Black Wolf's Revenge by Tera Shanley Page B

Instead, she’d refused help, refused to listen to the pack and Grey when they’d told her this could happen. Her stubbornness had killed her.
    Lana. Grey. She fought the tears. She’d never see them again. She would be gone. Grey was gone. Who would protect her baby now? Had he even found Lana? Who was taking care of her? Who was feeding her and bathing her and tucking her in at night? A quiet sob threatened to escape and she bit her lip against it until she tasted iron.
    Stop it. If Grey were here, he’d tell her to fight. Change and fight. She’d trained for so long for something. She’d shoved herself through years of fight training and weapons training, for Christ’s sake, and what for? It had to be for this moment. She just needed to remember what she’d learned when she was younger and end this quickly.
    She had to keep her mind from collapsing into a whimpering weak thing, threatening to give up. She couldn’t give up. She hadn’t even attempted escape yet. She padded carefully to the farthest corner away from the door, removed her shirt, and lay down. The tingling started in her back.
    She needed a plan. She was still able to Change, so she’d simply have to kill them. Kill them . She hung on those two words, testing them out in her mind. She had never killed anyone before. Could she do it when it came down to looking in a man’s eyes and ending his life? Her wolf was more submissive than the wolf that filled Grey’s head. Murder and mayhem weren’t the first thoughts to come to her mind in any situation. She did have motivation on her side, however. Lana needed her.
    They’d kidnapped her and taken her baby. One of them had drugged her and left her in a puddle of piss, and they’d do it again. Heat crept up the back of her neck and she welcomed the anger.
    Rage was a much more empowering emotion than fear. Her Change began and pain ripped through her in waves. No matter what, she wouldn’t whimper or make any pained noise that would draw the attention of the man behind the door. She would need the element of surprise if she was to be successful in her hunt. The Change took much too long but the door remained closed. Her fear of her capturers seeing her like that, mid-Change and defenseless, kept her silent.
    When it was finally over, she lay there panting and unable to move. She got up when she was able, quiet as a wolf, and trotted over, waiting behind the hinges of the door. Her nails didn’t make a clicking noise on the concrete. Instead, the layer of grime padded the noise to silence. She sat and waited.
    The anticipation was torture. Every second seemed like a minute, and every minute like an hour. When the lock turned, she was wound so tightly she was frozen in place for an important split second. The door opened and the man hesitated, swiveling his head in search of her. He stalked farther into the room and pulled the string on the ancient light bulb, illuminating the room with a dingy light. She could better reach him there. He turned his head in her direction when it was the only place left to check.
    She lunged, missed his neck but landed her teeth into his shoulder, biting down and using her legs against his body to tear into him. Something touched her rib cage and her body went rigid as pain seared through her, and she landed like a sack of flour onto the concrete floor below the man. He yelled out an expletive and held his shoulder with one hand like such a futile gesture would staunch such abundant bleeding. In his other hand, he held a small black box with a blue electric current visible at one end. Before she recovered, he kicked her in the ribs and tasered her again.
    “Bitch!” he screamed. “You ripped half of my shoulder off. I should kill you for that.” He leaned down toward her but another voice interrupted.
    “You’ll do no such thing. She’s mine.” a blond man growled from the doorway.
    The dark haired man backed off and handed the man in the doorway the taser.