Page 6

Glancing around, I don’t see a single escape route.

It’s either head into the city that may still have crazed prisoners roaming around, if they aren’t all dead, or run into the forest, where a pack of big cats might maul me.

Both options are worse than bad. But I decide the city is the safest option.

More so than when I began this journey, I feel as though someone else had to survive the crash.

And I guess I’ll take my chances with a royalist. Who could’ve survived here for a decade otherwise?

Especially after whatever war broke out on the island?

I clutch my stick and start hobbling alongside the edge of the forest. I don’t want to risk getting too close, but the broken pathway hugs the edge before curving left. I’m making good progress until something shifts, and a jolt of terror stabs me in the gut.

Some one else is here, not just the creatures lurking in the dark.

“What do we have here?” A voice like the sound of shattering glass grits out, and I jump away from hands that shoot out from the dark.

I stumble, falling to the ground, still too uncoordinated to be leaping around.

I try to hit whoever it is with my stick, but he’s quicker and pins me to the ground in a flash.

I wince as he clutches my bandaged wrists, and I’m forced nose to nose with a masked stranger.

His mask resembles a black wolf, half of his bearded face and rotten teeth visible.

The eye holes reveal misty gray eyes. But unlike the misty oasis I woke up in, his eyes, thick with lust, inspire nothing but fear.

“I spy a little white rabbit wandering in the woods. And you’re in heat, sweet omega. It’s my lucky night; a perfect end to what I thought would be a fruitless hunt,” he says in strangely accented English I can’t pin down.

His words are worse than a blow to the head or my heart.

His words bring my world crumbling down.

As if on cue, I can feel slickness building between my trembling thighs, dripping from my womb.

He licks his chapped, peeling lips, Adam’s apple bobbing on his brutally scarred neck, before licking my exposed neck.

I can’t be in heat! I can’t medically! It’s impossible! All the specialists assured me. But just like surviving the crash, I’m coming to learn the hard way that miracles really do happen sometimes, even when you don’t want to beat the statistical odds.

“Get the hell off me, you bastard!” I shout, trying to head butt him or knee him in the nuts like I did my guards.

But it’s no use. I don’t have the element of surprise, and despite being skeleton thin, what meat this alpha has on his bones is pure muscle. His hard-on digs into my stomach, and he pants like a rabid dog.

“I’m going to knot you bitch! I’m going to claim you as my mate.

My pack said I was lying. Planes and boats crash all the time on this cursed island.

But I knew that scent. That delicious scent led me to you, and you to me.

I knew an omega was here,” he rambles, breathing hard, groping me with one bony paw as his other hand pins both of my wrists with ease.

I scream and scream, but I can’t seem to fight back.

I won’t win. I’ll be raped. Then he might kill and maybe eat me.

Aren’t psychos trapped on islands usually cannibals too?

Maybe in the movies, but I don’t have any other context to work with.

But I can’t give up because I can’t die like this.

I try to find some shards of glass and cut him so he’ll let me loose.

But I can’t even get my wrists out of his sweaty hands, and his filthy pheromones flood my nose.

He smells like hot garbage, worse than his rancid breath as he licks my neck and claws my breasts.

“Ahhhhhh!” My scream doesn’t sound like my own, and it isn’t. I am screaming, but so is the black wolf-masked alpha, his jaw distended and…

Holy shit, something metallic is sticking through his neck!

The wolf rolls off of me, or more like he’s kicked.

Then he’s forced to stand up with the knife still plunged into his neck.

Behind him is a mountain of a man with flaming red hair, tanned freckled skin, and piercing green eyes that gleam like gems, naked besides a pair of the shortest, torn brown shorts I’ve ever seen.

They’re barely holding onto his toned, muscular ass.

He doesn’t wear shoes or any other article of clothing, giving me a near-perfect view of his animalistic yet graceful body.

Unlike the wolf, he’s leaner and muscular, but somehow more scarred, too.

They’re everywhere, the fox’s scars, including his neck and hands, almost as numerous as his freckles, it seems. And shielding half of his face is a black fox mask.

“Play in your part of the woods, wolf. This territory and this omega belong to us. What are you doing on the South Shore anyway?” he says, voice like velvet, and his scent is driving me wild!

He smells like the forest after a heavy storm, an earthy musk that makes my pussy flood. I’m disgusted by the pool of slick that drenches my thighs, but I can’t deny the evidence of what this alpha’s scent is doing to me. A fragrance that smells oddly familiar to me…

“Fox got your tongue, wolf?” the nameless killer, my savior, jokes.

The wolf can’t speak with a knife buried in his neck.

He gurgles, spasms, and claws at his severed flesh, and then crumbles to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut, when the fox-masked alpha yanks his knife out of the wolf’s throat.

Then he licks his bloody blade, and it takes everything in me not to throw up, afraid I’ll choke on it as I struggle to stand.

“Die you piece of shit! Get away from me!” I scream, everything speeding back up, for the whole scene unfolded in slow motion for me.

