Filed to story: Owned by the Alphas Novel
“Something is wrong, Spitfire. Zale and Enzi feel it; they’re warning me with their shadows. They’re unsettled. Get back to the city,” Brax ordered. I frowned, looking for the incoming ambush. I couldn’t see it.
“We don’t have time,” Kai snarled, more in tune with his wolf and the vampires than I was.
“Make time. Get our mate back to the city, Nikolai,” Brax snarled down the link. I swallowed hard. I trusted Zale and Enzi; I trusted Brax, but if we didn’t have the time, then how could we run?
“We won’t make it?” I asked Kai. He frowned, looking around the forest before snapping his head back to me and shaking his head with a slow, somber gesture. I nodded, sucking in a breath before speaking down the link again.
“I’ll get back to you and them. I promise,” I said. Then I had to pull away because the vampires were there. They didn’t pause like last time; they didn’t give us that creepy stare. They just attacked.
Running full speed, they were on us. The entire pack launched into the fight, as did Nikolai. I used my magic, throwing it at vampires, sending them flying, breaking the necks of ones that came for my wolves before they could touch them.
But there were a lot of vampires. More than I had seen in one group. Even the ones around the wall had been spread out, but there were a lot here, and that had me nervous. Why had they sent so many? Sacrificed so much of their army for one ambush?
Nikolai bit through another vampire, tossing it into the snow as I fought off a vampire that tried to get past my magic. It couldn’t. I was strong, and so was my will. My magic and shadows were a team on their own, enacting my will on the vampires.
It spread through them, taking out each one as it tried to attack and kept it even for my pack and my mate.
Until there was a crunch behind me. I spun just as a vampire dropped down from the tree above me. I crumpled beneath the weight of him, my magic immediately rushing to save me, but it was too late.
Silas grinned and locked my wrists in silver shackles. My magic hissed and writhed as the shackles dragged it back into me. I fought it, trying to kick Silas off me, but he just grinned, his strength much more than mine.
The shackles locked my magic inside my body, weakened my shadows as if they were sedated. They clawed inside me, trying to scrape their way back out, but they lost that fight, and it went quiet in my body.
“Nikolai!” Derik screamed. Then he was there, tackling Silas from my body, shoving him into a tree with a feral roar that shook the ground. I stood up and brushed myself off, trying to yank the shackles off, but I couldn’t.
They were locked on me, and every time I moved, they burned my skin. Another vamp went to grab my shoulder as Kai fought Silas, their bodies loud as they clashed, and Nikolai tried to take him down. But he was old, fast, and strong, with so much backup.
And then the wolves started turning back to human, roaring and whining as their bodies were forced to shift.
“My magic,” I whispered in horror as it stole the control of shifting from them.
Without the moon either, they couldn’t turn.
“Keep fighting, get away from them, we’re coming!” Brax called down the link. I saw him running with Derik and more of the pack, but they weren’t going to make it.
I saw that when Nikolai turned, his human body twisting into shape, he didn’t miss a beat and tried to take down Silas. But the vamp sidestepped him and locked his wrists in shackles too. Nikolai growled as the pack fought but lost.
“Derik, I understand that things are getting bad out there, but I’m going to need your help in the city. The wolves have no magic and have already started in the declination of their control. The buddy system is no longer an option, and I’m not sure how many I can keep away from the humans,” Galen said in the link. Tears sprang to my eyes.
Rage shook inside me as I shoved my heel into the nose of one of the vamps. He snarled and backhanded me so hard, my head spun.
Nikolai growled and went for me, but Silas nodded to more vamps that came in to keep Kai locked down. It took ten of them, but they kept him away from me. It only took three to keep me in place.
“I’m almost there with backup, Spitfire. Derik’s heading back to help Galen with the humans,” Brax said. I sucked in a breath.
“Who is with the twins?”
“Cain and Beenie. She said she needed to be. She warned us, Spitfire.”
“About what?” I gulped.
“That things are about to get a lot worse. That the pack is going to lose something.
She was crying and said to stay strong, that they won’t break you, but asked if you could save Kai. She begged, said he wouldn’t survive this again if you didn’t help him through it,” Brax strangled out. My eyes flew to Kai, who was wide-eyed.
We both knew what was happening, what was coming.
The vampires were taking us, and it wouldn’t be to accept the offer of Silas’s hand in marriage. It would be to torture us until we gave him what he wanted: the pack, the city, and control.
Which we wouldn’t give up. Not when I was going to spend every minute making sure I got my mate out alive and protected the pack that had accepted me when no one else had.
