Page 333 of Alpha Mates

He launches himself back at me, slamming his body into mine. His paws rise high, aiming to rip my chest open. I shove them away, but they’re soon back with his bloodlust leading the assault.

My vision becomes a blurred catalogue of open jaws and extended claws. I parry each one while the world as I know it falls apart.

Oliver’s attacks never stop, never slow. He keeps advancing, again and again, and I avoid each attempt on my life in a daze.

It doesn’t feel real.

My heart pounds in my ears. I’ve never felt so scared in my life, but it also feels like a bad dream that’s going to end once Oliver snaps out of it, or I put a stop to him …

I almost want to let him win—just so this can end.

He’s bigger than I remember, faster too, but I’m not sure if that’s a testament to time or the fact that he’s not holding back. That’s the strangest part of all this—not that I’m fighting him or that his amber eyes are more maroon now, but that with each attack, he intends to hurt me.

No, not hurt. He’s trying to kill me.

He can’t be. It’sOliver. He’s lost, confused … scared. I can only scent his bloodlust, but that doesn’t mean the other feelings aren’t there. He’s not trying to kill me, because that’s not him—he would never hurt me.

Only … he is. It is him. It’s Oliver, and he’s trying to kill me.

Alex’s whine slices through the air just as Oliver’s jagged claws catch my shoulder. They dig in, freeing a jet of blood. Pain ripples through me, but I stifle the sound and tear myself free from his grip.

I barely catch a breath before he’s back, hungry for more.

My chest tightens, stealing my next inhale as he guns for my throat. But this time, I don’t run.

I meet his advance with my own, ducking below his open jaws faster than he can see. I let my claws sink in.

It’s like tearing my own heart out.

For the first time, Oliver is the one to dart back. He looks down at his wound, at the imprint of my claws in his chest, then he looks at me again.

I brace for the moment I’ve been waiting for since I first spotted him among the rogues. That moment when he’ll look at me and realise that this is wrong—remember who he is, who he taught me to be.

I expect to see heartbreak, realising what we’re doing to each other. I don’t expect the excitement.

What’s left of my heart topples and shatters as hunger floods my brother’s glowing red eyes. My world splinters at its edges, quieting again as I watch Oliver charge.

Focus, Julian!Aiden’s voice booms through our bond, but it might as well be a passing murmur.Julian!

Oliver,I try, prodding at the remnants of our bond I hadn’t dared to approach since I thought I lost him. But there’s nothing there. It’s just a broken thread—an unravelling that only happens when a spirit is gone.

But he’s right in front of me. He’s here, racing towards me, so how had Goddess let this happen?

He’s on me again, a fragment of the chaos ensuing around us, and no matter how much I want to believe he’ll stop, I know he won’t. He won’t stop until I’m dead because … this isn’t Oliver.

The haze clears.

The rogue attacks, and I don’t hold back.

My claws catch in his, and as he tries to tear my jugular from my neck, my canines sink into his right ear and drag the organ from the rest of him. His howl breaches the air like a siren’s call, and while it causes my eyes to fill, I don’t let him escape.

I attack him with the same viciousness he used on me, and on our wolves before—mywolves. I show him the alpha I was forced to become as I tear him apart, bit by bit. I know his weakest spots. They’re the same as they were before.

It’s almost too easy, stripping him down when I don’t look at him as my own. Because no matter how big and strong he is, he’s still a rogue caught in the throes of a blood high, and that makes him sloppy.

The grass beneath us is splotched with his blood. It’s not nearly as much as when I’d found his fake body, but the memories surface as I add the real pieces of him to the collection.

My heart pounds—the part of me that will always love him slams against me in protest. It tells me that this is wrong and that it’ll haunt me forever. But Oliver has always been my ghost. So when he tries to rise again on his shaking hind legs, I sink my canines into his lifted paw, tearing his claws from the nail beds.