Itâs dark, itâs eerily still, and itâs like time has slowed, so his movements are almost paused. Instinct takes over, finally, blood rushing and pumping at top speed as he scrapes a step closer to me.
In a flash equal to his speed, if not more, I bolt from my flat-out position with a renewed lease of energy from God knows where and aim for the door.
Adrenaline spiking, survival instinct kicking in, and praying, I turn without even knowing how to.
Even though Iâm stronger and faster in human form since turning, our wolves are way more so. I need to turn to survive and to heal, to fight.
We only heal fast when in form. We only have abilities of extreme strength, ferocious aggression, and razor-sharp claws and teeth when we turn.
I donât get far because he catches me by the back of my hair effortlessly, snares and tugs it, and throws me backward as though Iâm a limp rag.
He violently smashes me into the vanity, sending me crashing through the mirror as wood splinters.
I tumble into a heap on the floor as heavy objects fall on top of me, pain slicing at my body as I convulse at the assault and am rendered mute with the wind being knocked out of me.
Iâm completely defenseless, weak, and no match for him. I submit to the pain as I feel every single one of those slicing shards pierce my skin, writhing in agony and bleeding out.
A scream rips from me, a bloodcurdling wail of hell as Iâm inflicted with a thousand tears and cuts and the bone-crunching, splintering of my body snapping.
Adrenaline takes over despite my body vibrating with the sheer effort, and I get up, grinding my teeth against the crunching of broken bone and dull burning ache, clawing the walls to get purchase.
My hands start changing before me, and relief washes over my mind at the evidence Iâm turning.
This is what I need, but itâs not fast enough or not progressing, and he has me from behind, around my throat, in an effortless maneuver before it takes effect.
He throws me and sends me flying forward with a thrust, straight through the window of our third-floor bedroom with another flinching of unavoidable, stabbing agony.
If I thought hitting furniture was painful, then the slicing assault of a thousand glass shards breaking on your already torn and bleeding skin as you fly through at speed is so much worse.
Thereâs a moment of silence as I hit the air, and my body changes direction, weightless for a second.
Thereâs a moment of ease before realization sinks in that Iâm three floors up, and my stomach lurches as gravity takes hold and yanks me downward.
I hit the ground below with a stomach-churning thud at a crazy speed that reverberates through every cell and pore and knocks the life out of me as it shatters any unbroken pieces I may have left.
Itâs so beyond painful, it almost doesnât hurt at all for a second, my body stunned, until my lungs try to stir and recover, and I start choking on my blood and bile.
I gasp for breath, body convulsing as I try to move, but Iâm bleeding out profusely, and the ground beneath me is turning dark with the evidence.
Iâm slashed all over from breaking through the glass, and shattered from my fall. Iâm hurt everywhere and can feel my life ebbing away from me as I become dizzy and useless. More so than I was.
Iâm dying. I know it, I can feel it, and try as I might to cling on, I canât.
I lie here like a useless piece of discarded nothing, unable to move in any way, as my body fights for dregs of energy and consciousness.
The kind of pain my turning inflicted is the only way to describe how this feels, and I donât know how to finish transforming.
If I donât, Iâll die for sure⦠we canât heal the way we can as wolves, and Iâm critical. Somethingâs keeping me weak enough that turning isnât happening.
No matter how desperate my instincts are, the self-preservation function of my kind seems absent. Weâre meant to turn without thought when weâre too seriously messed up to save ourselves.
Itâs so typical that I canât even get that right.
I can feel my human body giving up on me.
Iâm losing so much blood the grass around me is soaking parts of my clothes that werenât wet before, and the metallic stench of my essence is dowsing out everything else.
I claw the grass around my hands, which are splayed out as Iâm on my stomach, and pull myself forward painfullyârefusing to give up altogether and trying so hard to fight this.
I sob out loud with each wincing attempt. The impending fate is falling over me like a heavy dark cloud, and I know this is futile.
So slowly, painfully so, that I make little progress, only to shudder when a ground-shaking thud on either side of my head signals the landing of two feet.
He jumped from the window above and landed perfectly next to me, in human form. This is no wolf. This is one of them⦠coming back to avenge what they lost so many years ago.
Standing over me, bearing down, he grabs me by the back of my neck and digs his nails into my skin.
Long piercing clawlike talons bite with scorching pain, and he drags me partially upright to snarl in my ear. My body is cringing with the agony of being moved.
I reach back pathetically to grip his hands on my flesh. The skin is cold, icy, and clammy, alien to anything Iâve ever felt before.
I know what this is for sureâwe heard storiesâthe ice-cold, vile touch of the skin of the undead. This lifeless, cold monster is a vampire.
Theyâve returned.
âToo easy. Call yourselves warriors. Youâre all dropping like putrid flies, and with one snap, itâs all over for you, puppy. Iâm rather enjoying dragging it out, thoughâ¦
âWhy donât you go on and beg as your little friends did? Whine and cry some. Make it worth my while.â His icy cold stinking breath fans my cheek and chokes me to quiet submission.
I wretch, losing consciousness despite my fight. I have nothing.
