Page 24 of Wolf Trial

Reverie made a throaty sound, so scornful that I was impressed to find there was someone she despised more than me. “I hate that worm.”

Maveline gasped; Rev ignored her and powered on. If slug was an insult for humans, I could guess what worm was. And further guess that Maveline was a twin. She tensed when Rev threw her arm over her shoulders, but didn’t push her off. “Don’t worry about Mortem. After my father’s generous donation, she won’t be an issue anymore. Not if she wants to keep this place funded.”

The sliminess of her voice, the entitlement and confidence… she should indict Lawrence into her little gang. They had a lot in common.

“Here’s good,” Oona said, and their footsteps came to a halt.

“It’s… steep,” Maveline said, echoing my own frantic thoughts.

My heart banged around inside my chest, beating erratically. I renewed my battle to overcome the blood magic keeping me immobile, but it was like fighting an ocean in a storm. Every progress it felt like I made, a wave crashed over my head and pushed me back down.

The drop they planned to throw me off wasn’t a cliff, but it was no mere slope. It looked like a god had slammed their fist into a hill, crushing half of it. We stood on the highest point, and the lowest part had to be twelve feet down.

Don’t do this, you psychopaths, I wanted to spit, to scream. I thrashed inside my body, but not even my pinky finger shivered. I was going to die here, thrown off a hill by a trio of bully lunatics. And for what—a minute’s worth of insults? For touching a nerve?

As if she could hear my thoughts—and I had no proof she couldn’t, with drops of her blood scattered over my clothes, my cheek—Rev leaned down so her face filled my vision, fangs exposed when she smiled. “Let’s see who’s nothing now.”

Still you, sweetie. I would have spat those exact words—or begged for my life—but Maveline let go of me and stepped back, leaving me unbalanced on the jagged precipice.

“This is what happens to slugs who don’t know their place,” Oona said in my ear, her voice beautiful, musical, and fucking ugly in its arrogance.

Rev’s finger and thumb bit into my chin, forcing me to look at her hideously flawless face. “Have a nice trip,” she said with fake nicety.

And she and Oona shoved me so hard my stiff body tipped off the edge and I fell.

And fell.

And fell.

CHAPTER 14

LEANDER

“Be honest,” I said, my right eye twitching as Lainsz threw another dagger into the back of the front door to our stone cottage near the boundary. “Will you disown me if I use one of those damn knives to kill this prick?”

“Say it with me,” Verne, our small pack’s alpha, said without glancing up from where he was folding laundry, as if to rub in our faces just how much of an adult he was. As if that wasn’t enough, even his fucking underwear was ironed.

I groaned and parroted, “Maim, not murder. I know. But he’s being an annoying dick, and that should give me some leeway.”

“I’m bored,” Lainsz bit out, his accent a relic of his upbringing on Earth, where his parents worked as envoys between the four biggest packs here—North, South, East and West—and the secret wolves living among humans. Before his entire family was murdered by the brutes from the academy on the hill overlooking our forest.

“You’re always bored,” Verne said, shooting him a look as Lainsz ripped the dagger from the door and moved back to throw it again.

I snatched the knife from his hand before he could make another hole in the door. “You should be grateful for being bored. What’s the alternative? Being attacked by leeches?”

“I dare them to attack,” Lainsz hissed, and the madman’s light blue eyes actually lit up. As if he’d relish a gang of slayers finding the secret hideout where we observed them and collected intel for the good of our pack, our safety, and the future of our entire species. “My claws have thirsted for blood all month.”

“Calm down, Freddie Kruger,” Verne remarked, throwing a white shirt at Lainsz’s head and ignoring the growl that filled the cottage from our perpetually grumpy pack member.

“Who’s that?” I asked. “Friend of yours?”

Lainsz snorted, and Verne gave him the alpha look. Secretly, I thought of it as the dad look because my dad gave me the exact same look that one time we went fishing and I threw the bait, line, and rod into the lake.1

Verne was about to launch into a lecture that was chiding, inspirational, and irritating all at once; I could sense it in the air. But he didn’t get more than a syllable out when a tremor went through the forest. Outside, the wind whispered, then began to shout with urgency.

We shared an alarmed look, and then we were all scrambling for the door, me pulling on my boots, half fastened as I stumbled out the door.

The wind hissed through branches, rattling the leaves until a few fluttered down around us. Verne raced ahead, his long legs eating up the distance as the forest urged us left—towards the boundary between wolf lands and that vile training camp.