Page 21 of Pledge Of A Bobcat

My gaze flicked toward her, and our eyes locked. The fear I saw there twisted deep inside me. I’d told her to run, but she didn’t listen. She needed to. I needed her to get as far away from me as possible. There was no telling what Xander and Lucius’s spirit might make me do to her.

You are his weakness, Xander’s words echoed through my skull.

“Get out of here. Go!” I shouted. This time my voice cracked, and I hoped she understood it was because I was barely hanging on to my humanity, barely hanging on to who I was and able to fight against what was happening in my head.

“Look at her, standing there… willing to die for you,” Xander said, a smugness to his tone I loathed. “And look at you, already about to crumble. Isn’t it pathetic? How easily you bend to my will.”

I wanted to end him where he stood.

As though he knew what I was thinking, his grip on my mind tightened and even more pain blasted through me. Through it, I noticed when Rachel moved to stand in front of me.

Rachel was trying to shield me.

She stood in front of me—small and fragile—facing down a fucking monster. This wasn’t how this situation was supposed to go, though. I was supposed to protect her and keep her safe. Not the other way around. My bobcat snarled. He was as desperate as I was to stop this madness.

Xander’s smirk deepened as though he was amused by her protective stance.

“Nice try,” he sneered at her, mocking her gesture.

In the next instant, pure anguish blistered through me. I couldn’t fight against the shift he was forcing any more. A groan escaped me and I buckled over.

Rachel glanced back at me. Our eyes locked again, but this time I couldn’t tell her to run. I couldn’t speak. The force of the shift was too strong.

Giving way to my bobcat had always felt natural, fluid, blissful even, but now? Now it was like my body was being torn apart piece by piece and every nerve had been set on fire. My bobcat roared, pushing against my skin. He didn’t want to do this. Not like this, and not with Rachel here. Even so, his claws unsheathed and his fur sprouted across my skin.

The pain wasn’t the worst part of this situation, though. My bobcat and I both knew as much. It was fear. The fear that neither of us could stop what was happening and that as a resultwe’d hurt Rachel because we already knew that’s what Xander—Lucius—wanted.

When Rachel’s voice pierced through the agonizing fog clouding my head, her desperate plea cut right to my core.

“Please, just stop this. You’re hurting him!” she cried, her voice raw with emotion.

Xander laughed. It was a cold, cruel sound that made my blood run cold because it sounded exactly like Lucius’s laugh.

Exactly.

And then my bobcat fully took over. My vision sharpened and everything around me became tinged with the primal focus of a predator. I was no longer Ellis—the man. I was my bobcat—a beast—and one under Xander’s command.

My bobcat snarled; his attention focused on Rachel. His claws dug into the earth, and I felt every fiber of him wanting to lunge toward her. Even so, there was still a flicker of consciousness inside him, screaming for control and just as desperate as I was not to hurt her. She stood in front of my bobcat, frozen in fear.

“Ellis, don’t,” she whispered, her voice trembling in a way that tore at the edges of my heart.

I never wanted her to fear me—never. Xander had done this, and once I was free from his grip again, I’d make him pay. Dearly.

“End her,” Xander ordered, his words hitting me like a whip cracking through my bobcat’s skull.

He responded instantly, the primal urge to obey surging through his mind, overpowering everything else. I tried to rein him in, to fight him and Xander’s control—he tried too, I felt him—but his body was no longer his own. The instinct to harm her, to see Xander’s twisted order through, clawed at my bobcat. He snarled, ready to strike, and I knew there were only secondsbefore both of us lost this battle entirely and did something we’d never come back from.

“End her now,” Xander pressed harder.

“Don’t make him do this,” Rachel insisted, her eyes still locked on my bobcat even though she was speaking to Xander.

“You think your pleas matter?” He laughed. “Soon, you’ll be nothing but a memory.”

Something shifted in Rachel’s eyes. She no longer looked scared. Instead, she looked determined—fierce, even.

“I won’t let you force him to hurt me!” she shouted. “Get away from him—get away from here!” Her hand lifted in a sharp, almost dismissive gesture—and that’s when Xander went soaring backward.

His body sailed through the air, crashing into nearby trees. My bobcat blinked, disoriented, as Xander’s hold on his mind slipped enough for us to gain control again. Shifter magic pulsed through the air as Xander released his raven. The bird called wildly as its wings flapped in a panicked frenzy, and then he was gone—disappearing through the trees.