Everyone was chattering and murmuring and pissed off at the audacity of Cheyenne to volunteer a cow shifter, and Raven’s fury was growing with each breath as she listened to these idiots.
“I’ll do it.” She dragged her gaze to Tommy. “I’ll buck. Should be easy for tweedle-dickhead over there. I’m just a cow.”
“Yeah, it’ll be easy, and I won’t get no points when you go prissy prancing around the arena with me bored on your back! I’m not getting embarrassed out there!” Buster yelled.
“Then don’t get bucked off by a cow, and you won’t be embarrassed,” Raven barked. “Are we done here?”
Tommy’s bushy gray brows were arched high and his lips were pursed. “I think we have everything we need. Bull shifters”—he cleared his throat and amended—“and cow shifters. I need y’all changed and ready in five minutes. We’re going to start loading the chutes. The crowd is already wondering what the hell is going on. And for the love of everything holy, don’t eat anything!”
Chapter Fifteen
“This is really happening.” Raven couldn’t catch her breath. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re too badass to panic right now,” Dead assured her quietly. “I’m gonna be there to help load you into the chute, and I told Tommy ain’t nobody touching your flank strap but me. I won’t change and load into my chute until you’re done bucking, and at the end of it, Cheyenne will be waiting for you.”
“But not where I can get her, right? You told everyone to stay out of my animal’s way?”
“Yes, I did. The handlers are professionals at their jobs. No more worrying over the little details. Between me and Quickdraw and Two Shots and Cheyenne, we’ve got you.”
“What if I kill Buster?”
“Well, good riddance,” Dead muttered, pulling her shirt over her head and dropping it in a pile with the jean shorts he’d already peeled off her. “That dude is a chode.”
She snorted. She didn’t mean to, but it just crawled up her throat and escaped.
Dead gripped her shoulders and lowered down just enough to look at her eye-level. “You’re gonna do this, Raven. You’re gonna own the animal. You’re not gonna hide her anymore, and I’m gonna be so damn proud of you. When that gate opens? You get Buster off you. You put him in the dirt, okay?”
“I can do this,” she whispered shakily.
“Louder and like you mean it.”
She exhaled and swallowed the coward in her back down. “I can do this.”
“Thata girl. Hagan’s Lace, go earn that name. Go show people who the fuck she is.”
A handler yelled through the door, “We need her now!”
“Quick change, okay?” Dead murmured.
Raven nodded, and he jogged to the door, still clad in only a pair of jeans. “Do this for them boys that are down right now,” he said at the door. He gave her a wink. “I’ll see you out there. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
When he disappeared out the door, Raven clenched her shaking hands. “Be tough. Be the animal. Be tough. Be the animal,” she chanted to herself.
The change was painful because she pushed it, but a few moments of bones breaking, skin stretching, fur growing, face elongating, and horns pushing out of her skull, the pain was done, and only a tingling headache was left behind. But that, she didn’t care about in this body. All this part of her cared about was filling a bone-deep need for violence. That was the Hagan blood in her. Thanks, Ma. Thanks, Pa.
She charged the door and slammed it open so hard, the thing fell off its hinges. Outside, Dead and a handler were sitting on top of a fence, and Dead was pointing to the rope the handler had just dropped. It had been attached to the door handle. “Told you you wouldn’t need that.”
The handler looked terrified.
Ima kill him. Teach him real fear. She charged him, but Dead pulled him off the fence easily. Killjoy.
She tossed him a snort and looked for another victim, preferably one that wasn’t under Dead’s annoying arm of protection.
There. At the end of the alleyway was a human. Just a little one. Just a man waving a glow stick. Fuck that man. And fuck that glowstick.
Also screw that television above her that showed her trotting down the alleyway. She bucked her back end and kicked up dirt. Screw you TV. She pushed her legs and charged toward the man at the end, but he was a smart little cockroach and scrambled over a gate. Oh, another human, another glowstick, and he was in a little pen. She bolted for him, but as soon as she was within killing distance, he slipped through an open gate, and it slammed closed behind him.
Screw you, Billy Buzzkill.
The sting of betrayal was as long as a river and deep as a canyon, and it fueled her rage.
There were people up on the fences of the holding pen now, yelling, pissing her off, and something hit her hind end and stung. A cattle prod? Had someone just hit her with an electric current. Everyone was going to die.
She pushed forward, charging at a man up ahead in the narrowing alleyway. This time, she took matters into her own hooves and jumped for the top of the metal panel to get to him. He yelled and fell backward into the dirt, and she would’ve cleared it and landed on top of him if someone hadn’t used the cattle prod on her shoulder right at that moment. She clattered back to earth and bellowed a battle cry. The panels were closing in behind her, and she had to turn her head to fit her wide horns through the narrow alleyway. She saw light through the open
