Rejected (Shadow Beast Shifters, #1)(43)

Maybe by the end of my stay with the Shadow Beast, he would raise that number to six. Or maybe he’d murder me into a fiery ball of fur.

The fact that I didn’t know which way this would all go was not as terrible as I’d expected it to be. Maybe I’d lost my mind, or maybe… just maybe, this was where my life truly began.

All I had to do was make sure I stayed alive, which meant not pissing off this beast—and sticking around to see what destiny had in store for me.

Speaking of, he was off and running again, tracking the shadow creature down. It wasn’t exactly a quick process. We walked for miles, the snow growing thicker underfoot and the air colder on every part of my body exposed to the elements. No matter how much I tried to snuggle into my jacket, most of me still felt frozen, and eventually, when my eyelashes were nothing more than white popsicles, I ground to a halt.

“Are you legitimately fucking with me at this stage?” I growled, my wolf howling inside my chest.

“Why are you so useless at tracking?”

Yeah, I was tired. Exhausted, even. And I’d sure as fuck had enough of being dragged halfway across the wilds of Canada, all for some small chance of stumbling upon a shadow creature.

“What did you say?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

“I expected you to be better at tracking than this,” I continued carelessly, my entire plan of staying alive lost in my exhausted annoyance. “You’re just leading us in fucking circles.” I threw my hands in the air. “And what the hell am I even doing here? Why do you need me? Does the one who released the shadows have to return them or something?”

“Yes,” he snarled. “The careless, pathetic human who released shadow creatures to destroy Earth has to be the one to claim them back.”

Well, shit.

“Sounds like you can’t really kill me then,” I said, finding the silver lining.

Huge hands, strong and biting, wrapped around my biceps and hauled me up so that my face was at his eight-feet height. I gulped at his snarling expression, perfect in how terrifying and breathtaking it was. “You underestimate both your own importance and that of Earth. I do not need this world. But you… you have friends here. Family even. You’d do well to remember that.”

His advice was solid, as advice went, but I was more consumed by the fact he was again touching me and it didn’t hurt. How extremely unfair was it that he could instigate a one-sided touch relationship between us. Made me want to touch him more than ever, just because it wasn’t allowed.

“I’ve picked up its power trail again,” he said abruptly, breaking through the tightly woven tension between us, dropping me to my feet. “Follow me.”

I wanted to click my heels and salute him, but he was already gone, and my smartass action would be wasted. Oh well. There would most definitely be another time.

Shadow moved with determination now, seemingly locked on to this power trail. My ability to keep up was waning, and as my wolf gently whined in my chest to be free, I wondered if maybe it would be best to shift. I was about to ask him when we rounded a particularly dense set of trees, stepping out to stand at the edge of a frozen lake.

When Shadow Beast had stolen me from Torma, it had been a few weeks into winter, but where we were now was dead of winter weather, and I wondered if time was moving faster on Earth than in the Library of Knowledge. Or were we really far north in Canada?

Not that time really mattered when right in the center of the frozen lake was a… creature that was so far beyond anything I’d ever seen, it almost stole my breath away.

“That’s it?” I choked out, instinctively stepping closer to Shadow.

“Yes. It’s an abervoq.”

He said it so fast that I barely caught the foreign-sounding name, but I sure as fuck couldn’t miss the creature itself. Standing close to the eight-feet height of Shadow, it was a twisted beast. The top part looked like a bull, with huge horns, a snout, and large eyes. The bottom half was a shaggy bear with black fur that blended well into the darkness surrounding it.

Darkness wasn’t the only thing surrounding it, either. Nope. There were piles of carcasses, hundreds of them, filling the lake with death.

“All the animals,” I choked out. “It killed them all.”

Moose, bears, big cats, small bunnies. Nothing had been spared from its wrath.

“Abervoq are blood stealers,” Shadow whispered. “Akin to vampires, but it’s about more than survival for them. It’s a sport. They will try to best each other with the most kills. They’re one of the more dangerous creatures that exist in Shadow Realm.”

“Great,” I replied just as softly, unable to look away from the midnight creature braying at the moon. “How do we stop it?”

I could feel his gaze on me, heavy and considering, and I had to decide which scary creature to stare at. Shadow Beast won.

“Have you figured out how to touch the Shadow Realm again?” he asked me.

I shook my head, mute. Words were in my brain, but I couldn’t get them out of my mouth.

“Then we’ll have to subdue and contain it in one of the prison rooms back in the library,” he said, “until you learn to control your abilities.”

I was nodding, all the while wondering about these abilities. What abilities did I even have? Wolf shifters should not have been able to touch the Shadow Realm, so why could I? And would I learn to do it again fast enough to stop Earth from being consumed?