Read Online Sundered by Shannon Mayer - Free Book Online Page B

time I’d seen them, but they didn’t seem worse for the wear, their energy still high.
     
    I searched the group, standing on my tiptoes and finally standing on a log to see if Jessica was with them.
     
    “ She’s at the back!” I said, “She looks okay.” She was thin, her clothes ragged, but unlike some of the others who had scars and missing pieces of hair, she looked . . . like the queen of the pack. The Alpha male stepped out of the bush and put his hand on her shoulder, claiming her while he stared at Sebastian.
     
    “ What does he think? That you’re going to fight him for her?” I asked more to myself but Sebastian heard me.
     
    “ That’s exactly what he thinks. I’m bigger, stronger, and younger. A threat to his position in the hierarchy of the pack,” he said.
     
    “ But you aren’t.”
     
    Sebastian turned to look at me, his eyes sad; my heart dropped.
     
    “ Mara, the results from the fertility tests came back while you were out of it. It wasn’t you that had fertility problems, it was me. The day I gave you Nero, when I went into town . . .”
     
    I started to shake my head, backing away, half falling off the log and stumbling over Nero.
     
    “ No, no you didn’t, you wouldn’t have. You said that it was stupid, that there was no way you would ever . . .” The world swayed around me and I fell to my knees, grabbing at the axe for support.
     
    Sebastian walked to me, and turned me so that we both faced the gate and the pack beyond it. His hands were hot on my bare flesh and I began to itch, the concentration of broom in his body coming through in his sweat. It finally made sense and I understood my reactions at strange times, after he kissed me or we made love, my body responded to the concentrate within his system and I had to take antihistamines. I was allergic to him, to what he was becoming.
     
    I let out a moan and he held me tight.
     
    “ I’m sorry Mara, I took the shot.” He looked me in the eye, his own beginning to tint a light yellow that I’d been telling myself was just the way the light reflected on his iris.
     
    “ I took Nevermore.”
     
     
     
     
     

10
     
     
     
    I sobbed into his chest, pounded on it in a fit of rage that he could do this to me, that he would be leaving me, forgetting that if I’d had it my way, it would be the other way around.
     
    The pack dispersed, once more stymied by the gate and their inability to climb it or unlock it, melting back into the bush as if they had never been there.
     
    All that was left was Scout, who stared at us with his slitted eyes and rattled the gate to get our attention. In less than three weeks, that would be Sebastian, outside the property, an animal who no longer loved me, an animal who would as soon eat me as make love to me.
     
    I stood up, pushing away from him, anger and pain at war with one another inside my heart. “I need to be alone.”
     
    “ You’re going to get a lot of that in the not too distant future, probably more than you want. I would take advantage of the time we have.”
     
    I spun on my heel, ready to slap him. “You asshole! Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken the shot?”
     
    He frowned and shook his head, “I didn’t want you to worry.”
     
    “ It’s my right to worry! I’m your wife, if anyone should know that you’re going to turn into an animal, it’s me!” I yelled at him. Nero whimpered at my feet, upset by the yelling; I bent and scooped him into my arms.
     
    “ The right time didn’t come up. And I wasn’t sure at first, I didn’t feel any different, I wasn’t losing weight, but at the clinic they said that might not happen as fast to me because of my size,” he said, shrugging his shoulder, lowering his eyes.
     
    I stomped off towards the backyard and the garden, the sudden urge to kill something leaving me only one option. Pulling weeds. Over my shoulder I yelled, “The right time was the minute you figured it out.”
     
    I froze at the