Page 92 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

AUDREY

“Knox, stop!” Cyrus yelled when he realized commanding me to escape wasn’t working.

An enormous wave of power slammed into me, Cyrus willing to freeze me in place to control his brother, and I dropped to my knees before I could even think of doing anything else.

But Knox kept running straight for me, his eyes wild and his teeth bared, Cyrus’s power not affecting him.

“I. Said. Stop.” The pressure of Cyrus’s power increased, and darkness swept across my vision, narrowing it down to a pinprick where I was focused on the massive black wolf barreling toward me.

“Knox,” I gasped, his name a whisper on my lips as he crashed into me.

God. This was it. He was going to kill me.

The impact knocked me onto my back, and he pinned me down with his front paws and clamped his teeth around my throat.

My pulse thu-thudded , straining against Knox’s physical and emotional weight along with the weight of Cyrus’s power that crashed again and again, stronger and stronger, with his desperate attempts to control Knox.

But Knox didn’t move, didn’t even raise his head to look at his brother, who was clearly more of a threat than me. His hot wet breath huffed against my throat and he released a low growl.

Mine, his wolf snarled in my head, his voice filled with rage.

Black specks danced across my vision and I fought to breathe even as my body shook with fear. With a snap of his jaw, Knox could kill me.

Mine mine mine. Knox’s wolf released my throat and jerked his attention to Cyrus and Deacon, stopping them a good sixty feet away from us with a low, dangerous growl. Mine.

He looked ready to attack, his teeth bared, his body tense.

Mine.

“Let her go, Knox.” Cyrus took another step closer, his claws extending from his fingertips, and the muscles in Knox’s back legs bunched.

He was going to attack, and while Cyrus and Deacon were two of the most powerful shifters I’d ever met, they were already bleeding. A lot. I didn’t want to think about the damage Knox’s wolf would do if he thought they were trying to take what was his.

Bishop had said wolves in this realm weren’t possessive, but I wasn’t sure that applied to Knox, or at least Knox’s wolf.

Mine, he roared again, adding a suffocating wave of his own alpha power to the already suffocating mix.

“I am,” I gasped, praying that he wanted to protect and not hurt me and cupping his furry cheek with a trembling hand.

The touch drew his attention away from his brother and Deacon and back to me, and his dark eyes, filled with vibrant green flecks, captured me, stealing my breath and flooding me with his emotions: rage, fear, yearning… hurt.

I didn’t know why he hurt, but I recognized that he, too, was broken in ways others didn’t see or understand. I also felt his acceptance, or what had been his acceptance of how he thought he was before I’d come along, and the agony that he wasn’t worthy of having a mate.

I bit back a bitter laugh. I was the one who wasn’t worthy in our relationship. I couldn’t even shift.

He growled, his wolf pushing back his human emotions and insecurities and replacing them with a blinding fury. Those emotions would never get in the way again, not so long as his wolf was in control.

But that wasn’t good for him or me or anyone. The wolf half of a shifter’s soul was his primal half. It didn’t understand complex emotions or the need to sometimes sacrifice those emotions to protect someone.

Like protecting a girl who didn’t know he was broken.

The realization of what had happened hit me, and I brushed both hands into his thick fur, urging him to keep looking at me. He hadn’t taken his wolf form since before I’d had sex with Bishop, a form I’d been told — and had seen for myself — that he preferred. Which meant he’d been actively suppressing his wolf.

If his wolf was determined to keep me as a mate, then it would have taken everything he had to keep that half of his soul from taking over while I’d been suffering through my heat. He might have even had to collar his wolf to keep him contained.

And now his wolf was pissed, had taken over, and was never letting go of their body.

“I am yours,” I repeated, praying his wolf could sense my sincerity. “But I’m also his.”

I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with him without his human form, and while his wolf might even be strong enough to shift into a human, we still wouldn’t be able to connect in a way only our human souls could connect.

He huffed, his dismissal of his human half clear in that snort.

“He hurt both of us,” I said, “but you know it was to protect me.”

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Cyrus creeping closer. I needed to hurry and convince Knox’s wolf to let me go and agree to the natural balance found in all shifters’ souls. Because if Cyrus attacked, Knox’s wolf was going to go completely feral and do something he wouldn’t be able to come back from, like kill his brother.

“You know he did it because he was afraid.”

He’d said he’d done it for my own good, but now I knew it wasn’t because I was weak, but because he thought he was broken beyond repair.

Maybe he was.

But maybe so was I.

That didn’t mean we could avoid what fate had forced on us.

“You know it in your heart.” I slid my fingers through his soft fur, keeping my movements slow and soothing. “You know he thought he was doing the right thing for me.”

He huffed again, the sound softer and some of the tension eased from his body.

“I’ll always be yours. I need you to show me how to be strong. But I also need him. He’s as much my mate as you are. Can you let him go? Please?”

Mine, he rumbled, but all the rage and possessiveness were gone. In its place were love and wonder and a little bit of hurt, not because I’d hurt him for asking for human Knox back, but because Knox had forced him away and resisted what his wolf had known was fate.

