Page 27 of Fated to the Alpha Warrior (The Wolf’s Forbidden Mate #1)
Kieran
The howl of alarm pierces the air, sending a jolt of adrenaline through my system. Like all shifters, I instantly know what the howls mean: the fae are here. Based on the expression on Aurora’s face, she knows it too, which means I don’t have to explain when I say, “This will have to wait.”
My relief at avoiding the tension between us is short-lived.
Howls are moving toward us, carried by the pack, and Jacen’s hungover and still-drunk friends are in no shape to face the threat.
As Aurora leaps onto her bike and revs the engine, my wolf surges beneath my skin, eager for a fight.
I let him out, reveling in the way the shift tears the clothing from my body and clears my head in an instant.
I can feel my wolf’s excitement and bloodlust, but also his overwhelming protectiveness. He wants to protect our mate, and resents me still for denying him the wholeness of our bond. Even rejected, that bond hums with energy and sizzles between the two of us as we head straight toward danger.
It’s the scent that hits me first, stronger than ever before to my fae-sensitive nose.
An otherworldly mixture of rot and decay that burns my nostrils.
The fae are said to be gorgeous, charming, ethereal, and seductive, at least through human eyes, but to my shifter nose they’re nothing but threatening.
I snarl at the scent, and can sense through the mate bond that Aurora is on edge. This is the first real test of the cold iron knives she carries on her at all times. My wolf and I make a pact as we rush toward danger: we will protect her at all costs.
Bursting into a clearing on the outskirts of Pack Quartz, we leap into a chaotic fray.
The fae are unlike anything I’ve ever seen—strange and terrible, their forms shimmering and changing like heat mirages.
Some appear to be almost human, with features that are off in a slightly uncanny way, painful to look at directly.
Others, around half the fae in the fight, are more obviously monstrous, with strange limbs and skin and wings.
Their magic crackles in the air. It’s turned the familiar landscape into something that hums with danger. Trees bend and twist their branches toward us like snatching hands and arms. The ground beneath our feet seems to shift and ripple unnaturally.
Pack members are scattered throughout the clearing, most still smelling of booze.
Some are shifted, others in human form, all struggling against the fae, their numbers nearly evenly matched.
I spot Jacen in his human form, on his knees in the dirt, grappling with a fae whose arms are made entirely of thorny vines.
Blood streams down his cheek and pain flares in his eyes as he tries, and fails, to shift into his wolf form.
The smell of his fear is the most alarming thing of all. The Jacen I knew, that I met several years ago and encountered again last night, was too haughty to be afraid. He was especially too proud to be on his knees as he is right now, grappling in the mud with an inhuman monster.
Aurora leaps off her bike and races into the fray. I join her, the connection between us making it easy for us to wordlessly communicate. As she draws her cold iron knives, I leap muzzle- first onto the vine fae holding Jacen down and grab one of its “arms.”
The taste is revolting—like fishing old broccoli out of the back of the produce drawer and chowing down.
It’s shockingly solid and muscular, but I hold on, dig my teeth in and shake my head back and forth.
At the same moment, Aurora plunges one of her knives into the back of its neck, and it howls in pain.
Jacen gets the opening he needs to break free. The fae shrieks as it struggles from his grasp, whipping a second vine around and shouting in a booming voice, “You will accept this bargain, Jacen Boudreaux!”
I don’t like the sound of that. Aurora and I exchange a brief, worried glance. Then she shouts to Jacen, “Refuse him!”
Jacen looks at her like she’s crazy. Then back at the vine fae. Shrugging as if to say might as well, he shouts half-heartedly, “I refuse you!”
The fae hisses and shrieks. Other fae in the clearing do the same.
Aurora pulls her knife out of his neck and drives it back in again, twisting and digging.
I feel her determination, her fear—and know instinctively that she needs me to have her back.
So I get into position and take down any fae who come for her as the vine fae screams in pain and rage.
Jacen shifts into his wolf form and goes for its legs, while Aurora just grits her teeth and pushes the knife further in, even as disgusting miasma sprays in her face.
“Don’t look them in the eyes!” Aurora shouts as two golden-skin glowing-eyed fae lunge for me. “Stay in wolf form! They’ll try to get you to say something they can twist with their magic!”
