Page 54 of Moon Claimed

A cold dread settled over me, and I just knew.

It was happening.

Wrenching at the wheel, I barrelled down the road.

Past the heat detector.

Past the cameras and frequency generators.

Out of tribe territory.

Away.

I had to get away.

11

I screamed as my leg bowed under the brutal and invisible force.

Snap.

Thigh bone.

My toes followed suit in a wave of snaps that stole sanity from me.

My vision ebbed. This had happened before. The breaking and the blacking out. Many times. One of the other times, twilight was here. Now, it was pitch-black. No birds sang. Maybe I just couldn’t hear them over the weak shrieks ripping from my raw throat.

Time had passed and I couldn’t remember being here before.

Tears fell from my scratchy eyes as I panted, noting the pressure of fangs either side of my chin.

Was it still my chin?

I felt like paper mâché. Like pulp. Like someone had added water to me and let a toddler do their worst.

My body was broken andstillbreaking.

Arching, my feet slid through the sandy shore of Lake Thana. My cry turned guttural and deep, animalistic. Breaths chuffed from a chest that didn’t feel the same shape.

As my ribs popped and squelched again, I couldn’t care.

This had to end and take me with it.

The invisible force flung my thighs to my chest, and I shrieked again as my knee reversed in a splitting of ligament and bone.

I tried to move my limbs. It worked. A little.

A whining filled my chest as I was thrown forward, but I didn’t sprawl in the sand. My lower body supported me.

In horror, I stared at my human hands bunched in the sand, then to the hairy legs folded beneath me.

I was half wolf.

More than half.

Coarse hair covered my naked, bleeding, pulpy torso, spreading down my arms. I stopped breathing as my fingers shattered and pulsed, reforming into paws.

Mostly wolf, I sank into lying. But long, auburn hair waved in my peripherals. Was my face still human?