Whether we liked or even knew each other, accidentally mate bonding with him hadn’t been a mistake. We were fated mates. Neither of us could deny it.

Audrey? Knox, the human, gasped in my head, and the churning unease that had been squeezing my insides since last night vanished.

The green flecks in his wolf’s eyes brightened for a second before he collapsed on top of me, his body shifting from his heavy wolf to his almost equally heavy human form.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cyrus roared as he stormed toward me. His rage rolled off him in waves of uncontained power, making my pulse race and my mind whirl.

“What?” I didn’t understand why he was so mad. I expected him to be relieved that I’d brought Knox back.

But he was furious with a rage I’d never seen before, one that reminded me too much of Merrick and Sterling.

“Did you follow Bishop, thinking because he’s interested in you the rules don’t apply to you?” he accused.

“No.” I shrunk back from him, instinct screaming that I make myself smaller and hide because I couldn’t get away. “I just?—”

“You just what?” He rolled Knox off me, fully exposing me to his furious glare. “Deacon, take Knox to the grove before he wakes up here and freaks out,” he commanded without looking away from me.

Deacon dropped his kilt, shifted from human to wolf and back again, turning the gashes in his arm into not-as-bad but still bleeding cuts, then resecured his kilt. He shot me a concerned look as he hefted Knox onto his shoulder, except I couldn’t tell if he was worried for me or concerned that I was what Cyrus was accusing me of: someone who thought the rules didn’t apply to her.

“We don’t know how long he’ll be out,” Cyrus said with a snap of power. Then he frowned and Deacon raised an eyebrow as if he expected an answer.

The muscles in Cyrus’s jaw flexed, his fury sinking into a simmering rage, and Deacon nodded. The beta’s expression was still concerned, but he obviously wasn’t concerned about me because he turned on his heel and carried Knox out of the arena, leaving me alone with Cyrus and his now partially contained fury.

I curled in on myself, my arms wrapped around my stomach, trembling at the thought of what was going to happen now and trying to be as small as possible. Even if Cyrus had pulled in his temper that didn’t mean anything.

“You just what?” he repeated, his voice low and dangerous.

“I—” I squeaked.

No, damn it. I didn’t want to be small. I wanted to be strong.

“I felt—” I said, struggling to sound more confident.

I tried to scramble to my feet, but only got halfway up before the force of Cyrus’s wrath pushed me to my knees and consumed that flicker of determination that had told me to stand in the hope that he’d gotten his emotions under control.

But this was just like what had happened with Merrick in those early years. There’d been times when he’d calmed down for a moment, usually when there was a witness, but as soon as the witness was gone…

It didn’t matter if I had a good reason or not for jumping in and saving Knox, I knew what came next. The alpha was always right and always punished those who disobeyed him.

I was a fool to think I was anything other than what I was.

I clenched my jaw, fighting the urge to look down, and failed, my gaze dropping to the polished stone floor in submission. As much as I wanted to be strong, to be someone new in this realm, and as much as I’d momentarily lost my mind and tried to goad Knox into punishing me for talking back to him. I was weak and I’d always be weak.

“You can’t go sneaking around. Ever. It’s dangerous. Knox could have killed you and we would have lost both of you. You,” he growled, his tone growing darker with each word, his control vanishing. “You are not exempt from the rules. You might be mated to one of the pack alphas but you are not an alpha. You can’t just do what you want whenever you want.”

“Yes, alpha,” I forced out, hugging myself, desperate to stop shaking. “I’ll learn my place, alpha.”

Remember your lessons, I told myself, my throat tightening and my eyes burning with tears. Stay calm. Stay small.

Cyrus growled, the sound a precursor to violence, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t let him see me cry. Crying was weak. Crying wasn’t submitting to the will of my alpha and accepting my situation.

Just stay small. He’ll do whatever he’ll do and then it will be over.

Until the next time.

He threw his head back and roared, the sound echoing through the arena, and I flinched, anticipating a strike.

But instead of hitting me or ordering a punishment, he stormed away.

Tears rolled down my cheeks and I fought to stay silent. I couldn’t let him hear me. I couldn’t risk bringing him back.

For whatever reason, he hadn’t vented his anger on me and I needed to keep it that way. He was so much stronger than Merrick or Sterling, both in alpha power and physical strength. He could easily hurt or even kill me. I didn’t stand a chance against him.

God! I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t understand how Cyrus could turn on me so quickly, but maybe I’d been wrong about him. Traveling together had been extenuating circumstances and this was what he was really like when he was leading his pack.

Except that didn’t match with how he’d been at dinner with his betas and how they’d all been comfortable joking and disagreeing with him.

But none of that really mattered. I’d forgotten myself. I’d let my guard down because I’d thought I was safe when my whole life was proof that I was never going to be safe. Bishop had seemed sincere in his promise to court and mate me, but that didn’t mean I was safe from Cyrus.

A sob broke through and I slapped my hands over my mouth to muffle the ones that were sure to follow.

I’d really thought things were different, but I was even more trapped here than I was in my old pack. The only thing I could do was keep my head down and make myself as small and as invisible as possible.