Page 45 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)
AUDREY
I chewed on a tough piece of dried meat and watched the leaves in the trees through the rip flutter in a breeze I couldn’t feel. From the sunlight filtering through the branches, it looked to be about the same time of day there as it was here, and I could almost imagine I wasn’t in a different realm.
Rustling sounded somewhere beyond where I could see, then Royce stepped into sight.
Instinct seized me and I froze as my pulse lurched into a desperate, rapid beat. He’d gleefully tried to sacrifice me to a monster. I had his claw marks scarring my chest, marks I’d never be able to get rid of even if my wolf did eventually awaken because they’d already healed. They were forever a part of my body, a reminder that he and Sterling were psychopaths.
And a part of my soul still wept at his rejection, still believed he was my destined mate, even though it had all been a manipulation and my soul had picked someone else.
Well, fuck that.
I tried to shove aside the unwanted grief as well as my fear and feed my anger.
What I felt was an after-effect of the spell he’d used to fake the fated mating call, nothing more, and that disgusting spell was why my soul thought Knox was my mate and why I’d forced a soul bond on him.
I wasn’t in love with Royce and never would be. Just like I wasn’t in love with Knox. And while Knox could still hurt me, and was hurting me by rejecting our unwanted bond, Royce couldn’t touch me anymore. He couldn’t get through the rip to get to me— Hell, he might not even be able to see through it like I could.
As if he could hear my thoughts, he glanced at the rip and looked straight at me. His eyes flashed wide for a second, revealing his surprise, then his lips curled back in a wicked smile.
“Well, look who’s still alive,” he sneered.
I stood and glared back. He couldn’t get to me, but I refused to stay sitting and look up at him, even from a distance. Sitting was a weaker position and I wanted to make sure he knew he hadn’t broken me and never would.
“How’s your incomplete mating bond, mate ?” he asked.
“It’ll fade,” I lied. I didn’t want to bring Knox into this. For all I knew, he’d side with Royce about how useless I was and I wouldn’t be able to fight the grief from our rejected bond. “Soon you’ll be nothing more than a bad memory.”
“You keep thinking that.” His smile darkened with dangerous glee. “We got that witch to put extra juice into her spell. That feeling of emptiness, of utter rejection?” he said. “That feeling will never go away. It’s just going to keep on growing until you lose your mind and kill yourself.”
My breath stalled and I fought to keep the fear that was now rushing through me from my expression.
It was never going to go away?
But it had to. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life feeling like this.
“That’s a lie,” I said, forcing myself to hide my fear and keep my voice strong.
“You’re going to kill yourself just like Daddy.” He jerked forward a step, and I flinched even though I knew he couldn’t get to me.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “He ate a bullet in the bathtub.”
And there’d been so much blood sprayed across the dated yellow tiles.
“How will you do it? Got a gun? Got pills?”
The grief and icy hollowness that I’d been trying so hard to ignore surged, consuming my anger, and my eyes started to burn with tears I did not want to cry in front of Royce.
No one wanted me?—
Damn it. It isn’t a real emotion.
Except it was and the rejected bond was just shining a spotlight on how I’d felt after finding my dad. I hadn’t been enough for him to fight his PTSD from the war. I wasn’t enough for anyone.
“Looks like you’re going to have to find something sharp and slit your wrists.” Something rustled out of my line of sight and he glanced over at whatever it was. “Look who’s still kicking,” he laughed.
Sterling stepped up beside him, his expression darker, although he still seemed pleased — in that same psychopathic sick way that Royce did — that I was still alive.
“Well, well, well,” Sterling purred. “Are you broken yet?”
“Never,” I spat back, blinking away my tears. I might be hurting, I might get beaten down and be a complete mess, but I refused to let Sterling and Royce break me. “And you can’t get to me anymore.”
His expression snapped to sudden, violent rage, and a ferocious wave of his power slammed into me.
“Come,” he snarled.
My body jerked forward a step.
Oh, shit. He can control me through the rip.
I fought to step back, but all I managed to do was to stop myself from moving forward.
“I’m alpha and you’re pack. You belong to me. Come,” he growled.
No. No way in hell. Never.
“I’ll always be able to get to you,” he sneered.
His compulsion squeezed my chest and I stumbled forward a few more steps. I clenched every muscle in my body and glared at him. His power wasn’t as strong as Cyrus’s, and I’d managed to resist him… at least until I’d passed out. I wouldn’t give in to Sterling. I wouldn’t.
“I. Said. Come.”
“Fuck you,” I spat back even as his compulsion heaved me forward another step.
The wind on their side gusted, blowing a flurry of dead leaves at the rip, half of them flying through and half bursting into flames.
Sterling’s eyes lit up with wicked glee. Forty more feet and that would be me.
No. Fuck no!
Something small and quiet thu-thudded around my heart, and I staggered back a step, shocking myself and — from the look on their faces — shocking Royce and Sterling as well.
Holy shit, I’d defied his command.
But his rage returned, wilder and darker than before, and his face turned red with the strength of his emotion. The ghostly image of ram’s horns flickered around his head, curling from his forehead, and the dark, ominous power I’d been sensing since we’d entered the forest slammed into me and seized my muscles.
I staggered forward a step and then another and another, running full out toward the rip.
Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
I mentally clawed inside myself trying to find whatever power I had that had let me take a step back, but there was nothing inside me, no hint of a wolf or wisp of shifter power. I tried to fall, to let my body go limp, but Sterling’s command was too strong, and my body wouldn’t obey me.
Please. There had to be something I could do. I’d survived that monster — barely, but I’d survived — I couldn’t go out like this.
Kneel! Knox yelled inside my head, and a massive wave of power crashed into me, seizing all my muscles and stealing my breath.
I dropped to my knees, gasping for air, the warring pressure from Sterling’s power and Knox’s making it difficult to breathe. Royce and Sterling dropped to the ground as well and Knox bounded out of the shadows of a crumbling house. He stopped beside me, growling and baring his teeth at the psychopaths.
“Found yourself a new alpha,” Sterling snarled, defying Knox’s power and heaving up to one knee. “He’s not stronger than me.”
He raised his hands and black things — shadows, demons, I had no idea what they were — exploded out of the ground in a stinging shower of stone and dirt.
They whirled around us, too many to count, their bodies twisting and expanding into flying snakes. They were all black, black scales, black leathery wings, and black teeth, so many black shark-like teeth. The only things not black were their glowing red eyes.
Sterling howled with laughter but abruptly stopped when the shimmering around the edge of the rip flickered brighter.
“Kill them,” he snarled. “When the window reappears, I want to see their bodies torn to pieces.”
The rip shimmered again, and Sterling, Royce, and my old pack’s sacred grove vanished, the rip, once again, turning into a rippling thread of distorted air.
Then the snakes attacked in a writhing, hissing mass. One swooped at my head, I swatted it aside, and dropped to my knees, praying if I was on the ground, I’d be a smaller target.
Snarling, Knox caught a snake in midair with his teeth and, with a sickening crunch, bit it in half, then swiped his claws through two more. Another one sank its fangs into his back and I ripped it off, but that left me open, and two more bit my arm and back.
Screaming, I tried to wrench them off, but more snakes latched on and another wrapped around my throat.