PRETTY LETHAL

Silence followed as his gaze traveled slowly over me from head to toe before returning to my face again, deliberate and insulting.

“Why are you here?” he finally asked.

A faint smile brushed my lips before disappearing. “Have you forgotten already? You sent for me.”

His eyes flicked briefly toward the men near the entrance before settling back on me again. He slipped a cigarette between his lips, inhaled once, then exhaled the smoke directly toward me.

“You are in the wrong place...”

“Careful,” I cut in softly, tilting my head slightly. “You may not survive another interruption.”

The room fell silent again, the tension thick and oppressive, until Silas finally laughed. It started low, but his men quickly joined him.

“Tell me,” he said mockingly, gesturing toward me with the cigarette between his fingers, “is this thing a man or a woman?”

The laughter barely lasted more than two seconds before blood exploded across the room.

My men moved first, their claws tearing through the throats of the guards standing at the corners. One collapsed instantly, choking on his own blood while the other stumbled backward, clutching uselessly at shredded flesh, gargled noises spilling from his mouth.

The man behind Silas lunged toward me with a snarl, but he never made it close enough to touch me. One of my men intercepted him halfway and drove sharp claws directly into his eyes.

His scream ripped through the room like a man thrown into hell.

Blood streamed down his face as he staggered blindly, clawing at empty sockets before another brutal strike silenced him forever, his body crashing lifelessly onto the floor.

Silence settled over the room as the smell of blood spread heavily through the air around the scattered bodies, yet Silas remained unnervingly calm in the middle of the carnage. His gaze moved slowly across the corpses before returning to me again, and the faint irritation lingering in his expression made the slaughter around him feel almost insignificant.

My men stepped back toward the entrance again while I remained exactly where I stood beneath Silas’s stare, neither of us looking away as tension thickened sharply through the room. Then Silas rose slowly to his feet, and the atmosphere shifted with him as a low rasping sound echoed through the silence and something beneath his skin began to move.

Sharp ridges spread along his neck and arms like jagged armor while his fingers lengthened unnaturally, bones cracking softly as his posture straightened into something far less human. His eyes darkened into a muted amber ringed with black while sharpened teeth flashed faintly behind his lips, and as the transformation settled over him completely, only one thought crossed my mind.

“The heir of House Serakith,” I breathed, eyes widening as dark markings spread beneath his skin.

Almost instantly, the wolf inside me reacted violently as the shift rolled through my body with brutal precision, muscles tightening beneath my skin while dark fur spread slowly across my arms and shoulders. My claws extended from my fingertips while my senses sharpened violently until every heartbeat inside the room became painfully clear.

We moved at the same time, the distance between us collapsing instantly as we met mid-stride, the impact jolting through both of us while my claws tore across his side and his ridged arm dragged across my shoulder, pain following immediately after contact as neither of us gave ground and we broke apart for only a fraction of a second before the space tightened again.