The Biting Cold: High School Bites Book 2, page 8
“Nope. It’s rarely done but still allowed.”
“Thank you, Freddy. I’ll definitely consider your advice,” I said and I’d meant it. Freddy gave me a friendly nod before heading out the front door and I was alone with my thoughts once more. I sat on the couch in the living room and took a deep breath. The only sounds in the house came from the grandfather clock across from me. The steady click sounded so much louder in the silence but I had to admit that it was nice. The constant beat seemed to somehow calm my nerves and it reminded me much of a metronome. I leaned back further into the couch cushions and closed my eyes, letting the rhythm be the only thing in the world that I was focusing on. After a minute or two, the sound began to echo. I was probably falling asleep when I launched myself into a standing position at the sound of the front door opening. Kodi stood there with his hands held in front of him in mock defense.
“It’s just me. Sorry if I startled you,” he said as he came forward and offered me a hug, which I gladly took. He planted a kiss to the top of my head and drew back. “They’re ready to begin. Are you?” he asked and he didn’t try to mask his concern.
“Yeah,” I said, surprising even myself. “I think I am.” I have him a reassuring smile before hooking my arm through his. He led me toward the door and I closed it behind us.
“Since you skipped dinner I grabbed some steaks from Oscar and set them aside. You will need them to restore your strength or heal,” he said the last word hesitantly.
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “Thank you,” I added as we continued to walk, silent the rest of the way.
Once we reached the edge of the clearing I held both of
Kodi’s hands in mine and looked into his face. It hit me that Vivian wasn’t like me. She probably wanted me dead, if last night was any indication. If she was as ruthless and strong as she put herself out to be, this could very well be the last time that I got to look at this face. I used that moment to cherish it. Because he was staring as intently at me as I was at him, I allowed my feelings to show on my face. He placed a hand gently behind my head and drew me in for a sweet kiss.
“Let’s get you through this. We have a long night ahead of us and all I’m going to want to do is crawl into bed with my girlfriend,” he gave one last peck to my temple and retook my hand in his before stepping further into the clearing. Several heads were already turned in our direction and I searched for Vivian. It didn’t take me long to find her. There was a large circle void of people and it was around the same area Kodi’s Challenge fight had taken place last month. Vivian stood in the center wearing nothing but a black bra and panties set. It was fairly obvious that she planned to shift. I saw Jack speaking intensely to Freddy and Zeke and he looked up to motion me over. The closer I got, the clearer the conversation became.
“I don’t care if you think she’s incapable of being a floozy. I’m just telling you what I saw and I want a new Ringer,” I heard Zeke say snidely.
“Zeke, take care to remember that you’re speaking inappropriately about a member of my family,” Jack said tightly and the warning was clear. That also meant that I was the “floozy” in question.
“So what am I being accused of now?” I asked as I approached. Freddy answered before Jack could.
“Pretty Boy over here saw me leaving your house and thinks we had to be either hooking up or planning to cheat,” Freddy said.
His anger appeared to make the top of his cheeks pink.
“Zeke wants a new Ringer,” Jack said, getting to the point. Freddy began to call Zeke a very unfriendly name in protest when I held up to stop him.
“This is a waste of time. Zeke, the fact that yesterday you said a Ringer wasn’t even necessary and now you go out of your way to make up some crap about me and Freddy shows just how right everyone was about you. You’re an asshole. Lucky for you, I don’t care. So you go ahead and pick whichever Ringer you want so this fight can be over and you can get the hell off of my mountain,” with that, I took a well-needed deep breath and walked away.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were scared,” Zeke called after me.
“Every time you open your mouth, I realize that you don’t know any better,” I responded without turning or slowing down. “Dude, you want some ointment for all those burns?” I heard Alex say to Zeke and I couldn’t help but imagine that Alex must have been some kind of class clown back in high school.
I stopped at the edge of the circle and squeezed Kodi’s hand one last time before meeting Vivian in the center.
