Coldsnap: The Billionaire Alpha's Fated Pregnant Princess (GL)-Chapter 365 - Eerie Red Reckoning

I backed away, werewolf heart hammering against my mostly humanoid ribs. Vrika was thrashing inside to shift in full, but I couldn’t risk it until the right moment. Not with what I am wearing around my neck.

Silver mail isn’t exactly going to stretch with my neck when I hybridize. Though it might break easily enough. I just have to make sure to protect my abdomen. So I draw the knife and palm the emitters before I toss my purse into a corner.

"Touch me and I promise you’ll regret it. Like any of those men would have if your pictures were at all real."

I warned and put that on the record, now that the phone is listening in. Despite the fear of a first fight twisting in my gut, I knew my best chance was still that side door. Pretending to back towards the other door, I darted the opposite way with enhanced muscle ligaments.

Swiping the blade as Damien lunged with his off-white form to intercept me. Sliding on the polished floor when he kept reaching. And my shoulder was about to ram the door when his clawed fingers dug into my shoulder.

Pain exploded as I was flung back. As someone else grabbed me from behind. Turning to note one of the reinforcements of his I’d heard walking outside. A female werewolf with Victoria’s same haughty human features held me with strength considering she was not transformed.

"Careful. We don’t want to damage the evidence too badly. Not if we are also selling it back to the Duskpaw."

The two ’titles’ made my spirit howl with indignation that matched my own. I was not a thing to be traded or marked against my will. My mind blanked and I slammed my head back, connecting a hard part with her soft nose.

A satisfying crunch loosened her grip enough for me to twist free. Damien was closing in after my struggle, but not quick enough. He stumbled back when my hand, still gripping the knife, stabbed in a reverse grip towards his maw.

It hit his shoulder because of the dodge, paired with a bestial shriek of pain. Claws scrapped up my back as I turned to avoid the upward swing toward my front torso. Retreating until my back hit the wall, my mind raced to look for options... but I could see very few in this room.

Watching the knife get tugged out of his body, it gets flung hard enough to bounce off of a wall and nearly impale one of his helpers. Too bad. With four of them in the room in total, two men not yet transformed cutting off my two escapes, taking out one of them would have helped.

"That was stupid. We were going to make this quick. Now I think he’ll take his time."

The woman, who almost *must* be a relative of that Victoria, began to transform after she taunted in that nasally tone. The emergency signal had been sent, but who knew how long it would take for *someone* to receive it - or if she would come at all?

Shifting would give me claws, but would it be enough against so many opponents? This has already been more of a scrape than I’ve ever been in. Losing the advantage of surprise... though they are on guard enough now. Since I’m clearly moving quicker and am stronger than a human shaped member of ’our kind’ should be.

"Victoria should be here to witness this too. She’s waited a long time to see our Alpha brought down a peg."

The man behind me spoke as I watched the blood still streaming down the woman’s shifted nose. The murder in her eyes and stuffed up growl told me she might be a bigger threat than Damien over the next few moments.

"She’ll get the footage. Enough talk. Hold her down."

Another of the men replied while nodding toward a set of small spy cameras, like the kind I’d seen Claire use, mounted in the corner. Newly exposed or quickly planted while I was busy, I’m not sure.

I managed to dodge, driving my knee into the first’s stomach as I turned, but the she-wolf caught my arm and wrenched it behind my back. Pain lanced through my shoulder as she bit, kicked at my legs, and forced me to my knees.

"Let’s see how the mighty Kyrie Voss responds when she finds her little pet wearing someone else’s mark. Getting everyone to turn on her when she goes crazy will be easy."

Damien’s remaining mouthpiece grinned as the hybrid in charge kneeled before me. Gripping my chin, his claws dug into my upper neck hard enough to draw blood. Pumping out of me with each rapid heartbeat.

When he tightened even more while gazing at the possibly familiar extra turtlenecking cloth around the base of my neck... I spat in his face to make him too mad to think. And my clenched hand finally pressed the activation on the emitters I’d somehow held on to.

> What else could we do? <

The sound was horrific and made everyone recoil, including a loosening of jaws and claws. It also made Vrika whine, but the spirit had endured it with me before... once. Recently. I didn’t repeat the tests after that. But now I wish I had.

Because it felt like an icepick had been rammed between my eyes, ears, and every pore of my body as the final bone breaks and muscle tugs exploded underneath my skin. Fur sprouted in an instant as I grabbed for the throat behind me and rolled forward.

Bowling the she-wolf into Damien and lunging for the exit again was not so much a plan as instinct. Slashing in a stumbling, drunken way at the last man holding his hands over his ears, I slammed into that door at a half-speed charge.

I could see light through the crack as something behind the door moved. Hear shouts on the other side. And then a moment of silence after a crunch.

Because I’d dropped the hunter device in my hand when I started this last desperation. And the man I’d kneed in the shoulder had stomped hard on them. Stopping their effect.

"I was hoping he’d make this quick. Just a mark on your shoulder. But now... I think I vote we do this properly."

The strain around my neck and burning cold sensation told me that a metal ring had ripped through the cloth layer when I shifted. That it was poking into my half-wolven flesh even now. It hurt.

But the next moments hurt worse.

Eventually slammed to the ground, the simple dress I’d worn to the shoot was bloodstained and in tatters. I’d fought. I’d tried. But a single arm and a single leg could not handle the holding strength of another whole wolf.

My vocal cords burned as I howled at the top of my lungs. Desperately hoping that it would escape through the gap in the door. That it would somehow also make it past the soundproof concrete walls.

Echo up some ventilation shaft? I didn’t know what I hoped for. But I knew I felt vindicated when jaws clamped around my collarbone and a howl equally as infuriated rang out. Damien’s chomp met the silver he ignored.

I felt his pointy teeth try to pull back, but it only dragged the broken silver mail out with it and pulled my body up along. Searing his tongue, gums, mixing in his saliva. Entering his blood. I reveled in the knowledge that it was ruining his regeneration as it increased his pain.

And tried not to think about how gradually - too gradually - it was weakening the idiot’s connection to his wolf. Instead I just focused in a state past the pain and howl... on the ebullience of getting revenge.

Because even if he had not admitted to it? I knew. I knew this was the bastard. The one that poisoned my sweet-

The lights flickered rapidly before going out... replaced by emergency lights that kicked on and bathed the room in dim red before a deep, reverberating, and brutal growl filled the darkness as it tore throughout the fourth basement level.

A sound so primal it would have made every hair on my body stand on end if it was not already. It was a sound stolen from ancient times when firelight was needed to keep the real apex predators of the night at bay.

It was the sound of death approaching those huddled close together. A sound that made those holding me down whimper and back away, all but the wolf stuck in my hunter’s protective wear.

They all knew, like I did, that the noise was Kyrie Voss. But I’m not sure any of us were prepared for the sealed door to be torn from its hinges like it was made of only so much paper. It sailed over my form entangled with Damien and struck the tripod. Rammed into the wall and ricocheted.

And as my eyes saw it tearing down the white photography draping... warmth drenched me as I felt a violent tug. At least, Tolerance suggested that was the state of the thick red liquid pumping out of the torn throat above me.

Eyes whose orange glow had intended to force me into a half-finished mating bond flickered and went out just like the lighting had.

Before every step down all nineteen hells was unleashed on this small, underground part of the world.