A high pitched whining sound rattled her eardrums, and Vera clapped her hands over her ears, dropping her wares. She was horrified to look up and see it was the cashier’s voice causing that awful noise. She paid as fast as she could, eyes watering at the pain, then took her bags and made her way back to the hotel.
By the time she closed the door and fell into bed, she was reeling, barely able to move into the fetal position. A long growl rattled from her throat. She should call Tobias. He was good and strong and level-headed. He would know what to do to stop the pain. But she didn’t have his number, and really, she didn’t even know if he would hear a phone in the cockpit of his plane. He must be on a delivery that had been scheduled before she’d shown up. The clock read a blurry 4:00.
She was dying. No one could endure pain this bad and survive. Tobias would find her curled up on the bed, cold and dead, and there was tragedy in that. She’d only just gotten him, and she was going to leave him like this?
She yelped in pain as her neck snapped back. A long snarl vibrated through her throat, and suddenly, it all made sense. She wasn’t dying. She was Changing. No, no, no, not now! She was alone and in the city. In a hotel room. She needed to do this in the woods, away from people, but it was much too late for that.
The echoing sound of her bones breaking was like gunfire against her oversensitive ears as a keening wail left her lips.
Tobias wouldn’t like her after this. He couldn’t.
She’d tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened.
Vera’s animal was Monster.
Chapter Nine
Tobias’s hands were smeared with dried blood. He would have to wash them thoroughly before he hugged Vera. She would smell Jonathan on him. Her senses would be even stronger than his because of the animal she housed inside of her, and he wanted to explain before she jumped to conclusions based on the amount of blood.
He pushed open the door to room 1010 and froze immediately as the smell of fur hit his nose. Shit.
In the doorway, he rushed to close the door and squinted in the darkness as his eyes adjusted. A low growl sounded from the corner, long and low and filled with fury. He was definitely getting bit tonight. Again.
Tobias flipped on the light switch and laid eyes on his mate’s animal for the first time.
Damn, she was beautiful. Rich red fur with black tips and a cream-colored belly. Long legs and eyes that were an impossibly bright gold. Her lips were pulled back over a row of sharp teeth. His pretty fox. Too bad she didn’t recognize him. She charged so fast he could barely get his arm over his throat before she lunged. Her teeth latched around his forearm, and she held, snarling and shaking her head until her sharp teeth hit bone.
Tobias pulled the thick scruff of her neck and yanked her off. She was bigger than the wild foxes by twice the size and heavier than he’d imagined her. And she housed about thirty times the fury he’d expected. He held her at an arm’s length away. Her teeth were exposed as she snarled her death chant, eyes full of hate. This was what Clayton had seen. This is what his father had deemed a failure.
Tobias hated him all over again.
Of course her animal turned out like this. She was born from violence.
“Vera,” he murmured.
Her snarling grew louder, so he let off a growl of his own, filling the room with it. The noise died in her throat, but she still bore her teeth, her eyes still full of anger.
“It’s me. I’m yours, and you’re mine, and biting won’t help anything. It’ll only hurt me. You’ll hurt me, Vera.”
Her lips slid over her teeth in an uncertain look before she snarled again.
Tobias set her down, but she latched her jaws around his ankle immediately. With a sigh, he pulled her off, only to have her attack again. And again. This went on for an hour before she tired herself out and lay panting in the corner, eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.
Clayton had been right. She wasn’t safe in public. Yet. Vera was a fox shifter, one of the few animals that could actually Turn a human with her bite, and his mate was a ferocious little brawler who didn’t give a shit about dominance. Oh, she sensed what he was, but attacked anyway. Her instinct for self-preservation had been broken from the start by the way Jonathan had Turned and treated her.
No, she couldn’t be around humans until she learned to control it. And he hoped to God she would be able to come to some sort of compromise with her animal, but it wouldn’t happen here. Not in this hotel room where she felt caged.
She’d destroyed the room. New clothes lay in tatters across the floor, and she’d shredded the bedding and mattress until stuffing covered everything like snow. She’d left one pillow intact, but nothing else had survived. She’d even gnawed off the legs of the table and its chairs.
With a sigh, Tobias sat on the edge of the destroyed bed and put his face in his hands. How could he fix all the damage that had been done to her? Vera the woman was intelligent and intuitive. She compromised and reasoned. Her fox was wild and, from the way she was acting, about as mad as Link.