“Don’t worry, baby—I’m hiding everything with my tail as much as possible—just pretend I’m still in you.”
The surprise of what I heard nearly drove the fear out of my mind—it was his voice! But he had told me he wouldn’t be able to talk in his fur form. Then I realized that I hadn’t heard the voice with my ears—Jake had somehow spoken inside my head. Then I heard him again.
“Moan some more—arch your back and put on a show,” he directed me. “Tainer is watching—hopefully he’ll forget he’s supposed to be aiming at us!”
“Jake! Oh, please!” I moaned loudly. I moved under him, feeling the thick, dense fur rub along my spine as the enormous shaft rubbed against my pussy. If he put that thing inside me now, he would really hurt me—rip me apart—I knew it!
“Put the knot in her!” Sorenson was demanding, oblivious to my pain. “You must knot her in order to fill her womb with life—in order to carry on the line of the First Wolf! The Royal Omega must conceive by the Alpha Heir tonight!”
“Yeah—knot ‘er good!” Tainer exclaimed excitedly. He took a step forward—presumably to get a better look—and I saw the gun barrel drift down and to the side.
Jake must have seen too because I heard him say, “NOW!” in my head.
I felt him crouching for a leap and I collapsed on the bed, huddling into myself, trying to make myself small.
It was just as well that I went down because Jake jumped over me—a huge, dark, shaggy shape in the moonlight. I saw the silvery light shining on a pair of jaws with teeth like daggers and then the gun went off with a deafening bang and a flash of light that blinded me.
I lay there, stunned, my ears ringing and the brightness of the gunshot still clouding my vision. Where was Jake? Had he been shot? What was happening?
Then my hearing came back and I blinked, trying to clear my vision.
“Stop him! Shoot him!” Sorenson was shouting. “Shift, damn you, Tainer—Shift or he’ll kill you! He’ll kill us all!”
But it was too late for the big hillbilly. I watched in numb silence as the huge, dark shape—a wolf as big as a horse—sank its teeth into his grizzled throat. He was trying to Shift—fur was starting to cover his body. Before he could completely transform, however, Jake’s Wolf ripped out his throat in a bloody spray of droplets that were black in the moonlight.
I gasped and huddled lower in the bed. Oh God, it was like a nightmare! What was I going to do?
Then someone was grabbing me by the hair.
“Professor, what are you doing?” I heard Ophelia gasp. “He’ll kill you—he just killed Tainer, oh my God!”
“Come here and help me—I’m taking the Royal Omega hostage!” Sorenson shouted at her. “He won’t dare to touch us as long as we have her!”
He yanked harder on my hair and I gasped and kicked out at him.
“Let me go! Let me go!” I screamed.
Jake’s Wolf must have heard me screaming. He finished with Tainer, dropping the limp form on the floor with a thud, and turned his head towards me and Sorenson and Ophelia. His lips curled back from bloody fangs when he saw what was going on and his eyes glowed a pale gold. A low growl was rising in his shaggy throat. It rolled from his dripping muzzle like ominous thunder.
“Here—take her,” I heard Sorenson say to Ophelia. They were both behind me, so I couldn’t see them—I only felt them grabbing my hair. “I have to Shift!”
“There’s no way you can take on a Royal!” Ophelia objected. “His Wolf is twice the size of yours, Professor!”
Sorenson didn’t answer. The next time I saw him, he was in his fur form too. He leaped around to the front of the bed, guarding me like some kind of a prize as he growled at Jake.
But, as Ophelia had pointed out, Sorenson’s Wolf was barely half the size of Jake’s. It was like a Pomeranian challenging a Pit bull. He must be crazy, I thought, to take on someone so much bigger than him!
Jake gave him a single warning growl and then charged. I saw him catch the smaller Wolf by the throat and Sorenson let out a garbled howl.
“Bastard!” I heard Jake thinking. “Kidnapping fuck! How dare you hurt her? How dare you threaten the woman I love? How dare you threaten my Fated Mate?”
I couldn’t hear any of what—if anything—Sorenson was saying or thinking in his Wolf form so I assumed that the strange mental connection only existed between me and Jake.
I turned my head, unable to watch, as the big black Wolf’s jaws closed hard over the throat of the other animal. There was a sickening crunch and Sorenson’s Wolf went limp, its final whine cut off abruptly.