His Trouble Maker

Chapter 95

JESSICA

I don’t remember what happened.

n

One second, I’m screaming Grayson’s name because Riot is going to kill him. The next is pain. Blinding, full–body, all–consuming pain. Like something sacred is trying to crawl its way out of me and it’s using fire to do it.

My legs buckle.

My spine jerks backward so violently it knocks the air out of me. My ribs grind against themselves. Bone shifts under skin, and I can’t tell where I end or begin. The grass digs into my knees. I can’t breathe. Can’t see. There’s too much light–pale, silver, wrong light, like the moon is bleeding through my skin.

It fucking hurts.

A scream tears from my throat, but it splits halfway, cracking into something lower. A growl? A howl? A sound I’ve never made before, never should be able to make.

My fingers claw into the earth, scraping until I hit rock. I need something to hold onto. Something to keep me from splitting open entirely. But the shift keeps coming. Hot and sharp and unrelenting.

Every nerve is on fire.

Every bone feels like it’s breaking.

Over and over and over.

My shoulder dislocates. Snaps forward. Reforms.

I feel it. All of it.

1 lurch forward and vomit onto the ground, bile and blood and saliva dripping from my mouth. My vision blurs. My hands-

They’re not hands anymore.

They’re elongating. Fingers flattening. Nails tearing through skin like claws desperate to be free.

1 watch it happen. Scream through it.

1feel my jaw wrench sideways and push forward, bones sliding into a snout, teeth stabbing through gum. My whole face is splitting. I hear it. Hear the tendons tearing. The cartilage cracking.

It’s disgusting Beautiful Sacred Mine.

I cough and spit and choke on my own breath, and still feel the moon digging deeper. Like it’s in my blood now, branding me from

the inside out.

Grayson,

His name screams through my head like a siren, and suddenly there’s clarity through the fog

I drop to all fours, bones still tearing, flesh still splitting, but I move through it now. I need to save him.

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Chapter 95

I need to get to him.

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hand raised like he owns this, like he has the right

No.

No.

blink. His form goes from blur to target. I

Violent. Not

shatters beneath me as I spring forward, grass ripping under my claws. My jaw splits wider, fangs bared, ears flattened back. The wind howls past me as I cut through it–pure momentum, rage and

He turns too late.

skin.

choke, hear the wind leave him. Good. He

blood dripping from my mouth. He looks up

so sure of himself

I don’t hold back the growl. This time, I let it shake

He touched my mate.

get

face was. The earth splits under the weight of my strike. Dirt sprays in all directions. He scrambles to his feet,

Good.

low. Dislocated. I can smell it–copper, bone, rot. He still

you scare me?” he

every limb surging with that white- hot moonfire tearing through my nerves like it’s trying to finish what it started. But I’m not waiting

I’m using it.

Riot charges.

rage. One arm dragging, the other swinging wide with a blade he

with a metallic whistle. I twist,

He screams.

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Chapter 95

Not loud enough.

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his ribs again. He collapses sideways, wheezing. My body lands on him, forelegs pinning his chest, claws grinding into the earth beside his throat. My breath fogs in the space between us. Close. Close enough

I lean in.

And I growl.

I want him to feel it in

spits in my

Mistake.

cheek, slicing clean along the

I let him

upward with everything he’s got

White–hot sting.

off balance, and he

hit the ground on my side, dazed for half a second, air knocked out of my lungs. I see stars.

But I don’t stop.

get a paw under

trying to run now. Limping, favoring that bleeding leg,

Pathetic.

I sprint–feral, silent, deadly.

on him

down on his calf, crushing tendon.

Hard. He spins onto his back, clawing

“Jessica!”

“Jessica–stop!”

No.

doesn’t get to walk