Chapter 4

The truck's horn swallowed my scream as the taxi shot into the intersection.

Our driver wrenched the wheel. The truck clipped the rear door, exploding the window beside me and spinning the taxi through a barrier into the trees.

My seat belt locked across my abdomen. Metal folded around us with a shriek, the windshield burst inward, and the driver went limp against the airbag.

For several seconds I could hear nothing except a high metallic whine. Then two rapid heartbeats fluttered inside me, faint but separate, and I pressed both hands over my stomach.

"Stay with me," I whispered to children too small to hear.

The rear door had crumpled shut, so I kicked the opposite door until its bent frame opened. Glass cut my palm as I crawled into wet leaves, and pain shot through my left leg when I tried to stand.

The Blackwood SUV had overturned on the road. One guard hung motionless behind shattered glass, while the other dragged himself across the asphalt with blood pouring from his temple.

Three men emerged from the trees wearing black rain gear. None approached the taxi or checked the driver; all three came directly toward me.

"Alive until the sample is taken," the tallest man ordered.

I backed toward the ravine, keeping my injured leg beneath me. "Who sent you?"

The leader removed a narrow silver injector from his coat. "You will not live long enough for the answer to matter."

My wolf had never answered me. I had spent years begging for the smallest sign of her, yet the moment silver caught the light, something inside my chest slammed against its cage.

The first attacker grabbed my arm. I drove broken glass into the soft flesh beneath his jaw, twisted it free, and kicked his knee sideways.

Blood sprayed hot across my face. He collapsed choking, but the second man struck my ribs hard enough to lift me from the ground.

I landed on my injured leg and felt something tear. The leader caught my hair, dragged my head back, and pressed the injector against my neck.

"The Vale woman was right," he said near my ear. "You never learned how to fight like a wolf."

I slammed my heel into his shin and tore free with strands of hair still wrapped around his fist. The needle scraped my shoulder instead of entering my neck, and liquid silver splashed across the cut.

White smoke lifted from my skin. The pain was immediate and obscene, as if molten wire had been pushed through the joint and wound around every nerve.

My knees hit the mud. I bit through my lower lip to keep from screaming and drove the shard through the injector, spilling the remaining silver into the leaves.

The third man kicked me onto my back. "Hold her down before she damages the blood."

His boot pressed beneath my ribs while the leader produced a collection tube. I smelled wet soil, gun oil, my own blood, and the sharp mineral poison eating through my shoulder.

The two heartbeats inside me stuttered.

Something in me broke open.

My spine arched so hard my skull struck the earth. Heat poured through my bones, followed by a pressure that forced my joints apart and rebuilt them before I could draw breath.

The attacker stumbled away. "What is happening to her?"

My fingers dug into the soil as nails split and lengthened into claws. Every tooth in my mouth ached, my ribs widened beneath my skin, and silver-black veins crawled down my arm while white fur pushed through the blood.

I screamed until the sound tore into a howl.

The men froze.

The world sharpened with brutal clarity. I heard blood pulsing through their throats, smelled the fear leaking from their skin, and saw raindrops strike individual blades of grass.

The leader lifted his gun. I reached him before he pulled the trigger.

Rainwater filled my mouth with blood and iron.

My jaws closed around his forearm and crushed both bones. He shrieked as I tore him off his feet, and the gun vanished beneath the leaves.

The second man shifted into a brown wolf and lunged at my injured side. I twisted, caught his shoulder between my teeth, and threw him into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk.

The third attacker ran.

I chased him for two strides before agony ripped through my abdomen. Both tiny heartbeats accelerated, and every instinct in my new body turned away from the fleeing enemy toward the lives inside me.

I stopped.

Behind me, the two wounded wolves pressed themselves into the mud. Their throats were exposed, their bodies shaking, and neither dared lift his eyes to mine.

I had given no command. Still, the wolves who had come to kill me were bowing.