onto the floor. The landing rattled my bones, and I hid my face in my hands as I tried to curl into a ball.

“Leave her alone!” Maria’s protest rang through my ears.

They didn’t listen.

The one who’d dropped me nudged my hip with his foot. I flinched as light flooded my eyes, and a sharp bark of laughter sounded above me.

“She’s barely conscious,” he said. “Hardly worth the trouble.”

“But you’re still going to act like an animal, aren’t you?” Ada asked flatly. “Even my most idiotic pack members have better sense.”

The second man—taller, broader in the shoulders—stepped forward. “If you wanted to watch, you could have just asked,” he said, his broad, toothy grin standing out against the shadows. “Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two. Not everyone wants to be tamed.”

I blinked, trying to understand.Tamed?

But his meaning became clear as the other man fell to his knees over me. He loosened the top buttons of his jacket as he smirked and grabbed the front of my shirt. “Welcome to the real world, little fae,” he explained. “Out here, it’s survival of the fittest.”

Meanwhile, the second man had already begun to shift into his wolf form.

Was a shifter’s strength determined by how quickly they could transform?

If that were the case, then I was about to be eaten by some mediocre-level talents. It was almost insulting.

However, even if they were losers, they could still kill me.

Ice flooded my veins. Everything hurt, but this pain would be nothing compared to what would happen once teeth and claws ripped through my skin.

My body screamed as I forced my fingers to twitch—dragging myself into a roll. I had to keep running.

I couldn’t give up yet.

“Where are you going?” My captor pressed his palm against my hip. He easily overpowered me as he turned me to my back once more.

How—how could I have allowed myself to be bested by these morons? The other one hadn’t even finished shifting! What kind of incompetent shifter/onmyoji operation were these people running?

“Oh!” My captor climbed on top of me, his knees pressing into my thighs. “She’s still got some life left to her.”