Page 293 of Alpha Mates

Creatures skitter by me in a rush, their beaded eyes swollen with terror as they escape from their hovels. They run for safety, too scared to notice natural enemies doing the same at their sides while I watch thundering storm clouds gather above.

“Dear Goddess,” I whisper to myself while every fibre of my being, including Max, screams for me to run.

Somehow, I find the strength to remain where I am. I hold my ground, keeping my ears perked for movement, but when the animals are all gone and all that’s left is the coven beyond, there’s nothing to hear.

Not until the screaming begins.

It’s so sudden, so loud and disfigured that I stumble backwards, almost falling on my ass as the shriek pierces my ears. Another rises, and they blend together like voices in a chorus, but these songs aren’t given freely. They’re ripped from grating throats like a choir of mangled souls ascending from the sky in the midst of their crescendoing note.

Whatever witch or spell had kept the sounds of the coven hidden within the fog of the night had fallen,hard.In its absence, shrieks and wails from the living and dead alike poison the air with a cry no heartfelt being could ignore.

My heart however is exempt because at the moment I saw those raised welts on her skin, I found myself anchored to Katerina’s cause.

The earth convulses noticeably with the rise and instant vanquishing of power. I stand in darkness, and yet it’s as if I am watching it all unfold.

All who try to oppose her are wiped from the board, and each who holds any real chance at doing so has their power seized by the one that is soon stronger than them all.

Katerina.

If I thought I understood her power before, if I dared to believe that Julian and I had even an inkling of how strong she really was, then we’d been gravely wrong. Because while I canfeelthe witches that I can’t see clawing at the earth for the strength to beat her—and I’m sure they best her in numbers alone—none can succeed in tearing her down.

The earth shakes as they try to wrangle strength from it, but it doesn’t heed their calls. It bows alone to her.

In the madness, amidst the death and the carnage, I hear the rush of steps. A stark break from the chaos that feels like black ink splashing on a canvas, not meant to be there, not directed to fall the way they do.

I race towards them, spelled or perhaps bound to the promise I made to Katerina. It must be that because even so, I don’t think I would run towards the version of her that called upon magic I’d only heard of in legends. She is not the one in my mind, but the witch who’d looked at Julian and me with such fear—the one who stared at that lone tree as if it was her maker.

My claws drop, my canines quickly do the same, and even as fear pumps in my lungs, I don’t give it the chance to fester. I keep moving, racing through the webbed trees, moving deeper into the unknown until I spot them.

It’s an old woman, exceedingly old. She stumbles into the dark woods, looking over her shoulders with weeping lemon-yellow eyes that widen when they stutter over some sight at her back.

While she scrambles forward, I make my approach, slow and deadly silent and yet she somehow she senses me.

From across the length of the woods, she looks towards me, first with surprise, and then desperation. Our species are enemies as old as time, and yet, she looks at me as if I’m her salvation while she tries to escape the kin at her back.

Flashes of purple burst against her skin while punishing lightning strikes the ground, electrifying the air and quieting that chorus of screams one by one.

“Please,” she whispers, voice trembling like the soil beneath our feet. “P-please.”

Before I can disappoint her, something ripples beneath the earth, so large I can sense its power without trying. It moves like a snake, one propelled by energy that homes in on its prey with terrifying dexterity.

My blood runs cold as it surges from the ground, a purplish blazing rope of spiked magic that wraps around the old witch’s torso.

She shrieks as the spikes pierce her skin and then chokes as blood spills from her lips. The woman screams at me and then the world at large, begging for help as the coil of magic drags her back.

Her nails dig into the ground, frail and bony at first, and then strong and with plump flesh as the skin on her bones slinks away, and the hidden witch beneath surfaces.

It’s not an elderly woman—it’s not even a woman. It’s a youthful man with flaming eyes that burn in agony while Katerina’s magic drags him back to pay his dues.

I step forward, moving slowly until I fill the space he’d crouched in only a moment ago. My gaze travels across the clearing he’d escaped from, spotting for the first time what I’ve only felt until now.

It’s barely a glimpse—a crack between the coven’s surrounding trees, but inside, I see huts on fire, bodies charred on the ground, and one sinister figure standing at the centre of it all.

Katerina isn’t attacking them, at least not consciously. She isn’t doing anything herself.

Katerina stands prone, arms hung limply at her sides, head cast back while tears spill from the corners of her eyes. She cries, silently, while her magic pours from her without restraint.

It’s her magic that does it all for her—her magic that chases down every straggler before I have to, her magic that swats down every ill-minded witch that tries to attack her. It’s her magic that kills them all, that knocks her enemies down like a child striking down pieces on a chessboard.