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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10:05 Sun, 24 Aug

Chapter 95

I need to get to him.

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standing there, towering over Grayson, hand raised like he owns this, like he has the right to touch what’s mine. His boot lifts–he’s going to crush

No.

No.

vision sharpens in a blink. His form goes from blur to

Not human

ripping under my claws. My jaw splits wider, fangs bared, ears flattened back. The wind howls past me as

He turns too late.

everything I’ve got–shoulder to ribs, teeth to skin. He flies back, crashing into the dirt

wind leave him. Good. He deserves

blood dripping from my mouth. He looks up at me–eyes wide, hand

of himself

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

He touched my mate.

get a second

earth splits under the weight of my strike. Dirt

Good.

it–copper, bone, rot. He still tries to square

think you scare me?” he spits,

white- hot moonfire tearing through my nerves like it’s trying to

I’m using it.

Riot charges.

the other swinging wide with a blade he

metallic whistle. I twist, dig my claws into his thigh–deep -ripping through fabric and

He screams.

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24 Aug

Chapter 95

Not loud enough.

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+38)

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 to smell the fear now coating

I lean in.

And I growl.

I want

in

Mistake.

slicing clean along the bone. Not deep enough to

I

upward with everything he’s got left. The blade

White–hot sting.

instinctively, off balance, and

second, air knocked out of my

But I don’t stop.

roll, get a paw under me, then

run now. Limping, favoring that bleeding leg, shoulder dangling, blade dragging through the dirt behind

Pathetic.

I sprint–feral, silent, deadly.

him in

calf, crushing

Hard. He spins onto his back, clawing at

“Jessica!”

“Jessica–stop!”

No.

pine. He doesn’t