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

corridor, shining in a ray of dusted sunlight, a horrible goat-lizard monster with a fan of colored feathers arcing from its shoulders and a long, curled tail that ends in a vicious stabbing spike.  
    Shiori sees the Stricken and lets go of me. Her back bends and snaps and a long, curving black stinger drops between her legs.
    My creature’s furious, both at Shiori’s disobedience and the Stricken so close its scent is making me choke. My skin hisses and burns while I fight to keep her caged—
    The goat-lizard sees us, lifts its head and looses a frenzied bellow.  
    Heavy thudding on the sidewalk above.  
    “He’s calling his bros!” Trish screams while Anik slams his bare fist into the Stricken’s face. The creature’s goat head whips to the side and smashes into the wall while its spiked lizard tail arcs around and slices through the air an inch from Pimniq’s neck.
    “You’re too weak to call her,” Shiori says, turning to stare at me with her fractal insect eyes. She doesn’t sound angry. Or frightened. In fact she doesn’t sound anything …just…empty. “You’re too weak to lead.”
    Shiori glances at me, then at Connor and Trish, and I know she’s scheming, calculating the odds of her challenging me right the fuck now and coming out ahead.  
    I snarl and unleash a little more of my animal.
    A red-plated scorpion stinger unfolds over my head.
    “Lily no!” Connor screams, leaping between me and Shiori.  
    “This way!” Wes yells, eyes wide as he tugs at me and Trish. “We gotta move, boss lady! Now!”  
    The goat-lizard lashes its tail out again, the spike whizzing past my head and slamming into the wall. My creature’s raging in her cage, demanding to be freed, but I know if I do I won’t be able to chain her and my son Lachlan will be lost.  
    She cares nothing for him.  
    He’s a Skin.  
    There’s only her animal will, her desire, her need.
    If I loose her she’ll never let me back.  
    I lean forward and roar, inches from Shiori’s ugly plated face, and roar out a little heat, just enough to make the bitch understand who she’s fucking with.  
    Shiori withers from the white heat escaping my lips. He hair singes. She staggers a few steps back, lifts her hands in surrender, like she’s finally realized who’s boss and turns to face the fucking Stricken.
    It’s not over between me and her.  
    Not by a long shot.  
    And something’s telling me I better heal and get whole real quick, because the first challenge to my alpha status is already here—  
    Connor smashes into the goat creature, only half-wolf, his powerful jaws snapping at the thing’s scaled neck. Black blood sprays across the corridor and for a moment I want this fight, this kill, want to feed on the Stricken’s sweet blood, but three more hideous animals leer down at us from the hole overhead, their jaws leaking spittle…and I know they have the same idea.  
    Eat or be eaten.  
    Anik and Pim are trapped in the narrow corridor behind Connor and the goat creature. Shiori’s flicking her barbed legs up at the Stricken piling around the hole.  
    “Anik!” I scream as Connor and the goat creature tumble to the floor in a blur of teeth and claw.
    Anik leaps on the goat-lizard’s back, grabs its tail in both hands and somehow manages to wrap it around the thing’s neck, strangling it.
    “Run!” Connor yells, slamming his clawed hand through the creature’s chest while Anik hops off the thing’s back and toward us.  
    But Pim’s standing frozen, pressed into the wall, her face pale and slick with sweat, mumbling something I can’t hear.
    “Run Pim!” I scream again, and this time she startles and leaps over Connor and the dying goat-lizard as another Stricken, a hissing fanged monkey, drops into the corridor. The monkey lifts Connor by the throat and slams him into the wall, then stabs his clawed hand deep into Connor’s chest.  
    Connor’s eyes widen in shock.
    The monkey creature hisses and