I grab my stick and get up, wheezing all the while.

The new psycho alpha tilts his head as if he were a child observing something strange, smiling at me in a way that makes my skin crawl.

He steps closer, and I hold my ground, knowing I can’t outrun him.

At least I don’t think. But what am I going to do if he attacks?

“Omega, know this,” he says cooly, his sensual voice mesmerizing, “We will not die for you…”

“Ah!” I scream as he suddenly flings his knife above my head as quickly as a flash of lightning.

It sails down the path to the city as I turn around to watch.

A low groan hits my ears, and I spot another wolf-masked man, this one with deeply tan skin, fall to his knees.

He grabs at the knife but can’t seem to reach it; it’s buried in the hole where his eye used to be.

I turn back around, shaking from head to toe, and not from my heat.

The deranged grin on the fox’s face grows larger, showing off all of his shiny, sharp, bright white teeth.

“But we are prepared to kill, ” he finishes his sentence, and I whimper in fear.

I don’t wait around to find out who the ‘we’ are. This is the second time he’s referred to what I can only assume is his pack. So, I run.

My heart hammers so hard against my chest that I cry from the effort, trying to swallow, to breathe, only to choke on air.

Every nerve ending is screaming bloody murder, but I have to flee that bloody crime scene or I might be next.

I stumble on the last turn on the road towards the city, losing my footing as I tumble down a hill and out into an open field, throwing myself towards the grass closer to the forest to blunt the impact.

“Fuck!” I scream, my head swimming from dizziness, and then sharp pain as it collides with something hard as I roll into a tree.

My back seizes up, a pathetic whine escaping me as I lie in a crumbled, bruised mess on the ground.

For a moment, I consider giving in, a fleeting moment.

I’m in heat, for fuck’s sake. How bad can it truly be to submit if I can escape with my life?

The fox wants me; he doesn’t want to kill me.

Not yet, anyway. Maybe I can escape after him and his pack grow tired and my heat wanes.

The thought is tempting, so fucking tempting when everything hurts, and I’m hungry and overheating and all alone against such tremendous power.

Until the image of my little sister trapped on a sinking yacht on fire overpowers me, and I get the hell up.

“Haa… Haa!” My breathing is ragged, scanning the dimly lit forest floor for something heavy enough to fight with.

It’s then that I spot the rock my head collided with.

I feel for the space, scared something wetter and mushier than blood will be there.

But despite how woozy I still feel, relief floods me at the fact my skull isn’t cracked.

So, my brain isn’t leaking out of my head; I just feel like it is.

I don’t know if that means I have a concussion, but I’ll take the win for what it is, a win, and I’ll deal with the consequences after I survive this attack.

“Ah!” I squeak like a mouse in a trap as the fox’s hulking body lands in front of me. Was he swinging from the trees? Who the fuck is he, Tarzan? I didn’t even hear him chasing me.

Without a second thought, I bend over and snatch up the bloody rock.

I bend at the knee, getting into some awkward mockery of a fighting stance.

I probably won’t even get a chance to fight off one, let alone multiple feral men.

But I won’t go down without a fight. Heat or no heat, if I allow them to fuck me, I won’t make it out alive either by their hands or mine.

And I won’t abandon Faith without a fight!

“Princess, they’ve scented your sweet, slick pussy all the way up to the North Shore.

And you’ve hurt yourself again. Stop running around the forest and come with me, your alpha,” he demands, and a shrill laugh rips through me.

His freckled skin resembles a leopard prowling through the jungle, rolling his shoulders, and I can almost imagine how his muscles tense and splay on his back.

The fox grins, and I grit my teeth. I want to slap that shit-eating grin off his face.

But then I shudder, my eye snapping to my left just in time to catch the blur of a red wolf mask attached to a grimy alpha tossing himself towards me.

How many of them are out there? What do the colors mean?

I have no idea, but I do know I need to duck. So I do.

Before the red wolf can reach me, his eyes roll upward, straining, the whites bloodshot.

His face is frozen in horror as I back away, lips trembling violently as he jerks and falls to the ground.

Out of his head, a knife juts out. Great!

Another traumatic brain injury landed with expert precision.

The wolves are at zero, and the fox is three for three.

Now the last alpha standing is a handsome hunter who craves my heart, potentially in the most literal sense, as he licks his blade again. Gross!

How many daggers has this beast hidden on his body while wearing booty shorts? I think, mouth falling open in horror.

“The Island is no place for an unmated omega. Why not bond with us?” the red-headed fox coos, blasting the air with his intoxicating scent.

I shake my head no, back up, and clutch my rock.

I can’t fight this monster, who hasn’t broken a sweat killing two alphas and potentially mortally maiming a third, since the one on the ground is still twitching and breathing.

Hunting me down. Cornering me. He’s too strong and fast to take down.

And I don’t want to know who else is after me.

So I do the only thing I can do once again. I run as if my life depends on it, because it does.