Free The Lost Souls by Madeline Sheehan Page B

“Yeah,” he said, laughing.
    Grinning, Mira pulled her ski mask down and turned toward the stairs. Glancing back at him, her eyebrows lifted in question. “Let’s do this.”
     

Chapter Twelve
    “Why the fuck not?” Tahyra hissed.
    Shandor crossed the few feet between them, taking in her narrowed eyes, her clenched fists , and fang-filled snarl.
    “Are you questioning me, fată?” he demanded and quickly accompanied his words with a feral growl that he didn’t wholeheartedly feel. It was more for a show of control over what was his. And she was his. The entire pack was his.
    “Gods!” she screamed. “What is wrong with you? Why are we hiding out? And why are we eating animals?” She practically spat her last word as if the very feel of it on her tongue had left a rotten taste in her mouth.
    His claws began to lengthen, not out of anger but frustration. Since taking control of her pack, he’d kept them away from places humans might be hiding out, but even that hadn’t stopped them from running into a few loners. His own participation in the feasts that had always followed filled him with guilt every time he allowed himself to think of it. It was one of the downfalls of pack life, living among a group of creatures with only selfish, single-minded needs. The pack mentality combined with the insatiable hunger seemed to overpower any sort of rational thinking.
    So Shandor had begun to keep them hidden, staying in or near heavily wooded areas where wildlife was sure to be, thinking he was keeping them full and satisfied. But not even he, more rational than his entire pack put together, could deny that human flesh was ten times more satisfying than eating animals. Humans simply tasted better, leaving him feeling more fulfilled, more…human. But when that humanity would begin to wane, the hunger was ten times worse.
    His arm shot out and he wrapped his hand around Tahyra’s slim neck, digging his claws purposely deep into her skin. Blood wept from each individual wound and ran thick down her naked body before falling in droplets onto the snow at their feet. Lifting her, he swung her body to his right and straight into the wide trunk of an oak tree.
    “You will do as I say,” he growled, baring his fangs.
    “You’re forgetting,” she hissed, “that this pack was mine before it was yours.”
    “I’m not forgetting a damn thing,” he shot back, digging his claws deeper, watching as the tips of his fingers disappeared inside Tahyra’s neck. She gasped and choked as blood gurgled up through her throat and exploded from her mouth.
    Locking his jaw, Shandor fought the urge to lick her from head to toe. “If you continue to argue with me, fată, I will pick another female to fuck.”
    “You…could…try,” she rasped, her garbled words barely audible.
    Frustrated, he released her and she fell to the ground in a heap, clutching her throat. He wasn’t getting through to her, and other than actually fucking another female, something he had no desire to do, he was out of ideas.
    Since the day he’d taken control of the pack , he hadn’t been with another female aside from Tahyra. But on that first day, in his feral haze of bestial-fueled power, he’d taken each female, some more than once. After that, Tahyra had threatened any female that had come near him, and he hadn’t cared. Surprisingly, the fată was more than enough to satisfy him. Where, as a human, he’d once been easily bored with any woman, he had yet to tire of this one.
    Even stranger, he felt sort of loyal to her.
    But now he needed to make a fucking point, and if taking another female in front of her—showing her that it wasn’t him that belonged to her but instead was the other way around—was the lone way to knock her off that queen-of-the-universe pedestal she was standing on, then so be it.
    Shandor glanced to where the rest of the pack had gathered.
    “Marisa,” he growled, pointing at a heavyset female. “And Courtney.”
    Both