“You’re a failure,” he said with a smug smile that I wanted to wipe off his face. “I don’t know how you thought you’d be able to defeat me.”
I saw my chance materialize when he leaned closer. In reveling in my defeat he’d made the mistake of getting too close to me. I lifted my head up quickly and he wasn’t fast enough to pull away. I closed my jaws around his throat. It just took pulling with all the strength that I had to rip his throat.
Surprise and horror filled his eyes as he realized the mistake he’d made. He might have been stronger than me but his over-confidence had been his weakness.
I collapsed back on the ground. Even though I was barely hanging on, I watched as Richard collapsed to the ground and began to gurgle. I watched while he took his last breath.
I’d killed him. Richard was dead.
Activity erupted around me as I lay struggling to breathe. Curtis dropped to his knees beside me and started assessing my wounds.
“You hang on,” he commanded as he put his hand to my biggest wound on my stomach to stop the flow of blood.
“Don’t you dare die,” Kyle said, desperation dripping into his voice as I turned to see him kneeling on the other side of me.
“I need you to shift back into your human form,” Curtis told me, looking frantic. He was normally so calm so to see him like this made me feel very scared.
I shook my head. I didn’t have enough energy to do that.
“You have to,” he told me with desperation creeping into his voice. “If you don’t shift, you’ll bleed out.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. I felt so tired and I just wanted to go to sleep.
“Open your eyes, princess,” Kyle told me. It was the use of the nickname that made me pull open my eyes, despite my exhaustion, and glare at him.
“That’s my girl,” Kyle said with a relieved smile. “You need to shift.”
I gritted my teeth as pain throbbed through me. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back into my human form; nothing happened. I wasn’t strong enough.
“Come on, you can do it,” Kyle said, trying to encourage me.
I groaned and attempted to find the strength to try again.
“Do it for Blake,” Curtis encouraged.
Blake.
My heart lifted at the thought of him and I felt a sadness that I might die before I saw him again. He would be devastated if something happened to me. Even now as I was lying there on the verge of death, he would be able to feel my emotions. He would know that something was wrong.
I loved him and the thought of the pain he’d go through at my death made me try again. This time when I opened my eyes I was lying in my human form. Relief flooded through me.
“Good girl,” Kyle said, sounding relieved.
“We need to move her,” Curtis said to Kyle as nurses arrived with a stretcher.
“On my count we shift her,” Curtis instructed to Kyle. Kyle nodded his head.
“One, two, three,” he counted and when he got to three they both lifted me and shifted me onto the stretcher. I screamed out at the sudden movement and I was left gasping as they lifted me and moved me as quickly as they could back to the medical center. As soon as they got me inside, they began to check my wounds.
“I’m going to give you some pain medication,” Curtis informed me as he injected some liquid into my arm.
The pain I was struggling with began to fade as the pain medication took effect. Kyle stood beside me, running a hand through his hair as he held my hand with his other hand. His silver-gray eyes were wide and scared while he tried to soothe me.
“You’ll be okay,” he assured me. “And when you’re feeling better we are going to have a talk about what you did out there.”
I was too weak to try and respond. I was feeling tired and cold. It was probably from the loss of blood. A phone started to ring and I realized it was Kyle’s. He ignored it as he concentrated on me.
“We have to operate,” Curtis announced. The nurses began to prep me for surgery.
