The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) by May Ellis Daniels Read Free Book Online Page B

in her human form, her back to me, digging and scratching, uncovering the child’s body. The same frantic, desperate movements as the bobcat. She’ll finish soon, and then she’ll turn to me.  
    She’s in no hurry.  
    She knows I can’t outrun her, and I wonder if she scents what I am.  
    What am I? I don’t know anymore.
    The thought makes me leap at the door in blind fury. I pummel my fists into the wood, screaming and hollering, beyond all control, not fucking caring if the door gives, only wanting somewhere to lay this maddening rage. The door splinters and cracks and the top hinge begins to pull from the frame. I’m almost in, although I don’t know what fucking good it will do me, and I’ve stopped caring if the Skinwalker murders me. It’d be a quick death compared to what the Stricken will do if they scent me out.
    The hair on my nape stands on end, and I know she’s there.  
    Right behind me.  
    I close my eyes. Take a breath.  
    Fuck her. I’m done running.
    The Skinwalker rakes a single sharp claw down my spine, slowly, not deep, but her touch makes my entire body quiver.  
    “You shouldn’t be here, pale man,” the old hag says in a voice like stones grinding together. “You shouldn’t have witnessed.”
    I slam my bleeding fist into the door one last time before I turn to face my death.  
    The wood shatters into splinters. My hand punches through, and the momentum carries me hard into the door. The top hinge rips from the frame and the upper half of the door collapses inward, sending me ass-over-teakettle inside the cabin’s cool, musty darkness.
    Outside, the Skinwalker spits and cackles.

    ***

    I take a quick breath and roll to my feet, my survival instincts kicking in, ready to fight the fucking hag. But she’s still outside, her head lifted to the crimson moon, her hideous, piercing laughter rolling and echoing through the cabin. She’s cradling the child’s body in her arms.  
    I freeze. Wait.  
    Eventually the Skinwalker’s laughter fades.
    She peers inside, her face scrunched in concentration. Licks a long black tongue over her lips.  
    I smell her now. Like rotten meat.  
    “Rabbit found a hole,” the Skinwalker says, pacing just beyond the cabin’s tiny wooden porch, then laying the child down on the ground and settling onto her haunches. Her legs are bruised black and bone thin.  
    “Well,” she says with a wicked grin. “I have nothing but time.”
    “You can’t enter,” I say, watching how she’s wary of the cabin’s porch.
    The hag lifts her head and smiles.  
    “It was her home, wasn’t it? The girl’s?”
    She leans to the side, spits a long tendril of phlegm, then says, “You stink of fear, Pureblood. And hunger.”  
    Fuck her. I reach out and tear off the rest of the door, stand in the threshold and study her. She’s taller and thinner than I thought, and even sitting all bunched up I know she must reach ten feet when she stands upright. She’s naked. Her skin is bruised and sun-reddened and mottled. A nest of heavy necklaces and ornaments and amulets of sparkling stones, feather and polished bone hangs from her thin neck.
    The Skinwalker catches me studying her. Flips her filthy knotted hair over her shoulder and grins suggestively. “Invite me inside,” she whispers. “I can help you.”
    “You think I’m a fucking idiot?”
    She scowls, bares her sharp teeth and flicks a handful of sand at me.  
    I turn my back on her and begin searching the cabin. There’s an old, half-rotten wooden table and a set of two chairs. A rusted single mattress, its springs punching through a mess of mildewed fabric. A few wooden crates filled with tools and parts for old machinery I don’t recognize. And there, buried deep in the last crate, is a hatchet. It has a cracked handle and the blade’s dull as all fuck, but when I arc it through the air it whistles just fine.
    Better than a rock in my hand, anyway.  
    Something smashes onto the roof. The