Page 41 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

Chapter Seventeen

T yler’s shocked, barking laugh was apparently not the response she wanted.

I mean, having been on the receiving end of it more than once due to dumbassery in my teen years, I couldn’t blame her for being annoyed. Daniel, however, took it far more personally.

Tyler didn’t have time to move out of the way before Daniel was on him, fully shifted. His teeth clamped around Tyler’s throat as they went down, Tyler snarling and shifting as they fell.

Justin cried out, scrambling back. “Tyler! No! Stop! Landry, help him!” He screamed as Eliza activated the collar, sending him back to his knees.

I had a moment—too many moments—of paralysis, not sure who to go to first. Not parsing the chaos unraveling around me.

Eliza , my brain finally decided, kicking in when my body wanted to just turn to stone and hide.

She’s the center of the storm. Stop her.

She was fixated on Daniel, her thumb pressing on the damn button to Justin’s collar, letting me get far closer than she would have otherwise.

I took a step, then another, then shoved myself into motion, leaping at her in a rugby tackle I’d tried and failed in high school.

Apparently, coming into my abilities as whatever I was had really upped my game because I was able to grab her around the middle and take her to the ground without getting in my own way.

She shrieked, the control skittering out of her hand.

Daniel’s snarls became panicked, claws scrambling on the concrete floor.

I prayed Tyler could hold him because there was no way I’d be able to fight him off.

Not while I was still weak from injuries. Not while I was in low key panic mode.

Eliza being unable to shift, lacking were abilities, made it easier for me to restrain her but also made me feel disgusting. I was stronger, faster, and honestly deadlier if it came down to it.

And that notion bloomed into an exciting and awful realization.

I was deadlier.

I had power over her.

And I didn’t know how to feel about that. I froze. And it was enough of a stumbling block for her to get control of the grapple, just for a moment, and roll me off to one side.

Daniel was on me in a heartbeat, his heavy weight crushing against my ribs. Justin cried out, Eliza having gotten hold of the damn control once more.

“No,” I gasped, seeing the dark blur of Tyler out of the corner of my eye. “Justin! Get?—”

Daniel’s jaws on my throat were a warning, a threat. Hard enough to make me choke, not hard enough to break skin.

Yet.

Eliza scrambled to her feet, panting, her breath a high whine with each exhale. “Stop,” she shrieked. “Stop it!”

Daniel held still for just a half a heartbeat then decided not to obey his other half after all.

The piercing pain in my throat was worse than the bite on my arm.

Doctor-brain kicked in and scrolled vivid visuals of the structures his teeth were crushing.

Carnassial teeth gripped and tore at my skin while his canines held me in place.

My scream came out as a high-pitched whine, melting into something animal as I shifted, twisting and thrashing in Daniel’s grasp.

It wasn’t enough to make him let go, but his surprise loosened his grasp just enough for me to suck in a wet, burning breath.

My hands—my claws now—sank into his back as oxygen flooded my bloodstream.

I was dizzy with it, this rush not only of life-saving air but the fact I was strong now, stronger than I had been moments before.

I was able to pull Daniel off of me, throw him to the side even as I bled.

Wobbling only a little, I got to my knees, then to my feet.

Crouching, I moved towards Daniel. Everything in the room had become so much background noise.

The hiss of Justin’s panicked breathing, the staccato pulses racing from four different bodies.

But all of my attention, all of my energy, was aimed at Daniel with his bloody maw and raised hackles.

Huge, bigger than Ethan in wolf form, Daniel was pale gray and black, eyes blazing amber as he waited.

His own pulse was strong, fast as a wolf’s would be but the stink of fear, of shocked pain, rising from him gave me a spike of pleasure.

The part of me that wasn’t wallowing in wolf was horrified.

The rest of me though… Maybe a small sliver of that could understand why people like Daniel reveled in being were. Why they felt better-than.

Daniel bucked under my grasp, thrashing his head side to side seeking purchase, somewhere to sink those curved canines and tear.

“No,” I rasped, mouth changed just enough to sound wrong to my ears. But to feel right as my body struggled to complete the change. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

“Landry,” Justin cried out. “Don’t!”

Tyler’s hand—fully human—on my arm wasn’t pulling me away but he exerted enough pressure to make me pause. “Don’t,” he echoed Justin. “Don’t…”

Daniel couldn’t smirk, not in wolf form, but God I could feel him wanting to.