My powers fail me, my words dead on my lips as I gasp for air that my lungs canât seem to take in, and I choke on my bodily fluids.
I canât turn, and Iâve no idea why. Iâm as weak and powerless as Juan said I was. I failed to keep my mate safe by failing to save myself, and I donât deserve his love, his bond.
Because of me, Colton will perish tonight, too. Heâll feel this pain. Heâll know Iâm suffering, and as soon as my heart stops, his will too.
~âIâm sorry, my love. You were right. Iâm no warrior,â~ I say, but I doubt heâll even hear me, as along with my ability to turn, my mind-link is silent and has been since I lost him upstairs.
I close my eyes, trying hard to connect to him, to feel him inside my head one last time, but there is only deathly silence in the recess of my brain as fingers encircle my throat.
I wait for the inevitable squeeze to end it all. My blurry vision focuses in front of me, straining across the lawn in a last-ditch attempt to see the world Iâm leaving behind.
He begins to choke the air out of my body, slowly enjoying the power, savoring it, smug about my lack of fight because I have nothing left. Truly sick.
My eyes settle on the chaos lying before me, and my heart implodes with what I see, the devastation too much for me to compute.
Tears roll down my face as sadness numbs out everything else. A quiet peace fills my senses as shock and reality hit to shield me from the horror of what Iâm witnessing.
There are bodies everywhere. The unwanteds, the guardians, are side-by-side with no care about whether one was essential or not.
Blood, debris, and the lifeless souls of my reject pack are strewn wherever the eye strays, headless, maimed.
Some were torn to pieces, some bleeding out from wounds across their throats and already dead. Dark fluid taints it all. Blood in the shadows stains everything as far as I can see.
Chaos is everywhere. Itâs a massacre we never saw coming, and they hit the weakest in our kingdom, the ones who had no defenses.
Most of us were children or teenagers, and we never stood a chance.
This is it for us. My story is finally over.
I close my eyes and accept fate, choking slowly, no longer panicking but accepting as blood sours my sense of taste, and I gag and fumble at the grass, hot and sticky with the essence of my life beneath my palms.
Iâm struggling to breathe, my heart giving in, unable to fight while my body is broken and shattered. Itâs paused and waiting for the final snap to end this agony and suffering.
The sudden wrenching of the hands around my neck makes me spasm in response, so in tune with the final blow, but instead of relief from this plane to the next, Iâm set free.
Iâm dropped hastily, so my face collides with the damp, stinking grass, and the taste of my blood is rammed backward as I inhale forcefully.
My throat is released, and the flash of air that whooshes by me turns my gaze to follow, weakly, the path of whatever just flew by me.
I slump my head down on my cheek to watch him, as I canât do much else.
A flash of snarling fur, a massive beast in utter rage, takes down the form of the man that held me captive, and I can tell itâs Colton as his scent follows on the wind.
Only his presence can bring me that instant inner completion, and a tiny ounce of my heart is restored.
Heâs ruthless, a true warrior, and one of the biggest of the pack, as he towers at three times the size of my attacker on his hind legs.
Within seconds, without any apparent effort or fight, he tears the man limb from limb, with no hesitation, as though merely pulling apart a piece of damp paper towel.
He scatters him across the back wall in a vile dark-red spray of body parts with an almost explosion-like drama.
Snarling, seething, so his teeth glint in the moonlight devilishly, he turns viciously before throwing its head across the courtyard with enough force that it clears the wall completely.
Itâs an act of rage and fury, and he throws his massive head back, letting the most terrifying, stomach-churning howl erupt from deep within his body, alerting his kindred that they should come.
The noise fills the air, echoes insanely, and overtakes the silence and chaos as more of my brethren clear the walls effortlessly.
Like water over rocks, they scale and flow smoothly in from all directions to land in the courtyard, pouring from every avenue into the small space.
My view is flooded with the forms of wolves of all sizes and shades and packs from every corner of the mountain, uniting for a common enemy.
I try to get up, relief overwhelming me that theyâve come to our aid. Our saviors are here, but I canât move. Try as I might⦠I canât move.
My hands are bloody and ripped up, my body is weak, smashed internally, and I canât feel my legs anymore. Iâm so drained of my life force that Iâm ebbing away into nothingness.
~âLorey? Baby⦠Lorey⦠nooo!â~ The black beast is over me now, turning me gently with massive clawed paws so I face those glowing amber eyes to fall into his safety and care.
He calms from snarling teeth to human form instantly. In a blink, he goes from ferocious to handsome and familiar.
Heâs suddenly smaller, naked before me in the night sky, and a look of utter despair washes over that furrowed brow and tear-filled eyes.
âIâm sorry.â Itâs all I can splutter as I cough up blood and shudder with the effort, too consumed with fatigue to do anything else.
Colton stifles a sob, scrunching his face up, and cradles me close, picking me up as carefully as he can and pulling me against him gently, his pain at me being like this filtering back to me and weighing upon me tenfold.
Sharing our agony, I can feel his heart shredding for me. The devastation is tearing through him at what he sees.
I know he must feel my physical pain, too, but his emotions are overpowering that for both of us.