Total pages in book: 205
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
“I don’t want to come between you guys. We need to stand together, Kodiak. A unified front against Denver.”
“You keep saying that when you don’t have a goddamn clue.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what’s going on. Because you won’t fucking tell me!”
“Go to sleep.”
“Case in point.” Fuming, I jab a finger at him. “Evade, evade, evade. That’s all you do! Why won’t you talk to me?”
He drags a hand down his face and turns toward his bed, giving me his back.
His welted, brutalized, heavily scarred back.
The breath whooshes out of me, and my legs wobble. What the unholy fuck happened to him? Not an inch of his back is spared from trauma, the wounds old and chaotic. They couldn’t have been inflicted in a single, isolated event. No, these were doled out over time in viciously random patterns, and by the looks of it, with multiple tools.
Knife wounds crisscross layers of jagged lacerations with a smattering of pockmarks throughout, as if someone used him as target practice.
“What happened to your back?” I clutch my throat.
“Not everyone has lived your charmed life.” He shuts off the lamp, blanketing the room in darkness.
“Did Denver do that to you?” Blindly reaching out, I find my way to the other bed. “Did he torture you?”
His bed creaks beneath his weight, signaling his location. “You assume it was him and not the five women before you?”
He’s right, but I refuse to consider the alternative. I can’t lie here in the dark with this man, thinking about why those women would stab him in the back. And let’s not forget the strong possibility that one of those women was his mother.
Wolf’s mother stabbed Leonid, so it’s not a leap to think she hurt Kodiak, too. But why? Was she in fear for her life?
Of course, she was. But from Kodiak?
No, I can’t accept that he deserved those scars. This is Denver’s handiwork. He’s the threat. He has to be. Otherwise, I’m wildly, inescapably fucked.
“Don’t try anything.” Kodiak’s deep velvet baritone rumbles through the dark. “Unlike you, I am a light sleeper.”
I don’t know what he’s implying, but I’m officially unsettled. I’ve lost the nerve to ask more questions. As I curl up in the pitch-black silence, my mind turns against me. I know nothing about the boys of Hoss or its victims. Kodiak’s scars don’t mean he’s innocent. Look at Freddy Krueger, Darth Vader, The Joker, Scar from The Lion King…
Evil as plain as the scar on his face.
The state of Kodiak’s back tells me nothing about the state of his mind and heart. He may very well be a murderous maniac. A psycho-killer slumbering six feet away.
It takes me several hours to fall asleep. I didn’t expect to sleep at all, so the fact that I sink into a nightmare about cannibal children is no surprise.
I’m running for my life, chased by the growling, feral sounds of their hunger and the rapidly gaining patter of their small feet.
My ankle twists, and I tumble down the same hillside that took my baby. Only this time, the slope drops off into nothingness, and I fall and fall and fall…
My eyes snap open, and I shoot up in bed. At least I try to sit up. My body doesn’t move. None of my voluntary muscles—arms, legs, fingers, anything under conscious control—will react to my commands. But I am conscious. I can sense everything around me—the chill in the bedroom, the moonlight upon the walls, and the hot concrete chest against my side.
Kodiak.
He’s here.
In the bed with me.
Why, oh fucking why, is he in my bed?
Stunned with horror and rage, I scream at the top of my lungs. But no sound comes out. I can’t open my mouth. Can’t wriggle my jaw.
My hands lie on my stomach. I can see them, but I can’t feel them. I can’t make them work. Why can’t I make them work? It feels like I’m being held down by an invisible forcefield.
Is Kodiak awake? Is he staring at me? I can’t lift my head to see his face. But my gaze is rapid, darting over everything within my field of view.
That’s when I see it. A shadow that doesn’t look like a shadow at all. Near the door, floating inches above the floor, it’s too dark, too dense. Too childlike. The silhouette hovers, haunting, drifting closer. Oh, God, is it laughing?
I try to stretch my jaw to make noise, to thrash my head, to scream. No sound forms. No movement. Total paralysis. Except my heart. It bangs so viciously against my ribs the pressure explodes in bursts of blood through my veins, crashing past my ears and blotting my vision.
Kodiak doesn’t know. He doesn’t see the thing behind him. I try and try to warn him, ordering my vocal cords to work and commanding with all my strength to pull free of this stupor.