Tyler moved closer, leaning into my field of vision.

He was bloody but I couldn’t tell if it was his or not.

Bruises were already blooming on his face and arms. A livid paw print was taking shape on his shoulder, huge and red with burst capillaries. “Landry, no.”

The thing inside me shuddered, angry. Hungry almost.

Protective.

Swallowing hard, hard enough that my throat clicked, I nodded. “Can we put him in the cage downstairs?” I asked Tyler roughly. “Maybe her too?”

“I have an idea,” Justin said, voice barely above a whisper.

* * *

The human sized collar was almost too big on Eliza, even on the smallest notch.

She didn’t fight us, though I could feel the tension shuddering through her still body.

Daniel was something else entirely. He didn’t—wouldn’t—shift back to human form, so Tyler painfully shifted to wolf, cornering him against the bank of metal storage cabinets.

It wouldn’t last long—Tyler was fast, strong, clever, but Daniel had mass on him and didn’t seem to be reacting as strongly to his own injuries.

The blood had been his, staining Tyler’s fingers and face, but the injuries didn’t bother him as much as Tyler was bothered by his own.

I wondered if he was on something, or if maybe he was just one of those assholes who thought showing pain meant you were weak.

Probably both, I thought, eyeing him warily from my perch at the equipment bench. Every part of me hurt, and my head was pulsing with a liquid sort of pain that threatened to leak out of my ears.

“Eliza, please. Tell Daniel to stand down.”

She sniffed wetly, teeth bared in a parody of a wolf’s snarl. “You think I can control him? He’s not my pet , Doctor Babin. Or is that how it is with you and Stone? He’s your lap dog? A mongrel’s chew toy?” She spat and Daniel made a sound like a happy growl.

It would’ve been cute if I wasn’t kind of fighting for our lives at that moment.

Justin shuffled forward, staying out of everyone’s arm’s reach, even Tyler’s.

“She said I was second choice. I’m a doctor so I was second choice.

I… I told her I wasn’t a doctor like you.

I was barely out of residency when I got the job at the ME’s office and…

” He spread his hands limply at his side.

“Here I am. Useless as tits on a boar hog to anyone but myself, and even that’s questionable.

She said…” He gulped air, eyes trained on Eliza’s pointedly neutral expression.

“She said I was one of the mongrels. A failed lab rat. And I should make myself useful. It was because of Garrow that I even got through med school.” He turned wide, wet eyes to me.

“The bullshit studies I signed up for to make ends meet?”

“Garrow.”

He nodded. “Or his group anyway. All the time I thought I was doing something that’d help people, and hey what the hell, get paid doing it, I was… I was a fucking guinea pig for psychopaths!”

“You,” Eliza said, starting to lean forward, stopping only when Justin hurriedly brandished the clicker at her.

She sat back on her heels and, through gritted teeth, tried again.

“You are on the verge of something amazing, Doctor Babin, and you don’t even realize it.

You’re willfully refusing to see how much we need you!

You have the ability to help save an entire people, don’t you realize that?

Don’t you see the gift you’ve been given?

” She surged forward, still on her knees, desperately reaching for my legs.

“Daniel’s been working for Garrow for years, Doctor Babin! Years! He’s been instrumental in this project moving forward. I’m honored to be part of it, and you should be, too! You’re squandering this beautiful gift you’ve been given! Please don’t turn from us, Doctor Babin!”

“What the actual fuck,” Tyler muttered, and I could only nod in agreement.

“You kidnapped me—twice, apparently,” I added with a pointed glare at Daniel.

“You’re trying to engage in eugenics, which by the bye, is never awesome, you sick fucking freak, and expect me to just oh golly gee whiz doesn’t this sound great my way into joining you? ”

Eliza was very still, her expression still caught on that wild, crying hope from just moments before.

“Daniel was right,” she said quietly. “He was right. He said you should have been culled with the other mongrels, but I hoped… I hoped you’d realize.

You’ve been with Stone for a year now. You’ve seen how the clans work up close.

You’ve seen how you’re stronger than the other survivors.

But you still don’t see !” She drew in a shuddering breath.

“You’re the one causing these deaths, Doctor Babin.

You’re the one stopping us from doing the work! ”