His Trouble Maker

JESSICA

His skin gives. The blood hits my tongue hot, faster than I expect, and I push him off me before it settles–before instinct drags me deeper. He stumbles, hard, crashing sideways into a tree, breath knocked out, hands scrambling for something solid, something

that isn’t me.

Fuck.

What did I do?

My eyes widen and my breath catches while watching him stumble like his body’s been pulled loose from itself, knees folding hard and fast as his spine convulses once, then locks.

“Look at me,” I hiss, but i don’t even know if he can hear me, pupils blown wide, sweat slick across his cheekbones, lips pulled back in a half–snarl that he’s not even aware of.

His heartbeat is wrong. I can feel it. Fast, yes–but uneven. Staggering. I’ve been thinking of doing this for so long and now, it’s satisfying. Theo won’t die for it but he’ll be something else.

I’m not sure what but it’s for us to figure out. If we want to win against Riot, we need to be something. We need to have leverage for us to fight and this is it.

His chest jerks again, ribs straining like they’re about to split. It fascinates me how fast his body is changing and how fast I need him. to survive this before the two dumbasses come here and discover what I did.

“You’re going to survive this,” I tell him—not soft, not as comfort, but as command–because I didn’t bite him to break him, I bit him to build something, to drag him into the same sharp place I’ve been living in since Riot sank his fangs into me and rewrote my instincts like they were his to own.

His eyes roll for a second, lids fluttering, pulse surging beneath the thin skin of his neck, and I press harder, fingers splayed, breathing with him now, one beat off, syncing as his blood tries to sort what it is–human, wolf, infection, me.

Because it’s mine now.

Theo’s breath comes in shorter bursts, throat tight, muscles clenching, and the sound of it scratches down the inside of my skull like static, something between pain and fury and change, and it doesn’t scare me, not anymore–it calls to me, feeds that part of me I’ve been pretending to choke out for the sake of keeping the others calm.

Grayson’s voice calls out in the distance.

Shit.

For a second, I don’t move.

For a second, we just breathe.

I glance over my shoulder, sharp, automatic, tracking distance, sound, threat–he’s near, maybe thirty feet, less–and if he gets close enough to see Theo like this, twitching in the dirt, eyes gone black and body caught mid–shift, he’ll know.

I

Chapter 117

92%

Theo isn’t

fast, hand pressing harder into Theo’s chest like I can force the change to wait. It will take a

every exhale laced with a rumble

He snaps.

The growl tears loose from deep in his chest, raw and grinding and not human anymore, and I

I move.

a crack, my knee sliding into

fingers digging into soaked hair, yanking his head down,

giving it time to look deliberate, I throw my voice hard through

“GRAYSON! HELP!”

Theo freezes.

One breath.

Two.

louder, broken open–and before I can brace, he slams his palm into

shoves.

Hard.

lungs emptying on impact, and I see nothing but branches and sky for half a second before I twist up, coughing,

-but he’s already gone.

Fuck. That was close.

woods, fast, wild, the snap of branches and the burn of brush underfoot. He’s going to come back to me. When the change finishes, when the poison settles into his bones and he realizes what he is now, who did this to him–he’ll follow it straight

Obedience always does.

the sweat clinging to my brow, smear a little dirt over my cheek while I’m at

2 Sept

Chapter 117

into mine and soon after he completed his transformation,

They’ve kept it a secret enough for me to discover everything about this. Theo is the experimental shift. And soon, I’ll have to turn them one by one so I’ll have a pack of wolves

to die for me.

“Jess!”

stagger back another step, dragging in a sharp breath through my teeth, twisting my face into something that looks more like