<b>Chapter </b><b>95 </b>


    JESSICA


    I don’t remember what happened.


    n


    One second, I’m screaming Grayson’s name because Riot is going to kill him. The next is pain. Blinding, full–body, all–consuming pain. Like something sacred is trying to crawl its way out of me and it’s using fire to do it.


    My legs buckle.


    My spine jerks backward so violently it knocks the air out of me. My ribs grind against themselves. Bone shifts under skin, and I can’t tell where I end or begin. The grass digs into my knees. I can’t breathe. Can’t see. There’s too much light–pale, silver, wrong light, like the moon is bleeding through my skin.


    It fucking hurts.


    A scream tears from my throat, but it splits halfway, cracking into something lower. A growl? A howl? A sound I’ve never made before, never should be able to make.


    My fingers w into the earth, scraping until I hit rock. I need something to hold onto. Something to keep me from splitting open entirely. But the shift keepsing. Hot and sharp and unrelenting.


    Every nerve is on fire.


    Every bone feels like it’s breaking.


    Over and over and over.


    My shoulder dislocates. Snaps forward. Reforms.


    I feel it. All of it.


    1 lurch forward and vomit onto the ground, bile and blood and saliva dripping from my mouth. My vision blurs. My hands-


    They’re not hands anymore.


    They’re elongating. Fingers ttening. Nails tearing through skin like ws desperate to be free.


    1 watch it happen. Scream through it.


    1feel my jaw wrench sideways and push forward, bones sliding into a snout, teeth stabbing through gum. My whole face is splitting. I hear it. Hear the tendons tearing. The cartge cracking.


    It’s disgusting Beautiful Sacred Mine.


    I cough and spit and choke on my own breath, and still feel the moon digging <b>deeper</b>. Like it’s in my blood now, branding me from


    the inside out.


    Grayson,


    His name screams through my head like a siren, and suddenly there’s rity through the fog


    I drop to all fours, bones still tearing, flesh still splitting, but I move through it now. I need to save him.


    10:05 Sun, 24 Aug


    I need to get to him.


    *


    68%


    Riot is still standing there, towering over Grayson, hand raised like he owns this, like he has the right to touch what’s mine. His boot lifts–he’s going to crush him.


    No.


    No.


    My vision sharpens in a blink. His form goes from blur to target. I lunge.


    Fast. Violent. Not human anymore.


    The ground shatters beneath me as I spring forward, grass ripping under my ws. My jaw splits wider, fangs bared, ears ttened back. The wind howls past me as I cut through it–pure momentum, rage and instinct fused into a single, merciless thing.


    He turns toote.


    I m into him with everything I’ve got–shoulder to ribs, teeth to skin. He flies back, crashing into the dirt with a wet crack. I hear


    him choke, hear the wind leave him. Good. He deserves worse.


    I stand over him, panting, snarling, froth and blood dripping from my mouth. He looks up at me–eyes wide, hand trembling.


    Not so sure of himself now, is he?


    I bare my teeth. And this time, I don’t hold back the growl. This time, I let it shake the ground.


    He touched my mate.


    He won’t get a second chance.


    He rolls at thest second, my ws raking the ground where his face was. The earth splits under the weight of my strike. Dirt sprays in all directions. He scrambles to his feet, swaying, coughing–bleeding.


    Good.


    His shoulder’s hanging low<i>. </i>Dislocated. I can smell it–copper, bone, rot. He still tries to square up like that matters.


    “You think you scare me?” he spits, staggering backward.


    I snarl in response, jaws snapping loud enough to make his hand flinch. My body’s still pulsing, every limb surging with that white- hot moonfire tearing through my nerves like it’s trying to finish what it started. But I’m not waiting for the pain to pass.


    I’m using it.


    Riot charges.


    Heavy steps. Human rage. One arm dragging, the other swinging wide with a de he must’ve pulled from somewhere.


    I duck low. Let the swing pass overhead/The air slices around me with a metallic whistle. I twist, dig my ws into his thigh–deep -ripping through fabric and flesh.


    He screams.


    10:05 Sun, 24 Aug 0


    Not loud enough.


    68%


    <b>+38</b>)


    I m my full weight into his ribs again. He copses sideways, wheezing. My bodynds on him, forelegs pinning his chest, ws grinding into the earth beside his throat. My breath fogs in the space between us. Close. Close enough to smell the fear now coating his skin.


    I lean in.


    And I growl.


    Deep. Guttural. Shaking every inch of him. I want him to feel it in his spine.


    He spits in my face.


    Mistake.


    I snap my head down–my fangs graze his cheek, slicing clean along the bone. Not deep enough to kill. Not yet. But he’ll remember <ol><li>it. If I let him live. </li></ol>


    He bucks under me, wild and desperate, elbowing upward with everything he’s got left. The de catches my shoulder.


    White–hot sting.


    I jerk back instinctively, off bnce, and he shoves–hard–throwing his weight into it.


    I hit the ground on my side, dazed for half a second, air knocked out of my lungs. I see stars. I taste blood.


    But I don’t stop.


    1 roll, get a paw under me, then another, thenunch.


    He’s trying to run now. Limping, favoring that bleeding leg, shoulder dangling, de dragging through the dirt behind him.


    Pathetic.


    I sprint–feral, silent, deadly.


    I’m on him in seconds.


    My jaws mp down on his calf, crushing tendon. He drops. Screams again.


    I don’t let go. I pull Hard. He spins onto his back, wing at the ground, dragging himself backward like that’ll help.


    “Jessica!”


    “Jessica–stop<i>!</i>”


    <b>No. </b>


    He hurt Grayson. He threatened what’s pine. He doesn’t get to walk away. He doesn’t get to breathe.


    I bare my teeth, hot breath steaming again Riot’s skin, my ws tocking down over his chest like iron. One second more. One swipe and it’s over. My muscles coil, ready to end this.


    10:05


    Sun, 24 Aug


    68%


    “Look at me!”


    Grayson’s voice is closer now–hoarse, panicked, breaking.


    My ear twitches.


    No. Don’t. Don’t turn. Don’t stop. Finish it.


    “Jess, please.”


    His voice drops. Softer now. Like an open wound.


    And it slices through me harder than any de.


    I blink.


    And suddenly I see my ws sunk into flesh, his blood soaking into the dirt, pooling under my paws. Riot’s body trembling, too weak to even scream now. His face isn’t even a face anymore–it’s pulp and blood and fear. His chest rises in ragged jerks, shallow<i>, </i>erratic.


    I did that.


    I recoil–stumbling back on all fours, fur bristling, chest heaving.


    Riot doesn’t move.


    Grayson’s hand appears in my periphery.


    No. No. No.


    I snap my head toward him, eyes wild.


    “Jess… it’s okay. I’m here.”


    I pant. My whole body trembles–like the rage is still running its ws down my spine, unwilling to let go. My gums are wet with someone else’s blood. My throat’s raw from snarling. I don’t know if I can stop. I don’t know if I want to.


    He takes a step closer.


    “Come back to me.”


    And that–that is what breaks it.


    I copse onto my side, every muscle going loose at once. My ribs feel like they’re caving in. My skin is melting, folding, tearing, reshaping. The bones crack back into ce with sickening pops. My screamse out twisted, choked, barely human.


    The silver light finally fades.


    And I’m just Jessica again.


    Naked. Bleeding, Shaking Curled into the dirt, staring at the body I almost left cold.


    Grayson drops beside me, hands shaking as he reaches for my face.


    10:05 Sun, 24 Aug


    “I got you,” he breathes, voice wrecked. “I got you.”


    But he’s wrong.


    Because I’m not sure I have me anymore.