Chapter 5
Conner froze, my name a choked whisper on his lips, but Dad was the first to react.
His stunned expression twisted into a scowl.
“Sophie! Are you out of your mind? Have you had enough of this? Pulling a stunt like this just for attention!”
Mom chimed in, her voice sharp. “Get up! Do you have any idea how disgusting you look? You’d stoop to playing dead just to steal Ella’s spotlight?”
My spirit floated beside them, watching them yell at my cold corpse.
They still didn’t believe I was dead. They thought this was just my latest ploy for sympathy.
Conner finally snapped out of his trance. He strode forward and kicked my arm impatiently with the toe of his boot.
“Stop acting! Get up!”
My body shifted slightly on the floor, but otherwise, I was still.
That sent him over the edge.
“I said, get up!” Conner bellowed, and his next kick sent my body rolling over. The impact revealed the fatal wound on the back of my head, along with the countless bite marks scarring my neck.
For the first time, I saw true panic on their faces.
Panic for me.
“Her body…” Mom’s voice trembled. She was finally realizing something was terribly wrong. “Why is it… so cold?”
Dad’s expression finally shattered.
A werewolf’s body temperature is naturally higher than a human’s. If I were faking it, my body couldn’t possibly be this cold,
this stiff.
“Drop the block,” Dad said, his voice raw. “We blocked our pack link to Sophie. Drop it now. Let’s see if she can fake being
alive.”
It was the only way to be sure if a werewolf was truly dead.
Dad, Mom, and Conner closed their eyes, concentrating, trying to find my faint light within the pack’s spiritual bond.
One
One
Two
Three.
Conner’s eyes flew open first, all the color drained from his face. He staggered back a step, his body hitting the wall with a dull thud
Dad went rigid, his lips starting to tremble uncontrollably.
Mom’s face, a mask of scorn and anger moments before, dissolved into pure terror.
Where my life force should have been, there was only a cold, silent void.
I watched their expressions, wondering if they could feel even a fraction of the pain I had endured
“No impossible. Mom collapsed to her knees and crawled toward me
Chapter 5
“Sophie…”
“Sophie is really dead.”
