Page 80 of Captivated By Alphas 1, Fated (The Blood Moon Chronicle #4)

He was dying. Right there. Twenty feet away. And I was pinned under this fucking monster, helpless, useless, watching my father—my dad who taught me to fish and helped with my homework—get murdered.

“NO! NO! NO! NO!” I screamed until my throat felt like it was tearing. The sound that came out wasn’t human—it was the shriek of something breaking, something dying. “GET OFF HIM! STOP! PLEASE!”

But they didn’t stop. They never stopped. More blood. Dad’s movements getting weaker. The wet sound of tearing flesh.

Terror crashed over me in waves so intense I couldn’t breathe.

My vision went white at the edges, lungs seizing as panic locked my ribs in place.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

People like Dad didn’t die. Dads were supposed to be invincible.

They were supposed to protect you, not the other way around.

But Dad was down. Dad was bleeding out. Dad was making sounds I’d never heard before—high, pained whimpers that cut through me like broken glass.

Something inside my chest cracked. Not metaphorically—I actually felt it, like a physical snap behind my ribs. Heat exploded outward from the break, white-hot and violent, flooding my bloodstream with liquid fire that burned away everything except pure, mindless rage.

The world went silent. Not quiet—utterly, completely silent, like someone had muted reality itself.

I couldn’t hear my own screaming, couldn’t hear the panthers, couldn’t hear anything except the thunderous roar of my own heartbeat and the sound of something fundamental inside me shattering into a million pieces.

Then the pain hit.

Electric agony raced along every nerve ending, like being struck by lightning from the inside out.

My bones felt like they were melting and reforming, my muscles stretching and contracting in ways that should have killed me.

The sensation of my fingernails elongating was like having my fingers peeled apart, nail by nail, while molten metal was poured into the wounds.

But underneath the agony was power. Raw, alien, absolutely terrifying power that made my skin glow like I’d swallowed the moon. It felt ancient and cold and completely wrong, like something that had been sleeping in my DNA for decades and was now ripping its way out through my nerve endings.

I threw the panther off me—actually threw a three-hundred-pound killing machine through the air like it weighed nothing. The sound it made when it hit the tree was wet and final, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t even looking at it anymore.

My eyes were locked on Dad.

Dad, who was barely moving now. Dad, whose panther form was so covered in blood I could barely see the black underneath. Dad, who was going to die if I didn’t do something right fucking now.

“STAY AWAY FROM MY FATHER!” The words came out distorted, my voice gone strange and musical and absolutely terrifying. The sound made the attacking panthers actually pause, their heads turning toward me with something that might have been fear.

Good. They should be afraid.

Because something was happening to me—something that turned the world too bright and too sharp and made every color so vivid it hurt to look at.

My hands didn’t look like hands anymore.

They looked like weapons. Pale, crystalline claws that caught the light and threw it back in razor-sharp fragments.

I could smell everything—the copper tang of blood, the sour stench of fear, the chemical wrongness of whatever drugs were coursing through these things’ systems. I could hear Dad’s heartbeat from twenty feet away, irregular and way too fast. I could see the individual leaves on the trees, count the scratches on the truck’s bumper, track the movement of dust motes in the afternoon air.

And I was moving—not running but flowing across the ground like gravity had stopped applying to me, covering the distance to Dad in what felt like a single step.

The panther that had him pinned saw me coming. It tried to react, but I was already there, my transformed hands buried in its fur, supernatural strength letting me do what should have been impossible.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t the helpless one. I wasn’t the weak human watching from the sidelines while stronger, better people fought and bled and died.

I was the monster now.

And every single thing that had hurt my father was going to pay.

The three panthers that had broken away to challenge me circled closer.

But I wasn’t Eli Harper anymore. I was something else.

Something that had claws made of crystalline light and eyes that burned silver-blue in the forest shadows.

Something that could hear Dad’s heartbeat faltering twenty feet away and feel the vibration of approaching paws through the soles of my feet.

“Stay away from me,” I snarled, my voice gone completely alien—higher, musical, with harmonics that made the air itself shiver. “Stay away from my father.”

