Lips peeled back, I squeeze his throat, watching his face turn purple. He jerks, holding my gaze with open defiance. My fingers curl tighter, feeling his rapid pulse hammering.
“Submit,” I roar in his face.
A choked-off wail from the nearby crowd filters through the red haze consuming me. Sylvie, Lorne’s mother. I spare her a glance, finding my uncle’s fist clamped on her nape to keep her quiet.
“Don’t interfere. You’ll make him look weak,” Cormac corrects angrily.
My uncle was never much of a problem when my father was alpha, but once his older brother passed, Cormac has never missed an opportunity to make it known what he thinks of my choices in leading the pack. Everyone measures me against Dempsey Blackburn’s great reign, but he actively works to see his sons undermine me without any of them facing me in a challenge.
I fight with my wolf for control. I never let myself break like this. Cormac’s going to use this against me. He’ll probably whisper with the elders who waver between begrudging me their respect and griping about how things were in their day. I’m losing ground.
My wolf isn’t listening. His hackles are raised, growling nonstop. He won’t be satisfied, not by submission alone.
I’m on the verge of doing much worse to Lorne than breaking his arm and choking him out. My wolf wants to tear him limb from limb, death the only acceptable outcome to the challenge.
“That’s enough,” I seethe. “It’s over. I have you pinned. Drop your fucking eyes and submit.”
Lorne’s eye twitches. Movement in the grass drags my focus from him.
Sweet notes of honey wash over me. Warm sunshine breaking through after a summer rain. I whip my head in Avery’s direction.
She’s edging closer. I lose what little thread of my control I’ve regained all over again with her near.
This is why I know fate is wrong. Look how quickly I almost destroyed the fragile balance of order I maintain over the pack because of her.
Pain flares in my sternum, jarring me with a sharp lance before fading. My wolf fights me for our skin, scratching at my restraint. He barrels against the barrier keeping him at bay. If she comes over to me, if she touches me again, I know he’ll break through.
I snarl at her, battling between reason and my crazed wolf wanting the taste of Lorne’s blood on my tongue when I rip his throat out. Everything I’ve worked to build in this pack is seconds from slipping through my fingers if I give in to what the beast within me wants, no, demands—to tear my packmate to shreds for daring to go near his mate.
The very mate I just rejected because this bond is wrong. She can’t be mine. Fate is fucked up for thinking she’s my destined match.
Avery is a Morgan. My enemy. I’ll never trust her.
“Go!” I shout. “Get the hell away from here!”
She flinches, stumbling back another step with hunched shoulders. I grit my teeth, ceasing Lorne’s struggle against my grip pinning him to the ground. My claws dig into his jugular, ready to pierce his skin and soak the ground with his blood.
“Now, Avery!” I order fiercely.
The powerful Alpha command infused in my words booms through the clearing, bringing anyone left standing to their knees in submission. Everyone except Avery.
She remains defiant on her feet, somehow unaffected by the strength of my dominant rule.
Impossible. No one should be able to ignore an order of a pack alpha with that much force behind the shifter magic.
A rumbling growl vibrates in my chest. My wolf is pleased with her. Proud.
8AVERY
My ears pop and my gut twists when Caden issues his order for me to leave, but it doesn’t feel the way it should. Not even the way the Alpha’s command tried to influence me earlier when we crossed paths.
It’s painful, but it’s more from him doubling down on rejecting me as his mate. There’s no spark running through my soul to demand my loyalty to his word.
A few packmates’ whimpers and distressed whining reaches me through the blood rushing in my ears. Some have pissed themselves, faces pressed into the dirt, quivering in fear. Focusing on them becomes difficult, my attention returning inward to the storm battering my psyche.
Maybe this mangled bond that’s burning a hole through the space in my chest where my heart should be has some way of sparing me from an alpha’s power. I don’t have time to examine it, fighting the cascading rush of everything crashing over me.
When he attacked Lorne for being near me, touching me, I thought—the bond made me believe he was changing his mind. Why else would my fated mate go so wild defending me if he didn’t want me?
Well, I don’t want him either.
I hate him.
It hurts to hate him.
I close my eyes in frustration. My soul feels like it’s splitting in two. This is too much. All of it. Panic rises, threatening to suffocate me.
Should it hurt this badly?
I gasp for air, tripping backwards through small divots in the grass. Putting more and more distance between myself and Caden. Away from my mate.
Every wobbling step is agonizing. I’m pretty sure I’ve twisted an ankle, or worse, I fear when a sickening crack jolts me, fire shooting up my leg.
I cry out, nearly losing my balance. Tears stream freely down my face. Every heaving breath I draw burns my lungs and throat.
Goddess help me, I need to get out of here now or I might very well die. For my sisters’ sake, I won’t let that happen.
It’s insane that a delusional part of me still wants to go back to his side. As if he’ll somehow decide it was a mistake, take back the harshest words a shifter fears hearing, and engulf me in his strong embrace again. My aching heart breaks all over again because that will never happen.
Caden Blackburn rejected me.
He doesn’t want a mate like me. A broken shifter who can’t shift. The daughter of the man who turned on his father.
Enemies don’t belong together.
I swallow, picking up the pace of my retreat. No matter how much I’m ready to turn and run until my legs fail me, something still tries to stop me from leaving as I stagger as fast as possible. I swing my wild gaze between the tree line and the scene behind me.
No one’s on their feet yet, awaiting permission. Lorne is still pinned to the ground, Caden’s hand around his throat.
I can’t decide which slices me to the bone more—knowing I’ll never have another chance at happiness again because the mate the moon goddess wrote in the stars cast me aside, or facing Caden’s scowl as he tracks me across the clearing.
He already broke my heart once. The carefully hardened pieces I spent years mending with my own resolve to survive have shattered to thousands of shards, wrecked beyond any hope of repair.
I refuse to let him break my heart a second time.
Go. The venom in his tone echoes in my head.
My teeth chatter and needles prick my skin, spreading tiny fires down my arms. Something unfamiliar fights its way out of me. A growl rends the night air. It takes me a second to realize it came from me, my vocal chords still vibrating strangely with another wounded call.
Something’s happening to my vision. It sharpens, focusing on details at a much greater distance than I should be able to make out, leaving me disoriented. My gaze locks with Caden’s once more. His blue eyes flash gold, his wolf shining through, softening the force of his ire.
Get out of here. Go. We need to go. To run. Let’s run.