Thirty Three

My eyes snapped open, glowing blue.

But it wasn't me looking through them anymore.

"Her eyes—" Nathan's voice came from somewhere to my right. I saw Marcus wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth as Nathan moved back toward me slowly and carefully, like he knew something wasn't right but still needed to see it up close.

He took every precaution as he approached, his eyes locked on my face with an intensity I had never seen from him before — not fear, but concentration. Deep, focused, almost reverent concentration.

"Do werewolves have blue eyes?" Marcus asked from behind him, his voice dropping low, almost to a whisper. He had one hand pressed to his ribs where the wall had caught him — I could see the wince he was swallowing down — but his eyes hadn't left me either.

He wiped the blood from the corner of his lip with the back of his hand and stared. "How are her eyes blue? That's not possible. None of the bloodlines I know of produce—"

"Apparently one does," Nathan said quietly, and something in his voice said he knew far more than he was choosing to finish out loud.

Meanwhile, just seconds ago I had been chained down and pinned there, desperately bleeding and barely holding on — and then the next second I was forcefully shoved backward inside my own mind like something had grabbed me by the collar and yanked me clean out of the driver's seat.

I was still present. Still aware of everything happening around me, watching it all through my own eyes like a passenger pressed against a window with no access to the wheel. But I had absolutely zero control over any of it.

My wolf had completely taken over my body.

I was in a partial werewolf transformation — my fangs fully out for the first time, my claws long and sharp at the ends of fingers that weren't responding to me — and under any other circumstances that would have been something worth celebrating. Twenty two years of being called wolfless and here it was, finally, actually happening.

But it didn't feel like a celebration. Not even close.

I tried pushing forward and immediately understood the problem.

I had no control. None at all.

*Wait — what — I can't move. Wolf, give me back my body—*

She didn't acknowledge me. Didn't spare a single second's attention for the girl she had just evicted from her own body. She simply looked through my eyes at the room around her and quietly decided what she thought of it.

From what I could tell, she was not impressed.

*Bloody hell. What the actual — this is MY body. Can you hear me? I need it back—*

What came after was silence. Absolute and complete silence.

She gave no reply, no reaction, nothing.

*Hello?!* I screamed inside my own head, throwing everything at the wall between me and control and watching it bounce straight back.

She continued existing in my space like I was background noise. Like my panic and my screaming and my desperate clawing for control was just weather she was patiently waiting out.

That was somehow worse than if she'd fought back. At least if she'd fought me I would have existed enough to be worth fighting.

But I stood no chance. She had used the fact that I was weak and already dying to take over completely, slipping through the cracks my body had left wide open. My wolf had overpowered me without breaking a sweat.

The only mercy was that the dying feeling had gone. The burning, the pain, the venom pulling me under — all of it had stepped back the moment she stepped forward. Like it didn't dare.

And then her attention dropped down to the silver chain restrain burning her skin on her hands.

And she responded with a growl and made her move.