The first panther lunged without warning, all matted fur and crazed desperation. But where it expected to find soft human flesh, it found something that moved like liquid lightning.

I didn’t dodge the attack—I welcomed it.

My body flowed toward the collision, every movement guided by instincts I didn’t understand but trusted completely.

We crashed together with bone-shattering force, but I was the one still standing when the dust settled.

The panther staggered sideways, confusion replacing hunger in its yellowed eyes.

My clawed hand whipped out faster than thought, tearing through fur and flesh like they were made of paper. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc across my face and chest, hot and metallic and satisfying in a way that should have terrified me.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, staring at my transformed hand. The claws weren’t crude things—they were works of art, crystalline and sharp enough to cut light itself. “What am I?”

But there was no time for questions because the other two were already moving, attacking from opposite sides with the coordination of pack hunters.

I dropped into a crouch that felt more natural than walking upright ever had, muscles coiling with power that sang through my bones. Then I exploded upward, launching myself over their heads in a leap that defied every law of physics I’d ever learned.

They collided below me with startled yowls, and I landed behind them in perfect balance, one hand touching the earth like I was drawing power directly from the planet itself.

This was what I was supposed to be. Not the weak human who needed protection, not the helpless bystander watching from the sidelines while others fought and bled.

“What is happening to me?” I whispered, but even as the words left my lips, I caught sight of Dad again.

The killing bite was happening. Right now. The largest feral had Dad’s throat in its jaws, and I could see the exact moment Dad’s struggles began to weaken. His beautiful black coat was more red than black, blood pooling beneath him in quantities that meant death.

The sight shattered whatever fragile control I’d been clinging to.

Rage detonated inside me—not the hot, messy rage of humans, but something arctic and absolute. My vision went silver-white, and suddenly the world was moving in slow motion while I cut through it like a blade through silk.

The scream that tore from my throat made every panther in the clearing flinch back. It wasn’t human sound—it was the cry of something ancient and terrible and absolutely done with watching the people it loved get hurt.

I covered the distance to Dad in what felt like a single heartbeat, my transformed body moving faster than the eye could track. The panther choking the life out of my father saw me coming, but it might as well have been trying to dodge lightning.

I crashed into it with the force of a meteor, sending us both tumbling across the blood-soaked ground. We rolled, a blur of claws and fangs and supernatural fury, until we came to a stop with me on top.

My hands—my weapons—buried themselves in thick fur, and I could feel the massive creature’s heartbeat through my palms. It thrashed beneath me, trying to throw me off, but I was done being thrown around. I was done being weak.

“I SAID STAY AWAY FROM MY FATHER!” The words came out distorted by teeth that had grown sharp and a mouth that felt like it belonged to something built for killing.

A memory tried to surface—blood on snow, a woman’s desperate voice—but I shoved it down. No time. No fucking time for anything except making sure Dad lived through this.

The panther beneath me twisted with drug-enhanced strength, breaking my hold and sending me sprawling. Before I could recover, it was on me, massive paws pinning my shoulders as jaws dripping with saliva descended toward my throat.

“Eli!” Dad’s voice—human now, weak and fading. I turned my head to see him lying in the grass, naked and bleeding from wounds that looked like they went all the way to the bone. “Eli, run! They’re here for you! RUN!”

Those words. I’d heard them before, in nightmares and fragmentary memories that always slipped away when I tried to focus on them. But hearing them now, seeing Dad broken and bleeding while telling me to abandon him—

Something else broke inside me. Something that had been holding back a flood.

The panther’s jaws snapped at my throat, missing by inches as I jerked aside. Instead, teeth sank into my shoulder, tearing through fabric and flesh with white-hot agony that only fed the fire burning in my veins.

I drove my clawed hand upward with every ounce of supernatural strength I possessed. The impact lifted the panther off me, sending it flying backward to crash into a tree with a wet, final sound.

Blood poured from my shoulder, but I barely felt it. The power coursing through me was intoxicating, addictive, making me feel like I could take on an army and win.