Savage Read Free Page B

everything. Katelyn had to find a way out of this, make her way back home so she could see him again. She had to tell him how she felt about him, even if it was the last thing she did.
    Cordelia pressed her fingertips against the bridge of her nose, clearly trying to pull herself together. Katelyn — whose own father had been killed when she was only twelve years old, her mother dying more recently in a fire — knew from those experiences every emotion her friend was going through as she tried to grasp the terrible truth that her father was dead. Grief, pain, anger, guilt. They were all mixed up in an insane bundle that gnawed at you. It would take Cordelia days, weeks, to sort out all the emotions and to feel like she wasn’t moving through some kind of hazy nightmare.
    But they didn’t have days or weeks. Katelyn needed Cordelia to be on her game right now so that they had a hope of surviving the next few minutes.
    “Do you think we lost him?” she finally whispered.
    “I don’t know. I hope so,” Cordelia whispered back, caution in her voice. “We have to get out of here.”
    Something warm covered in fur fell on top of Katelyn and she let out a shriek. Panic rocketed through her, followed by blinding pain.
    She could hear Cordelia calling her name, but she couldn’t answer, not with her teeth lengthening and her face elongating. Her vision seemed to telescope and her other senses went into overdrive.
    I’m changing, I’m turning into a wolf.
    Her nails scrabbled for a hold on the bark, gouging trenches as the bones in her thumb broke and her hands began to reshape themselves into paws.
    Paws that could rip into the hide of a deer and dismember it. Paws that could churn up the earth as they carried her along. Paws that were absolutely useless to her up in a tree.
    She started to tumble sideways but caught herself with a yelp. She was slipping, falling.
    And then she finally heard what Cordelia was saying.
    “—raccoon! We’re safe. It was just a raccoon. Please don’t change, just calm down, deep breaths.”
    A raccoon. What had fallen on top of her wasn’t a wolf or a Hellhound. And with that knowledge planted firmly in her brain she felt herself regaining control. Her thumbs broke once more, and she yowled with agony but gratefully got a firm grip on the branch again.
    And then her vision returned to normal and she was staring at an angry Cordelia.
    “You can change without the full moon and you didn’t even tell me?”
    “I-I can’t. It starts to happen sometimes when I get freaked out, but I can’t control it,” Katelyn said.
    Cordelia frowned, skeptical. “How is this even possible? You’re way too young, both as a wolf and as a person, to be able to change without the moon.”
    “You’re asking the wrong person. If I knew, I’d tell you,” Katelyn insisted. “It’s just one more thing I have to try and guard against.”
    Cordelia’s face was white. “Did my father know? Is that why he brought you here?”
    “No one knows. Except you.”
    An irrational desire to beg Cordelia not to be mad at her caught hold, but she held her tongue as she thought about how Cordelia had constantly apologized for things that weren’t her fault and how it irritated Katelyn. It was a wolf’s desire to be submissive, to want its place in the pack to be secure.
    But Katelyn was more than a wolf and she didn’t have to do as she was told. Not with Cordelia.
    Not with anyone , she corrected herself. And with Lee Fenner dead, she realized that there was no one left in the Fenner pack whom she truly feared.
    Cordelia turned her head and Katelyn twisted to follow her gaze through the smoke. The night sky was a corona of orange embers and scarlet flares.
    “Look. A truck,” Cordelia muttered.
    She was right. It was Justin’s Ford, barreling through the woods, heading, presumably, for the road out of the swamp.
    But there was something wrong. Now, above the steadily increasing whine of the motor, Katelyn