Series: Werewolves of Wall Street Series by Renee Rose
Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
I pace the circle, meeting each glowing gaze. Some of the spectators avoid my eyes. Some stare back, but eventually all of them look down. I’m still the biggest and baddest here. But there’s no shortage of challengers, and eventually the fighting will wear me down.
A heavy body hits my back. Teeth tear into my flesh. I snarl and turn, but Jake is already there. He doesn’t bother to shift, just grabs the errant wolf by the scruff and tail, and hurls it aside. The crowd parts, and the wolf hits the wall, hard. It slides down and is still.
“No fighting out of turn,” Jake growls. A few onlookers growl back, but he bares his teeth and they slink away.
“Who’s next?” I call before more wolves decide to rush me.
Lowell Hunt’s son steps before me.
I search for Lowell in the circle surrounding us. “You’re sure?”
Lowell’s eyes flare bright green. Then he turns his head away.
His son, Junior, spits at my feet. “Face me or yield.”
I’ve hunted with these wolves. I’ve fought beside them. We’ve shared a kill and then a beer around the barbecue at a pack gathering. I know their families, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers. And now they’re my enemies. They’re standing up to me, one by one, and watching their own pack members get cut down. Lowell Junior’s cousins stand by, ready to challenge me after he falls.
When will it end?
If it weren't for the faint scent of Madi in my nose, I’d go mad.
I give myself over to the wolf and leap for the kill.
Madi
Billy breaks speed records zooming me across the river.
I keep a death grip on my seatbelt. “The meeting is in New Jersey?”
He grunts. “There’s too many of us to meet in the usual spot. It’ll attract attention. But nobody cares what happens in New Jersey.”
He weaves his souped up muscle car through a wasteland of a commercial district somewhere south of Newark and screeches to a stop beside an ancient brick warehouse. A faded sign leaning against a wall announces the place as “Blue Moon Burlesque, Discotech and Rodeo.” Billy parks illegally behind a dumpster and hops out.
I accept his help getting out of the car, wishing I’d had a few more minutes of drive time to compose myself. I guess it’s better to get this over with.
Billy leads me through the back door, into the darkness. Shouts and stomps echo around. It’s like being backstage at a concert–and then the smell hits me. The thick musk of wet dog, overlaid with the sharper scent of new pennies. Fur and blood.
Prickles run up my arms. The last time I was surrounded by shifters, I’d been kidnapped. My body remembers the desperate moments, the terror. Warrior shifters with red eyes and sharp, oversized teeth. Adrenaline fizzes in my blood, screaming at me to “Run!”
Billy pauses, glancing back at me. His eyes flare bright blue. I blow out a breath and set my shoulders. “I’m ready.”
He tries to lead me further, but there’s a crowd on stage. A bunch of shifters cram side by side until no one else can fit, jostling each other, yelling, and staring at something below. I can’t see what they’re watching. A few of them turn as I approach. Their eyes flare brighter.
“Human,” one of them mutters in a way that makes me feel dirty.
Billy growls at them. He puts a hand at my back, guiding me to a side set of stairs. We step out into the light, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.
When I imagined a pack meeting, I imagined something like a Moon Co board meeting–the kind in a big conference room. Rows of shifters in three-piece suits seated in folding chairs that strain under their powerful frames. At most, I imagined them standing and shouting like brokers on the trading floor. I’ve been to some late night meetings in the boardroom that got vicious. Corporate types can be animals. Especially lawyers.
The chaos in front of me makes lawyers look civilized. The hall is a seething mass of people, many of them half naked with glistening muscles on display. Shifters in furry form wind between the clusters of shouting humans. It’s louder than a football match, if the sports event had giant wolves in attendance and constant brawls breaking out between the spectators. People are screaming at each other, red in the face. Wolves snarl and snap at everyone and everything in their paths.
Billy nudges me. “You okay?” His voice is raspy like he’s been up all night drinking and shouting.
My breath shudders in and out of me. My hand is at my neck to protect the vulnerable spot.
I have a plan. I hope it works.
If it doesn’t, I might die here tonight.
But at least I’ll die beside Brick.
“Where's Brick?”
Billy turns me to face the wild knot of people towards the front of the hall, in front of the stage. A half circle of onlookers protects a bare patch of concrete–the only empty space in the room. The people on stage lean down and jeer at the two wolves fighting.