Read Online Deadly Crush (Deadly Trilogy, Book 1) by Ashley Stoyanoff - Free Book Online

kisses.
    It seemed like only yesterday that he was
bitten.   The memory was still clear in my
mind, cemented there, unwavering and unyielding.   We were walking through the park, after watching
a stupid horror movie.   Dominic was a Freddy Kruger fanatic, me, not so
much.   There was just something about
dying in a dream that made my skin crawl.
    Late night walks after scary movies were
kind of a ritual of ours.   It gave me
time to unwind and reassure myself that it was only a movie.   We were walking, arms linked, looking up at
the star-speckled sky, when Dominic had stopped short and said, “You hear
that?”
    I smacked him playfully with my free hand
and said dryly, “Not funny, Dom.”   He
gave me an odd look, one that I really didn’t understand, and then started
walking again.
    One of the things I had always loved about
our friendship was that we had never needed to fill the silence with pointless
conversation.   We could spend hours just
being together, doing our own thing without talking.   And that night had been one of those
nights.   It was peaceful and perfect.
    “Jade, there’s something I need to tell
you,” Dominic said, after we had walked for at least twenty minutes.   That was when I had noticed how stiff his arm
was in mine, as if I was holding onto a steel pipe.
    “Mmmhmm,” I mumbled, hugging myself closer
to his side, trying to keep myself out of the chilly fall wind.   But instead of holding me closer, he only
stiffened further.
    I stopped short, looking up at him.   A muscle in his neck twitched under his skin,
throbbing like a heartbeat.   His face was
lined with crevasses, branching out from the corners of his eyes and lips like
wild vines.   “Ray wants me to join the
pack,” he blurted, all the words running together.
    It took me a long minute to understand what
he was saying, but when I did, sweat began to trickle down my back.   My stomach sank, and a chill rushed over my
skin.   For a moment, I thought I was
going to be sick.   I could taste the sour
bile rising, burning up my esophagus.   “You can’t.   They’re a bunch of
jerks, Dom.   You can’t.”   My voice screeched on the last word, loud and
piercing.
    “I know,” he said.   He hadn’t needed to say more; I understood
everything he wanted to convey in those two words.   They would eat him alive.   They were hard on him now, and we both knew
they would be even worse if he was one of them.   The pack had changed drastically since Ray became the alpha.   They were vicious, even toward their own, and
Dom … well, Dom had a soft heart.
    But Dominic never had a choice, not really.
    The chilly night turned bitter.   I remembered thinking that Erika must have
been following us the whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to step out
from the trees.   I heard the crunch of
gravel before I saw her.   She stood in
the center of the winding path with a purely evil smirk.   The moonlight casted an unnerving silvery
glow around her, making her black jeans shimmer in the light.
    “Dominic, you have been summoned,” Erika
said.   Her voice rang out, splitting
through the silent night.
    I moved in front of him without thinking,
trying to block him from her sight.   Thinking about it now, I realized that it would have never worked; he
was half a foot taller than I was, but at the time, all I wanted to do was to
hide my Dom.   “No, you can’t have
him.”   My voice was strong, giving no
indication of the twisted knots in my stomach.
    Erika threw her head back and laughed.   She locked her eyes with mine, and her skin
rippled.   Snaps and pops echoed through the
cool night, and hair sprouted along her exposed flesh.   Her face hazed over,
distorting and shifting.   Her legs
snapped back, her arms extended and thinned.   My stomach rolled as another deafeningly loud snap reverberated around
me, and she dropped to all fours.
    “Dom, run!” I yelled, glancing behind me, but he didn’t move.