Chapter 108

Alyson

I don't have a choice but to run. My feet slip on the river rocks as I try to cross over the rapids, failing so quickly and falling into the swift waves. I spot the rogues running nearby on the banks, ready for me to crawl out so they can snap my neck in half. I have to pursue another option to shake these guys off my trail. Thankfully the water will muddle my scent enough for me to hide and loose their tracks.

Pushing myself under the water, I swim under the heavy white bubbles of the river and watch the wolves continue on running down the river's edge, passing me up as I pin my back against a heavy boulder under the waves, thankfully blocking the current from sweeping me down further.

Holding my breath for as long as I can, I dare to breach the surface, cut off when four massive paws jump into the river and stand directly in front of where I am hiding out. It's Maddox, I can tell, his wolf dunking his head underwater and snapping out toward me. I move in time to avoid loosing my head, instead feeling him bite down hard on my wrist.

I watch one of the silencer stone bracelets fall off in crumbles and tumble down with the current. It's not like the wolfsbane where it lingers over a long period of time in my blood. This is instant, and I'm only down to one bracelet now.

Maddox dares to bite at me again and I loop the excess bracelet around his canine tooth, ripping my arm sideways when he clomps down on it with his locked jaw.

The last silencer stone is ripped off my wrist.

I bolt to the surface, running thin on holding my breath, and when I breach, I feel my wolf so present and so fucking pissed off. I shift instantly when I hit the bank, my paws digging down into the gravel and my bones finally stretched out to their potential. I may be smaller than Maddox in size, but my wolf is far more wise than he ever will be.

He charges, a few other noticing rogues returning to his side, adding him in attacking me. I dodge as best as I can, for as long as I can, before I am far too outnumbered to fight back. I take off up the nearest mountainside, feeling them biting at my tail and almost making a strike until I zip sideways, throwing off their tracks a little. I continue to zig-zag through the woods, running uphill and tiring myself out but I know if I'm exhausted, the rogues will be too.

Maddox is forcing himself to move faster now, sensing my tire, and he leaps over a boulder overhead, catching me as I bolt down the mountain. His paws crash into my side and send us both tumbling down the rocky hillside. I howl a noise of utter pain, my ribs snapped, and Maddox does the same, screaming in mortal form after I spot a cut on his forehead that looks damning enough to kill a wolf.

I remain shifted, pushing myself to run more but it's useless. I'm done for now, the rouge all pouncing on my back, three—maybe four—and I am forced to my mortal form under the weight of their towering wolves. I scream as I a shift back, every bone in my body crooked and fractured, especially my leg, tainted in a bright red hue with bruising shades of black and blue already painting up toward my hip and looping around my pelvis.

"Fuck," I pant, laying my head back as the pain forms into black and gray spots over my vision. "Dammit, Maddox, you asshole!"

"You haven't even seen the worst of it yet," he growls, standing over me now, the rogues all circling around us in their snarling, growling forms. Maddox is bleeding from his temple profusely but he doesn't pay it any attention at all. "You think it's fair you and your kind have got the easy life? I am so sick of you being protected. That ends now."

He jumps forward, slamming into me on the ground and pinning my hands over my head with just one of his. He squeezes my wrists together tightly, his knees planted firmly on either side of my hips, his other hand unseen to me. I swallow hard, noticing that he is far too busy stroking his erection, daring to do so just inches away from my sex.

I squirm harder. The rouges all bark and snap in warning toward me.

"No, Maddox, don't do this, damnit!"

"You Lunas are good for one thing, and that's breeding like the fucking submissive whores you are," he growls, leaning over me tauntingly, his eyes red as fire. "I will end this hierarchy once and for all. You are nothing but a baseless she-wolf, no better than anyone else."

I try to push him off of me, writhing my hips up, but it only entices him further.

"This ends now," Maddox grins.

I feel him penetrate my body once, harsh enough to create a scream out of my lips, the scent of my blood more overwhelming now than it had been before. He tips his head back, smiling pridefully now as he dares to thrust again, ripping my body in doing so and creating a cheerful growl through the onlooking rogues.

It doesn't last, though.

A massive wolf pounces into the clearing, along with a herd of wolves that instantly go for attacking the rogues, taking them off guard and slaughtering them at once. The largest wolf of them all comes for Maddox, ripping him off of me and snapping down on his neck. I turn away from the sight, shivering and exposed in the center of this chaos and death trap.

I run a hand down my inner thigh, my fingertips laced with my own blood.

The sight makes me hide my face in shame, only long enough to hear the fighting die down and the death coming to a halt. That's when I begin to worry who has come over this fight, who will hunt me next, seeing how easy of a target I am now.

That familiar voice reigns through my heart, piercing me in my soul.

"Darling, Alyson, I'm here now," Ryan hums.

My hearty pounds in my head, but it doesn't stop there.

"Relax, sweetheart," Olivera sighs in exhale. "You're safe with us."

The word rings more importantly than anything I have ever heard in my life before.

Us.