“Ready to lose? No one to break us apart to save you this time,” she stated smugly, hands on her narrow hips. Biting back any negative retort before it had a chance to surface, I realized that asking Vivian nicely to fight as humans wasn’t going to work. I’d have to goad her into it. Intelligence didn’t seem to be one of this woman’s strong suits so I stood a pretty good chance of success.
“Are you so sure that you can beat me?” I asked, and was sure to put on a cocky expression.
Vivian laughed, “Do wolves eat rabbits?” she asked with a snap of her teeth.
“Okay. Let’s make this interesting then. The last thing I want is another mouthful of one of your body parts. We fight in human form and have a good old-fashioned girl fight.” She didn’t look convinced so I added, “Unless of course you can only handle yourself on four legs.” The look she gave me could have cooled fire.
“I’ll play your little game. I should warn you though, the only severed body parts are going to be yours, but don’t worry. They’ll stop bleeding after you’re dead,” her words chilled me to the bone. Suddenly my hope that we would both walk away seemed a little more delusional. I knew she wanted to hurt me but kill me? I had definitely underestimated this woman’s irrational hatred for me. The realization that I may have to kill someone tonight in order to live, based on whether or not I could make this wolf submit…hit me. Turning my head to Jack I gave him a subtle nod to let him know that we were ready.
Jack made the announcement and I was surprised when he named Moki as the Ringer. I wasn’t sure how that came about because regardless of what I’d said, the expression on Zeke’s face made it clear that he had not chosen the Ringer himself. I should have been paying attention to Vivian instead because out of nowhere I was sucker-punched as I for some reason had been under the impression that there was some type of word or motion that would come from someone signaling the start of the fight. I guess I was wrong, I expertly ascertained as my head snapped to the side with the force. Sucker punch or not, there was werewolf strength behind the blow so it was still a fairly hard hit. If I were human, my jaw would be very unhappy.
She came in for another hit but I was ready this time and I grabbed her wrist and held her arm away before punching her in her jaw to return the favor. Unfortunately I’d had to use my right hand to deflect the blow and my left hook was not as strong. She barely reacted but when her red-painted nails dragged across my arm, a growl escaped from my throat and I released her arm before mustering a good amount of strength to shove her away and she slid halfway across the circle. A quick look at my arm showed me four nail tracks that had already begun to bleed.
I saw her satisfied smirk as we ran toward each other. My bleeding arm seemed more of a hindrance to her rather than myself because as we traded blows, her hand continued to slip off every time she tried to grab me. Now that I was able to use my right arm to punch her, it was dealing more damage to her face and her lip was now bleeding, most likely cut against her teeth after taking a hit. My jaw was sore but I didn’t pay much mind to it. I went to land another punch to her face with the intention of breaking her nose, but she was too fast and pulled back enough to where I’d just missed her. I saw her arm rise up with her hand open and her nails extended. Not wanting to let her add to my collection of nail marks, I used my missed punch as an opportunity to bring my elbow back as fast as I could and caught her between the side of her head and her jaw.
Something snapped.
She backed away from me breathing heavily and when her eyes changed color I knew what was coming. She was shifting. I knew we were vulnerable when we shifted and I didn’t know if it would be bad form to attack in that moment so I fought the urge to run up and kick her as she dropped onto all fours. A moment later the wolf ran snarling toward me, saliva flying into multiple directions. I didn’t have time to think of a counter measure so I was pelted onto my back with a heavy thud a moment before Vivian’s jaws locked onto my left arm, which I had put up in defense. I cried out as she shook her head, tearing flesh further and my own blood dripped down into my face. There was only one thing that I could think of to do but I risked losing my arm altogether. Better my arm than my life, I decided.
Bending my right knee up I anchored my foot in the wolf’s pelvic area and kicked up as far as I could, using my arm in her mouth to guide her. Her body flew backward over my head and she landed hard on her back. Because she didn’t let go until her spine had slammed against the ground, my arm had been pulled out from my shoulder socket and twisted. I was pretty sure it also broke at the elbow. My right arm that had been raked into by her nails had just become my “good arm”. I knew I wouldn’t have time to stand up and get after her so I used the moment that she was stunned to swivel around on my butt so that my legs rested on either side of her.
