Chapter 14

ANNA

Her shoulder was beginning to burn. Anna tugged, but the hand that was holding her forearm tightly against her upper back didn’t even twitch.

Anna turned her head, awkwardly trying to catch a glimpse of Mitch over her shoulder from her position flat on the floor mat.

She was just about to tell him to let her go when she caught sight of his face and realized his attention wasn’t even on her.

Instead, he was staring transfixed at the door to the training room, a frown marring his brow.

Anna opened her mouth, ready to ask what was wrong when a loud roar froze the words in her throat.

Her head swung toward the door just in time to catch sight of Zach lunging through the doorway.

Immediately, Mitch sprang into action as he leapt backward away from her.

Anna followed his lead, scrambling up onto her knees and ignoring the twinge in her shoulder.

She watched Mitch crouch down into a defensive posture before she focused her attention on Zach.

He looked completely feral, his eyes wild and focused entirely on Mitch.

He didn’t even spare her a glance, and Anna knew that the wolf was after blood.

He had half-shifted, with fur sprouting along the visible skin of his arms, and his hair seemed to have thickened and lengthened so that it was brushing his shoulder blades.

His hair looked brighter, much closer to white than gray, and Anna briefly wondered if the lights were just playing tricks on her.

Her attention was drawn to his fingers, which were rounded into sharp claws, and his mouth… Anna could see a speck of blood where his fangs had pierced his lip.

Anna knew with utmost certainty that Zach had given in entirely to his wolf, although it was interesting that he had managed to avoid fully shifting.

Anna cleared her mind, focusing on the situation at hand because she knew that Zach was the tiniest trigger away from shifting completely.

While he was in this half-state, there was a chance they could reason with him.

Anna fervently hoped that her ability to calm Zach down at the lake hadn’t been a fluke.

Just as the thought crossed her mind, Zach bent at the knees and launched himself at Mitch with a ferocious snarl.

His arms were stretched out in front of him, his sharp claws glinting with deadly intent.

The sound of the two bodies hitting the floor was deafening, coupled with the grunt of pain that she ~knew~ came from Mitch.

He didn’t stand a chance against the alpha, and as Anna watched them…it didn’t even look like he was fighting back.

She battled with herself, knowing that if she didn’t act fast, someone was going to die…and it didn’t look like it would be Zach.

Mitch had curled into a ball on the floor under Zach’s vicious attack, one arm protecting his belly and the other protecting his throat.

Anna could already see blood dripping down one of his forearms, her eyes zeroing in on the deep gashes that Zach had inflicted.

She caught a glimpse of bone, causing her stomach to heave as she was thrown into the memory of her mother’s mangled, dead body surrounded by chunks of gore and fur.

She no longer saw the training room or the two males, but instead, Blake’s bloodied face as he grinned sadistically at her, blood dripping everywhere.

She saw her father behind him, beaten, swollen, and unrecognizable. Anna felt her whole body start to tremble as the memory took over her mind.

She could even smell the violence, blood, and death.

A keening moan jerked Anna’s mind to the present, and she realized it had come from her own mouth.

At the same time, she became aware that Zach was probably seconds away from killing Mitch.

Before she could give it a second thought, she jerked into motion, sprinting toward the two males.

She had to dodge around Zach’s arm, the sharp claws almost catching in her shirt, as she leapt up onto his back.

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, her fingers gripping each other tightly so that she couldn’t be shaken off, and her legs were hitched awkwardly around his torso, making her feel a bit like a spider monkey.

The extra weight didn’t seem to slow Zach down at all.

In fact, it was almost as if she wasn’t even there; the raging alpha was fully focused on his prey.

Anna closed her eyes, focusing her thoughts so that she could send out a blast through the pack link, hoping beyond hope that someone, ~anyone~, was close enough to help.

~“Somebody, help! Training Room C. Zach is about to kill Mitch!”~

Knowing that she couldn’t wait for someone to come to the rescue, Anna leaned firmly against Zach’s back, pleading, “Zach, please!”

Her voice was a weak whisper, and she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t react.

She hitched herself higher on his back so that she could move her mouth closer to his ear.

She pushed past the fear clogging her throat so that she would be heard through the bloodlust that had overtaken him.

“Zach, he didn’t hurt me. He was just teaching me how to defend myself. Mitch didn’t hurt me!”

Anna wanted to believe that, just for a second, Zach’s movements had slowed, that maybe, her urgings had gotten through his need to remove Mitch’s head from his body.

She knew that they definitely weren’t out of danger yet, though.

Anna tightened her arms around Zach’s neck, knowing with absolute certainty that she would be unable to physically hurt the brute of a male.