I don’t need to be told twice. Lunging for the two fae, I twist beneath their grasping hands and dig my teeth into flesh wherever I can find it.
They reach for me with fingers that shimmer with deadly magic, making my nose tingle and setting my hackles on edge.
So I bite those fingers off and spit them in the ground.
Aurora, meanwhile, is now standing over a puddle of withered leaves and disgusting fae-goop on the ground.
She whirls around and throws a cold iron dagger over her shoulder, barely looking to make sure it hits its target right in the middle of the forehead.
Injured wolves cry out and howls echo in the clearing, but Aurora keeps moving, her gaze sharp and her movements deadly.
“Stay together, don’t let them isolate you!” She shouts to a pair of shifters fighting two small, feminine looking fae with sharp teeth and gossamer wings. “Take this cold iron dagger! You—use salt!”
I’m forced to drag my eyes away from her when the two golden-skinned fae come for me again, their fingers having regrown. This time I go for the throats, tearing one out and getting a scream of anger followed by a poof of magic into nothingness from the other.
That task handled, I join Aurora in the fight.
Jacen is nowhere to be found now, so I keep her back as she moves from battle to battle, shouting out words of wisdom and sharing her weapons.
Her daggers and knives seem to come from nowhere and everywhere, appearing in a palm and slipping through her fingers, each one taking her hair down until it’s a flowing river of gold strands at her back.
Her quick thinking and hand-to-hand combat skills save more than one pack member from a grisly fate.
I watch as she talks a young shifter out of a fae’s thrall, breaking through the magic’s hold and leaving the snarling fae to vanish into nothingness, back to his unholy realm.
A moment later, she’s twisting open a ring on her finger and tossing out a handful of strange-scented powder that makes a hauntingly human fae scream in pain and vanish in a puff of acrid smoke.
In the middle of it all, we move together in perfect harmony.
She turns her back to an enemy with burning hands, knowing that I’ll kneecap him before he can take her out.
I jerk my head in the direction of a wolf shifter being held down by fae magic, and she whips out her hand, a cold iron knife flying from her fingers.
I hold down the few bodies that stick around so she can pull her weapons from them, and she shouts a single word of warning to make me whirl and take out an enemy with my teeth.
When a fae lunges at her exposed back, I’m there in an instant, my jaws closing around its exposed neck.
When I’m momentarily blinded by a burst of fae light, her hand on my flank guides me out of danger until my vision returns.
All the while, the bond flows between us, and my wolf sings in my head, thrilled to give in to the path fate made for him.
It’s in the middle of the deadly battle that the realization hits me like a physical blow.
With mud on her skin, her eyes wide and wild, her hair loose and tangled, Aurora is the most beautiful, alluring, wonderful woman I’ve ever set my gaze on.
More than that, she’s brave, brilliant, compassionate, and willing to fight with everything she has to protect her people, even though no shifter pack has ever fully accepted her.
I love her.
Not because she’s my fated mate, but because she’s Aurora.
My Aurora. I love the way her brow furrows in concentration as she faces down a fae twice her size, undeterred by his physical strength.
I love the fierce determination in her mismatched eyes as she stands protectively over a fallen shifter.
I love the quick wit and strong intelligence that allows her to outwit creatures who have lived for centuries, and the kindness that drives her to risk her life saving complete strangers who would never show her the same courtesy.
The intensity of the feeling makes me stumble as I take down another fae, their numbers dwindling fast around us.
My wolf howls inside me, a sound of triumph and longing that escapes my muzzle before I can stop it.
As I tilt my head back and let the sound free, I hear it: it’s a howl of recognition, of completion.
This is our mate, my mate, my wolf seems to say, and she is perfect for us.
Aurora’s eyes find mine across the mud and dirt and blood of the battlefield, concern drawing her pale brows together.
For a moment I wonder if she can feel it too: the bright shining essence of our bond, an unbreakable tether between us.
But she looks puzzled, so I just give a quick shake of my head, dirt and blood flying from my thick fur, and dive back into the fight.
But I can’t forget the way it feels to know that I love her. The realization colors every move I make, every thought I feel.