I used my right hand to bunch in the scruff on the back of her neck and yanked her upward so that she was on top of me, facing the sky just as I was and put her in a headlock. I tried to wrap my legs around her middle to keep her legs from getting free but her hind legs were hard to keep trapped. Her right hind leg broke free and she turned her pelvis left and the claws on her foot began to scratch frantically at my left leg. I squeezed my arm tighter around her throat and her claws went deeper into my leg, tearing flesh once again. If I had to kill her, all I had to do was pull all the way up on her jaw to snap her neck. I really didn’t want to kill Vivian. In one final attempt to make her submit, I squeezed my arm around her throat as tight as I could while using my mangled left arm as leverage, pushing my right wrist toward my body as the crook of my arm crushed her larynx.
“Please!” I yelled through gritted teeth. “Vivian, please submit!” At that moment I heard her leg stop clawing my own. Heard, because I had lost feeling in it long ago. I could only hope that the nerves were not lost to me forever. For a moment I thought she might have died of suffocation, but when I loosened my grip on her neck, she attempted a whine, made more difficult by the damage to her throat.
“Vivian. I’m going to let you go. Please submit so that we can both go home. Whatever your problem is with me, it can’t be worth either of us dying for,” I said as quietly as I could, hoping that only she could hear. I released her slowly and used my only undamaged limb, my right leg, to push myself out from underneath her, but I didn’t try to stand. It was up to Vivian now. I expected her to move slowly but instead she jumped to her feet quickly and turned toward me. My hopes were broken and I tensed for a fight, but she surprised me. She walked slowly and coughed, causing a weird hacking sound that I’d never heard a wolf make. She came face to face with me and shocked me further when she gave a small lick to my forehead before gently laying down and resting her head on her paws.
“I believe that’s a submission!” Jack announced and I released a breath that I hadn’t known I was holding.
Ten
Everything happened all at once and suddenly I was being hauled off of the ground by multiple people that were trying to support my weight without touching any of my injuries. With my legs being held in front of me I was able to see the extent of the damage to my leg. It looked like the inward side of it had been run against a cheese grater a couple dozen times. My arm didn’t look much better. I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of my wounds, the smell of them, the pain, or the loss of blood, but all of a sudden a wave of nausea rolled throughout my gut.
“Freddy, Henry, let’s lay her on the table,” Kodi’s urgent voice called out. Table? I opened my eyes and looked at my surroundings. We were coming into the kitchen at the Barrett’s house and the dining table came into view. How did we get here so fast? Had I blacked out? The last and only other time I’d lain on this very table was when Simone had bitten me while I was still human. Werewolves heal. I healed broken ribs overnight. Was I injured more than I had realized? If I couldn’t even stay conscious then I guess it was a definite possibility.
“Kodi, I’ll be alright,” I croaked out. I didn’t sound very convincing.
“Yo, you’re girl is a beast. If I got this jacked up I’d be off in a corner crying where no one could see me,” Henry joked.
“You think we can’t see you,” Freddy quipped back. If the guys were able to joke around then I shouldn’t be in too much danger. I looked at Kodi as Freddy and Henry gently set my lower half onto the table. Kodi said nothing but lovingly lowered my back and head onto the table on top of a pillow. Where had that come from?
I shook and chills ran down my spine. I realized I was in shock. It happened the last time I was on the table as well. I was most likely not feeling the pain like I should be. For that I was thankful, if the meat that used to be my limbs was any indication. “Freddy can you go get the steaks? They’re in the fridge. Meghan. Meghan I need you to focus. Is anything broken?” Kodi finally spoke. I was pretty sure that the closest thing to a break I had was my shoulder that was out of the socket. I told him so.