“Zach,” she said again, “please, you’re scaring m—me…” Her voice broke as she trailed off, and she felt a shudder run through the body underneath hers.

Zach swung his head from side to side as if he had just awoken from a dream and couldn’t quite understand what was going on.

A snarl escaped his lips, and as his body tensed up again, Anna prepared herself for a renewed attack against Mitch, who was lying completely still on the ground.

Anna was surprised when Zach suddenly took a step back, away from the bleeding male.

There was a brief pause before he took another step. And then another.

Before Anna could even consider doing anything like jumping off his back, Zach spun around and sprinted from the room.

Anna shrieked at the suddenness of the movement before she wrenched her head back to try and catch a glimpse of Mitch before he was out of sight.

All she saw was his crumpled, bloody body before they were through the door and moving quickly down the hallway.

~“Mitch is still in the training room. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead,”~ Anna sent out to the pack link, hoping someone would come.

She knew that Zach was probably sane enough to hear her now, but she didn’t care. Mitch needed help.

Anna buried her head into Zach’s shoulder, the speed at which they were passing through the hallways making her feel dizzy.

It wasn’t hard to guess what direction he was headed in, and as if to prove her right, a cool breeze rushed past them, bringing the faint sounds of birds and rustling leaves.

Anna lifted her head but almost immediately put it back down; the sight of trees flying past her was the only thing she could see.

She decided firmly that she would wait until Zach had exhausted himself before she did anything.

Anna quickly lost track of time but knew that it had been at least an hour, if not more, before Zach finally slowed his pace to a jog.

She could feel his body heaving under her arms, sweat causing her shirt to stick to the back of his.

She lifted her head once again and saw nothing familiar…unless you counted the trees, which all looked the same to her.

She glanced over her shoulder, hoping that she would at least be able to see the top of the Calmariel ranges quickly dwindling.

The knowledge of just how far away she was from the den, from Mitch, sat like a stone in her stomach.

~Was he dead?~

No one had tried to contact them, and she wondered if her message had actually gotten out.

What if no one had heard her, and they had just left Mitch to lie in a pool of his own blood, dying?

Or…what if he had been dead before they had even left?

She hadn’t been able to look closely enough, hadn’t been able to see if his chest was moving with his breath.

Anna closed her eyes as guilt and grief filled her. The pack probably hadn’t contacted them because they were busy dealing with the death.

Knowing that there was nothing she could do right now, Anna turned her attention back to Zach.

He had come to a stop, his arm stretched out and supporting his weight, and hers, against the wide trunk of the nearest tree.

His breath was see-sawing in and out roughly as if he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.

Anna waited, chewing her bottom lip and wondering if she should break the tense silence that was surrounding them.

She couldn’t bring herself to get down from her perch on his back just yet though she knew that it would probably help him recover faster from his run.

The warmth seeping through his clothes into her body was too comforting and seemed to calm her rattled mind.

If she let go, the memories might come rushing back. Mitch, her father, her mother, Blake—the smell of death.

Anna sucked in a breath sharply, pushing the thoughts away as Zach moved.

She watched the back of his head intently, listening as his breathing started to finally calm down and wondering whether he was still caught up in his rage and bloodlust.

She fervently hoped not because she had no idea how to help him if he was.

She would probably say the wrong thing and send him flying back to finish Mitch off, while she would be left stranded there, wherever that even was.

After another tense minute, Anna decided that she had had enough.

Zach obviously wasn’t going to break the silence, so she stiffly slid down from his back.

As her feet touched the ground, her legs buckled, numb from holding on so tensely for so long.

Zach still didn’t move, almost as if he were frozen with his hand planted against the bark of the tree.

Anna moved slowly until she was standing in front of him so that she could look into his face.

But he refused to meet her gaze, his eyes firmly on the tree.

“Zach…,” she finally uttered softly.

She stood on her tiptoes, ignoring the twinges of pain in her legs as feeling came rushing back. She pressed a palm against his jaw, applying pressure until his face was tilted down toward her.

He allowed the movement, but his eyelids dropped so that his gaze was still hidden from Anna, the rest of his face a stone facade that gave away nothing.

Anna stepped closer, the other palm rising so that both her hands were cupping his face. “Zach, please… What’s going on?”

She was annoyed at the way her voice trembled, wanting to appear anything but weak at that moment.

She ignored the way her body seemed to ignite with the proximity between their bodies, his chest brushing against hers and his scent filling every pore, surrounding her.

Her palms tingled where they lay against his skin as if a thousand tiny electric shocks were shooting from his skin into hers.

