Page 10 of Celestial Alphas (Nexus #2)

Chapter

Nine

ALEKSANDER

“ S he’s dead.”

My bloodstained boots dig into the mud of the forest floor as I feel her die in my arms. Gwenieve, my brilliant and beautiful mate, her heart just stopped. The mate bond, something that has been like an electrical wire, alive and buzzing in my chest from the moment she rejected me, stills for the first time. Over the years, it was faint and sometimes flickered, but it’s grown stronger since she was brought back to Starlight. Now, it goes cold and dead, just like her. I’ve lost my mate. I’ve lost the only woman in the world born for me. I look down at her, the paleness of her skin as I hold her in my arms, in a blue dress the very colour of the night sky. Her warm blood is pouring through my fingers as I hold her close to me, and time freezes.

“NO!” My roar echoes off the trees, off the very stars who dare to try to take her back. I’ve known what it’s like to be scared, but nothing compares to the pure terror I feel as I realise that she isn’t breathing and it’s not a nightmare. It’s real. Carefully, I put her down on the ground, and I start resuscitating her. Finnegan stands over my shoulder, silent but shaking. Onyx and Hollis are silent, both watching, too, but I can’t focus on them. Annie’s cries, for both Gwen and her mate, fill the silence of the forest as I pump her heart, as I blow into her mouth and into her lungs to get her to fucking breathe. “No, you don’t get to leave us! Wake up!” I carry on, even when time ticks on and it feels hopeless. “Have my life, my Nexus, anything! Wake up and tell me you hate me. Tell me to fuck off and kiss me like I’m nothing to you. I’ll take anything, but open those pretty eyes, Gwen. WAKE UP!”

Sweat pours down my face, and I don’t know if it’s sweat or tears that drop onto my hands as I finally stop. She’s gone. She’s actually dead. Finn shoves me to the side and continues after me. “Don’t fucking stop, we will get her back!”

“Wait!” Onyx yanks Finnegan back off her, and he shoves Onyx, who growls right back at him. If we start fighting between each other again, it’s a dishonour to her. Our mate brought us together, and we have fucked up so much of our relationship with her from the moment we met, and this is just making it worse. We should know better; we can be better, and I want to prove that to her. I wanted to, but now she is gone, and everything is gone right alongside her. I was fooling myself that I wasn’t half in love with her the second she sat down at the dinner table with a look of pure hate on her face, even in the room of all the mates she rejected. It was brave, brilliant and sexy and everything I wanted in a woman. In a mate. My Nexus was addicted from the beginning too.

Onyx cocks his head to the side and looks at her. “Just wait. She told me something at the trial, and I don’t think she is really gone.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Hollis questions.

“Like you give a fuck. Why are you even here?” Finnegan shouts at Hollis. “I’m surprised you’re not fucking cheering. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

I stare at her body, her broken and fragile body on the forest floor. I never got to tell her everything. I never got to fix anything between us, and we didn’t get a chance. She died thinking that I thought she was a monster, but I think she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. She’s the strongest, that’s for damn sure. I lean down on my knees and kiss her forehead, stroking her hair to the side.

The air stills in an unnatural way that makes my skin crawl. The ground turns grey around Gwen, everything dying, colour draining into nothing. It’s like she is the beginning of a power grid that spreads around us in a circle, spreading wide. It goes around my knees, never touching me, and I watch in silence as a star bursts to life in the centre of her chest, right under her skin. It’s a dark five-pointed star, and it glows brighter and brighter until I have to look away, right before disappearing, and she gasps. Gwen sits up, gasping for air, and when I look, it’s not all Gwen. It’s her Nexus.

“How the fuck?” Hollis’s shocked shout is pretty much what we are all thinking. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like her. She can’t die. Or she can die, but she comes back. It’s why she wasn’t scared when she was hurt, because she knew she and her Nexus couldn’t die anyway. The trial, all of it, was nothing to her. How many times has she died? I want—need—to know everything about her and how this miracle is possible.

Her skin is void of all colour and light, drained of all warmth and everything that made her alive. Her grey, empty of warmth, eyes meet mine, and it hurts to hold her gaze for more than a second. She reaches up, digging her nails into my chest, inches away from my heart. I flinch from the pain, feeling my blood spread down my chest and her nails. “Bow.” My Nexus rarely gives me an order, and I don’t hesitate before listening to him. I bow my head, and she retracts her nails. The air is so cold as I speak. “I’m sorry. We won’t let her down again. We fucked up.”

Her Nexus looks at Finnegan next and then to Onyx before turning to Hollis. She snarls at him, and he is smart enough to look worried she might attack him. “Can we have Gwen back?” I ask. I thought she might refuse, but she turns to me, leans up, and kisses my cheek. Her lips feel like ice, pressing against me, right before she shifts back. Gwen passes out in my arms, and I catch her, picking her up as I stand. Finnegan checks her pulse, and Hollis heads for Annie, who is plastered to a nearby tree, and she looks scared as she asks, “Is she okay?”

“Yes,” Onyx answers. “I will get your mate’s body to return to his family in Starlight. It’s your choice what we tell them about what really happened.”

Annie snuffles, taking Hollis’s offered arm. I doubt she could walk herself to the cars. “We tell them he died saving me and nothing else. Not for me…but for his parents.”

Onyx nods and heads to get the body, and I turn in the direction of the cars. “I’m taking our mate home.”

“They still want her for murder,” Finnegan points out. I eye him and he rolls his eyes. “And me.”

“Onyx has to talk to his father, and I’ll see what I can do with my connections. Either way, she is staying near me.” I look at her one more time. I nearly lost my mate, and that should never have happened or happen again. “Or it won’t be her they need to fear. If anyone tries to take Gwen from me…I’m killing them all.”