“Okay, we need to get her on the floor,” he said and positioned himself to lift me back off of the table just as the smell of raw meat made me sick to my stomach again. When Kodi had said earlier he’d saved me some steaks, I had assumed he meant cooked ones.
“I’m so not eating that,” I stated, scrunching my nose up at the silver bowl and its contents. It was worse that the meat reminded me of what my left arm and leg currently resembled.
“Yes you are. You need to shift. Flesh wounds heal a little when you shift, the meat will help after that,” Kodi stated.
“Torn to shreds and she’s worried about the taste of her food. Kodi’s right, Badass. You need this,” said Freddy as he eased me onto the floor. Apparently the nickname was sticking. I’d heard worse. Giving up, I nodded and closed my eyes. I tried to shift and it didn’t work. I tried to sit up.
“Meghan, STOP.” I froze. There was so much power behind that one word that the command echoed like a tingle throughout my entire being, almost physically stopping me from disobeying the order. I looked up at Jack and realized that this was him as my Alpha. He must have never given me an actual command before with his Alpha power. I’d have remembered the feeling. I was suddenly really glad he didn’t use the tone for more mundane things, like getting me to do my laundry when I felt too lazy. Jack knelt in front of me and although he seemed to be in Alpha mode, he still had concern in his eyes. I gave a small nod, not even sure if my body would allow me to do that small gesture.
“You need to shift, Meghan,” he said gently. I began to shake my head and tell him that I couldn’t. “You can. You just need a little help. I’m going to help you, Meghan. I can give you a push, but you’re going to need to help yourself as well.” I nodded in agreement and closed my eyes again. A warm sensation washed over me and as I focused on changing and allowing my wolf to take shape under my skin, I finally felt my bones contort. I realized that warmth was power from Jack. Pack magic. Kodi had told me this was what Jack had used to try to heal me after Simone had bitten me but it had drained him because I hadn’t been a werewolf yet.
When I looked up at them next I knew there was pain in my eyes because Kodi said, “It’s okay, Meghan. I know it hurts. The wounds have already stopped bleeding.” At his words I looked down at my arm and leg, now covered with fur other than where the actual injuries were. In those areas there was only angry, red, open wounds but they looked a little smaller on my wolf form than they had as a human. Suddenly the smell of the raw meat both grossed me out and enticed me. Kodi saw me look at it and pushed the metal bowl closer to me so that I didn’t need to lean very far to eat it. All three large steaks were boneless and they were also gone in a matter of minutes.
“Good girl,” Kodi said as he stood. I’d have growled at him but I figured now wasn’t the time. This time he was able to pick me up by himself, gently wrapping his arms under my middle and gently lifting me up.
“How much time do we have?” Kodi asked his father.
“Two hours. I’ll make sure of it.” And with that we were headed upstairs. Kodi gently deposited me onto our bed.
“Try to lay on your right side. We’re going to go to sleep for two hours and then we’ll have to ride up to White Point. We’ll get you healed as much as we can in the meantime,” he explained before stripping off his shirt. It was a sight I’d never get tired of. My position made it impossible to see anything lower but I could see his motions and hear him remove his shorts before he shifted and hopped up onto the bed. Kodi hopped up into the bed and did a few turns before settling down against my back. He leaned over and licked around a couple of my wounds before heaving a deep sigh and resting his head over my neck. The warmth of his body comforted me and made my pain seem like just a heavy ache. I was asleep within minutes.
I knew right away I was dreaming. Once again, the ground was covered in snow but didn’t freeze my bare feet. I could see a little better, but that was probably because this time, I knew what to look for.
It didn’t take me long to find the cabin with the cracked window. I opened the door and the furniture was still overturned. “Lallo?” I whispered aloud. I heard scrambling in the back but I waited for him to come out on his own. “Lallo, it’s okay. You have people looking for you that care about you,” I said. Another small noise but no one came out. “Moki sent me,” I decided to try.
The door opened and the little boy emerged wearing a pair of denim shorts that looked to be too small on him. “Moki?” he asked quietly.
