Halfway Bitten Read Online Free Page B

rock, smoking, and blowing plumes in my direction. I think it was intentional; a sort of announcement that she was around so that I didn’t get startled and roast the little bitch with a spellstrike. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I weighed the possibility of faking it and frying her with a bolt out of sheer principle. Tragically, my better angels won out. I dropped my hand, albeit reluctantly.
    This version of Anna was quite different from the playfully sexy girl who’d frequented the diner before she left with Emilia, the daughter she shared with Wulfric. There was a tightness to her eyes, and a hardened expression that robbed her of whatever cute might have lingered. She was still exotic, but more like a venomous fish lying in wait on the bottom of the ocean. There was beauty, but there was palpable danger there, too. I watched her carefully and stood completely still, deciding to let her speak first.
    She did.
    “You only have him because it isn’t convenient for me to “—she paused, letting her eyes slide over me, and I felt my face flush an even deeper shade of red at her barb—“reclaim him,” she finished, then granted me a frosty smile. “My pack will have these lands, Carlie, with or without his blessing. We need the room, and he doesn’t.”
    “How do you know what he needs?” I snapped. I felt my mouth go dry at the question, as part of me hoped she didn’t have an answer.
    She nearly purred with laughter. “He needs what I tell him he needs. He’s really quite the man-child, that one. One minute, he’s making love to me and telling me that we’ll never be apart, and the next he’s worked himself into a frenzy over some meaningless prey animal with a broken leg. He’s so perfectly unformed despite his age. That’s where I come in, Carlie. Do you see?” She flicked her cigarette away and looked mournfully into the empty pack, then tossed it as well. Add littering to reasons for hating her—not that I needed any more.
    “I think I do,” I said.
    “You do?” Anna’s eyes narrowed. I’d given her the one answer she wasn’t expecting.
    I walked a step closer toward her and had the satisfaction of seeing the hint of a flinch. So, she wasn’t immune to threats. Good to know. “You lay underneath him like a two dollar whore so that you could have a child—who you don’t deserve, by the way—in hopes that you could lure him away from lands that your pack of half-breeds wants to control.” She bristled and I threw my next dart. “The problem is that your pack is too weak to keep any real powers out of your turf, so you’re relegated to second-class lands in the middle of an empty wilderness. You don’t even have the guts to stand and fight for it.” I drifted my eyes up and down her petite form, then let them rest on her face. “Or maybe you do all of your best work on your back. I don’t know, and I don’t care. He’s mine, and the lands are his. If you were serious about taking them, your alpha wouldn’t have fled when I approached and left you to do the dirty work.”
    Anna was getting angry now. I saw amber flashes in her eyes and knew she was struggling to contain the cat within. Good. I had more where that came from.
    I sniffed to let her know what I thought of her unseen master. “That’s beta behavior, Anna. Are you sure you’ve hitched yourself to the brightest star?”
    She bared her teeth in the outline of a smile, sliding from her rock in a liquid grace as her feet hit the grass without a sound. Cocking her head, she regarded me with a cool gaze. I felt the animal inside her, and didn’t care for it at all. When she spoke, her voice bubbled with arrogance.
    “My pack is perfectly capable of taking what we wish, especially from a half-coven of witches who would rather heal a bird’s wing than practice actual magic. You’ve got bigger problems, Carlie. You just don’t see it yet, or maybe you do, but the whole heart of gold thing has you blinded.” She