It felt like the tips of her fingers were itching painfully, distracting Anna from the sensuous heat between them.

Just as she focused on that itch, she became aware of a murmur.

Even as she became aware of it, she knew that it did not come from the woods surrounding them…but instead, it was coming from ~inside~ her head.

Before she could focus on the sound and figure out what it was, Zach finally moved.

He hunched his shoulders downward as his eyes slowly rose to move over Anna’s face.

Her attention completely on him, Anna caught her breath at the guilt in the blue eyes, and she knew that the enormity of what had happened had hit him in full force.

Still, he didn’t say anything. Instead, his hands slowly rose up.

Anna waited in anticipation for the feel of his hands on her skin, but instead of touching her face, he gripped her wrists and began to gently tug her hands away from him.

At the same time, he stepped backward, and Anna felt the loss deeply.

“Please,” he started grimly, “don’t comfort me.”

Anna copied Zach’s movement and stepped back, inhaling deeply as she steeled herself for a different kind of battle than the violent fight in the training room.

Zach’s eyes followed every movement, the silence almost tangible.

“What the hell is going on, Zach?” she finally said, anger coursing through her voice.

The worry for Mitch was still weighing on her mind, but she pushed it back, hoping that Mitch was being looked after by other pack members.

This was the second time that Mitch had almost died at the hands of the male in front of her, and this time, he had almost succeeded.

Anna knew that the fact she had been near Mitch both times was important but decided that was something to deal with later, on her own—because if she was a trigger for making this alpha want to kill people, then leaving Silver River was something she needed to seriously consider.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, Anna felt defiance stab through her. This was her home now. She was going to fight for it!

She would not let another violent alpha chase her away. Zach continued to watch her, his mouth a tight firm line.

He was clearly not going to answer her, and Anna felt the anger turn into rage.

A rage that seemed alive and clawing at her from the inside to be unleashed.

“Fine, you want to sulk, go ahead,” she finally snapped into the silence, her hand slashing down between their bodies.

Satisfaction momentarily filled her at the shocked expression on Zach’s face, his eyes wary. Still, he said nothing.

“I’m done,” Anna continued harshly.

“I’ve been around violence my whole life, but this pack, you and this pack, were supposed to be my escape from it. Instead, here you are trying to kill one of the first people to truly accept me, to treat me as family…and you can’t even look me in the eye and tell me why!”

Anna could feel her eyes beginning to burn with angry tears, which only made her angrier. She blinked furiously, refusing to let them fall.

Zach didn’t comment on her watery eyes. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.

Anna shook her head at him before she stormed past him, heading back in the direction they had come.

She had no idea how far they had traveled or even where they were in relation to the den, but she’d figure it out.

She’d only been walking for a short time when the sound of a stick breaking came from behind her.

Anna huffed in annoyance, refusing to turn around.

Instead, she increased her pace though the logical side of her brain told her that she wouldn’t be able to outrun him.

He didn’t comment, only increasing his stride so that he didn’t lose sight of her.

They kept walking in silence for a long time, accompanied by the sound of their feet moving along the forest floor.

Eventually, Zach picked up his pace so that he could fall into step beside Anna, who still resolutely refused to look at him.

This time, he was the one to softly break the silence.

“Anna—”

“No! She threw a glare in his direction. Not right now; I’m still too furious with you.”

There is something I need to tell you,” he carried on, ignoring her. You’re the reason I attacked Mitch.”

Anna gasped, stopping to turn and look at him, horrified.

“What could I have possibly done to trigger that?!” she demanded, shocked that he would pin his despicable behavior on her.

“Come on, let me have it. What ~exactly~ did I do to make you so psychotic? I mean, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, ignoring being comatose and kidnapped for some of it, so I must have ~really~ annoyed you to make you want to kill someone,” she finished sarcastically.

When he didn’t immediately reply, she started tapping her foot in annoyance, raising an imperious eyebrow when he met her gaze.

At that moment, she had truly forgotten that he was the alpha of her pack and could change the course of her future by, maybe, kicking her out of the pack for insubordination.

“Come on, out with it then!” she snapped impatiently when he didn’t say anything.

Zach rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, staring over Anna’s shoulder into the woods behind her.

“I did it because I was jealous,” he finally muttered, ashamed. He cleared his throat before continuing, his voice now loud and clear.

“I did it because you’re my mate.”

Anna stared at him, gobsmacked. As he snuck a glance at her, trying to discern her reaction to his announcement, she burst into hysterical laughter.

“Mate! Good one; try again.” She hooted before turning and walking, leaving a flustered Zach behind her.