While the man who’d kept Ramsey in a cage and butchered her wings turned out his pockets, my gaze locked on the guard in the observation tower to my left. He carried his rifle on his shoulder as he paced back and forth, and his gaze had been scanning the yard while the prisoners had their allotted time outside. But as they filed through the door, his attention was focused on the group.
More than half the men were already inside. My window of opportunity was closing, so I lunged forward, closing the remaining distance between the fence and me in a few seconds. Then I pushed off my hind legs and leaped through the air, sailing over the electric wires with a few inches of clearance before landing. My muscles bunched as I powered forward.
The guard spotted me, and his head jerked in shock. I took advantage of his stunned disbelief and went for my prey’s throat. As much as I would have loved to make his death a slow one, I didn’t have time for the torture he deserved for his crimes. Instead, I slashed at his chest with my claws and sank my teeth into his neck with a bone-crushing bite. Ripping through his jugular vein and carotid artery, I felt the blood spurt from his neck. They were both completely severed, and his limp form dropped to the ground when I released my hold on his neck.
He was already unconscious when I bounded away from him toward the opposite side of the fence. The wounds were too severe for him to have any chance of survival, no matter how quickly help arrived. He would bleed out before anyone had the chance to help him.
Ramsey’s enemy had paid for her suffering with his life. He would be leaving the prison in a pine box instead of with his freedom after a ridiculously short sentence of only six months. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. I savored the coppery taste of his blood as I raced across the yard and leaped over the fence, reaching the safety of the woods before the guards realized what had happened.
This would be a mystery the human authorities would never solve. An animal attack that would spark rumors of a beast living in the nearby wilderness…land claimed by the local pack. I took comfort in the fact that the alpha and his wolves would no longer be able to run free. Not when people would be drawn to the forest to hunt for the beast for many years to come. It was a small price for him to pay for his prejudice against loners.
1
Thora
I normally enjoyed talking with my parents on the phone, but my mom was laying the guilt trip on me extra thick today.
“But if you were still in Chicago, we could celebrate with you.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t like to think about my baby girl being all alone on her birthday.”
I was a grown woman with a career and my own home, but my mom treated me as though I was still a teenager whenever she didn’t get her way. The blame for her self-absorption rested squarely on my dad’s shoulders. He always gave her whatever she wanted and pushed me to do the same.
“I came up for my birthday last year,” I reminded her.
“But not for Thanksgiving.”
She was never going to let me forget about that perceived slight, but it was a small price to pay for spending the holiday with Peppa and her growing family. Although we’d made a feast fit for kings, it had been the most relaxing Thanksgiving I had ever experienced. Mainly due to the fact that I didn’t have my mom looming over my shoulder, trying to tell me that her method of cooking the turkey was better than mine. Even though I was a chef who specialized in the preparation of roasted and braised meat.
“I had to work the day before and the day after. If I’d come up for the holiday, I would’ve only been able to spend half the day with you and Dad before I needed to turn around and head back to Timber Ridge.”
She sniffed at my explanation—one I’d given her many, many times already. “If you’d stayed at Castagna like I told you to do, spending the holidays with your father and I wouldn’t be a problem.”
None of my friends or family had understood why I’d left one of the very few restaurants in the world that had earned three Michelin stars for a job at a start-up in a small town almost two years ago. No matter how much I tried to explain why I was following my former sous chef—who’d only had the position for six months before she resigned—they just didn’t get it. Peppa had protected the other female chefs of the misogyny in the kitchen as much as she could, but there had only been so much that she could do.