Free The Willing by Aila Cline Page A

dresses had not hurt me in any way.
Let Josh and the pack hunt; I would take a walk and meet creatures
that had fascinated me since I could remember. I did not fear them.
I was curious.
    My rage had become a constant
companion, and I felt safe carrying it with me as a weapon. If I
needed to Change, the hot surge of suppressed anger towards Josh
would fuel that need. I felt my hate for him was the only
protection I needed against vampires, if any.
    I wove through the crowds, the smell of
civilization thick in my nose. I never realized how much I had
missed that scent—baking goods, hamburgers, even soap powder
wafting through the air—encased in the movement and noise of
people. My life seemed so complicated and simple all at once. Eat,
sleep, fuck. Not a hard cycle. Faced with the complexities of my
life now, I can see the appeal to Josh’s pack, but to me, it wasn’t
even an echo of my former life with Will. Whereas Will taught me to
use my Lycanti senses and reflexes to enhance my human experience,
the pack broke those down, using their senses only as tools to
allow the animal to fully overtake them. It bothered me, but I
feared being alone, especially with new life growing in my belly.
Joshua may have threatened me before, as well as threw me to his
food supply to do with as they pleased, but with his pack, I was
still safer than I would have been living alone. But now, I walked
alone. And it felt good. I loved the smell of humanity.
    A body bumped hard into me and I
growled in reflex, watching the blonde hair disappear into the
crowd. Had I a wallet or any valuables, I knew they would now be
missing. As it were, I had neither, and so I was not entirely
worried about the bump.
    Stupid, stupid Emily.
    I, one who knows the importance of
smell for the hunt, should have recognized being marked. The brush
of skin on skin was all that the girl needed to leave a traceable
scent on me. But in my arrogance, I thought nothing of it. I
traveled on, looking through stands of books and clothes, trying to
keep the inexplicable anger from dominating my mood. Yes, public
was risky, but I had a purpose. I wanted to meet a vampire and see
why Luka could no longer love Shasta, why Will had recoiled at my
interested with the creatures, and why the pack would not even
discuss the matter. Even Josh, so contemptuous of the Lycanthrope,
seemed to slightly fear the Children of Dacre.
    I kept my senses attuned to any shift
in smell of the mass of bodies around me, but I was only rewarded
with the overwhelming smell of too much body odor in too small of a
space. I did not realize how gloriously I had failed until later
that night. I continued to stroll through the crowd, oblivious to
anything but my memories of Will and the commercial interests
around me.

    I was cold, colder than I’d ever been.
I didn’t know where I was or how I’d gotten there, but I felt
sluggish laying there with my eyes closed. I could have been waking
from some long dream. The last thing I remembered was my anger at
Josh’s dismissive attitude for the seriousness of the Lycanti curse
and his frolicking among Hollywood’s wealthy as if he were an Anne
Rice character.
    Just thinking about it made my temper
spike again.
    “Her heartbeat just jumped,” a soft
female voice hissed. I felt a rush of breath at my throat, warm and
sweet. My eyes flew open, but darkness flooded them.
    “Leave her be,” another woman answered.
“She’ll recover soon enough.”
    “We can’t just leave her…”
    “I said let’s go,” the other voice cut
her off, lowly but sharply.
    My throat tried to work, but no words
came out. The other woman did not speak up for me either. I fought
to stay awake, but my eyes fluttered and there was nothing but more
darkness left for me, like always.
    I awoke shortly after that with a
massive headache, dizzy, nauseated, and tired. I hadn’t felt so bad
since the final moments of my Change, and that was only because I
had practically died before