“I’ll keep us alive. You keep the pack and humans alive. It’s going to be bad without my magic, but I need you to keep everything together until I get us out,” I cried in the link, refusing to let a single tear fall when my heart was breaking for what I knew they were going to feel.
“Don’t let them take you, beautiful. Please. We can’t–“
“I’ll close the link between us, I have to. We won’t survive what they are going to do if we can feel the pain in each other,” I said as Kai stayed rigid, his eyes dark and heavy as the vamps pushed him to his knees in the snow.
The pack had been subdued, on their knees as Silas came around to me, a smirk pulling at his smug face. I swung at him, but he just laughed, moving out of the way.
It was a distraction though, and when he stepped to the side–closer to me–I ripped out of the vamps’ arms and sunk my teeth into Silas’s neck. Toxin leaked out of my canines before I was ripped off.
“Have some toxin, bitch.” I grinned, and Silas snarled, gripping my throat and squeezing before looking over his shoulder.
“Kill that one.” He nodded to Tatum, and before I could stop him, the vampires holding Tatum on his knees broke his neck.
I screamed past the hold on my throat as the entire pack whined and howled in my head. My heart broke, the pain crushing my heart as I felt the death down to my soul. He was an elder; he was one of us; he was Kai’s beta. The tears fell, and I lashed out at Silas, who laughed.
“Oh, was he important to you, little winter born? So was my flesh. Rip it with those teeth again, and another one dies. Do you understand how this works?” He snarled, and I clenched my jaw shut. His grip tightened, and I refused to cower despite the oxygen in my brain depleting.
My head swam, and I tugged at his grip as Kai fought the vamps that held him.
“I’m going to separate every piece of skin from your flesh if you don’t let her go,”
Kai snarled, and Silas eyed him with a laugh.
“And how are you going to do that, Nikolai? Every vampire you kill is another pack member you lose. Every taste of me you get will be another scar on your mate,” he threatened.
“You have no leverage here, Alpha, and now that I have my little playthings all tied up and ready to play, I think it’s time we leave so the backup on its way finds death, not us, hmm?” Silas said, turning so his bright red cape flicked snow everywhere, his naked torso as white as the innocent puffs.
His eyes were as red as his accessories. He looked crazed and excited. It was a dangerous combination, and I was terrified. Not that I would show him that. He wouldn’t get anything from me.
Kai roared as he fought, but it was no use. The vamps had us.
“Take the Alpha and Luna. Kill the rest,” Silas ordered, and before I could release the scream in my throat or Kai could release the pain and anger in a roar, the vampires knocked us both out.
Darkness claimed me, and I knew waking up was going to be my worst nightmare.
But I couldn’t wait because the shackles weren’t going to stay on forever, and the second they were off, I was going to take Silas out.
12. The Beta
DERIK
I was not in control. Everything was too loud, too chaotic.
My head was fucked, the pain on the edges of the link making my control and sanity fray at the edges. I needed everything back to the way it was; I needed my brother back; I needed my mate. I needed to kill those fucking vampires.
I didn’t get those urges, or at least when I did, I could control them. But I hadn’t for days, not since Brax had gotten to the forest and found so many of our pack dead with no trace of Lorelai or Nikolai.
But I could feel them–not fully, since she refused to open the link, but the ache was there. They were suffering, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
We didn’t have the numbers or the resources to go in there for a rescue mission.
Even if we did, the wolves were too lost to the winter.
The change in the city in a matter of days lingered in the shadows that filled it. The whole city was quiet, eerie. Nobody left their homes, scared of the savagery their wolves were capable of. It was as if not letting winter have its way for so long had made the descent harsher, and now it was getting its revenge.
I sat in my office, scrawling with a quill on a piece of parchment, writing out more rules the wolves wouldn’t listen to. Then I screwed it up and threw it at the wall.
“Fuck!” I growled, running my hands through my hair. I clutched it tightly as Brax came in. His stubble was rough, his hair, shaggy and wild. He ran more often than not, and when he wasn’t, he was with the twins.
He played with their shadows, whispering to them as if he was talking to Lorelai, but I knew he was just losing it. No way Lorelai would let the twins feel what they were going through when she wouldn’t even let us in.
“Since when does Saint Derik swear?”
“Since his mate got taken,” I snapped back, and Brax clenched his jaw, his eyes flaring at the reminder. If I could see his shadows, I knew they’d be hovering.
He barely kept them in anymore. It was obvious in the way the room fell cold and people were shoved away from him whenever they came close. Now they didn’t try.
“The pack link is too weak. We’re losing them,” Brax bit out, and I nodded.
“You don’t think I know that? What do you want me to do about it?”
Brax shrugged.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?