Page 24

LIVIA

I stared with wide eyes at the alpha of the Whispering Pines Pack, then my gaze flickered around the room as quickly as it could. Last time, when I had fought his son, I’d had a dagger. I could use it. I hadn’t been trained in weapons, but it somehow seemingly came naturally to me.

But there were no weapons here. There was only blood and two dead witches.

“There’s nowhere to go.” A low chuckle left his mouth, and he inhaled the scent of my lingering heat and stepped toward me, his canines dripping with saliva. “And Lycos, you smell so good.”

My heart pounded so loudly that I could hear it in my ears. I swallowed hard and stepped back, stumbling into the table and kicking the books behind me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to use this magic. I couldn’t shift. What had I been thinking?

Part of me knew that there was a chance that he would find me. And I had just left? What did my pack think? That I had been taken? Did they even fucking care? No matter what anyone said, it didn’t seem like my pack wanted me there.

“There’s nothing like an unmated, unmarked she-wolf in heat.”

“Stay away,” I warned, hands out in front of me.

“Or what?” He took another step toward me, his eyes so dark they were almost black.

The hairs on my arms stood up. I had never, ever seen eyes so black in a wolf before. My heart was thrashing inside my chest, and I swallowed hard again. What could I do? I was trapped here alone with him, and surely his pack would be here soon too…

… if they weren’t already outside.

“Stay away from me,” I said again, this time my voice trembling.

When my back hit the table, he seized my hip and pulled me closer to him. A wave of heat rushed through me, and somehow, someway, his touch kind of felt… good. The heat was surging inside me, coursing through my body.

Everywhere except where his touch was burned so hot.

“Please, please stop.”

“What a cute little mate you’ll make,” he said with a smirk.

But his neck was already marked. He was already mated. Hell, he had a son. But he didn’t care. No one in the Whispering Pines Pack cared at all. About anything. He would fuck me. He would claim me. He would mark me. And I’d be his.

Tears welled up in my eyes, because I… I belonged to someone. I was supposed to belong to someone. I had a mate, someone who didn’t want me. But deep down? I wanted him. Truly, I did.

So I shoved the alpha off of me, and he stumbled back.

“Fucking bitch,” he snarled and lunged at me again, this time grabbing my wrist and hurling me down to the ground. “I’m gonna have you one way or another before I kill you. Might as well make it easy for me.”

But I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

No, I needed to get away now. I needed to do something.

I kicked and I shoved and I punched and I did whatever I could to try to get him off of me.

But he was climbing between my legs, faster and harder than I could stop him.

I had learned how to fight several times, but I couldn’t fight a wolf, never mind an alpha wolf.

Not one out for vengeance. Not one who was responding to a she-wolf in heat.

It was primal, something that he couldn’t control even if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to.

“I said get away from me!” I shouted once more, shoving him back as hard as I could. It gave me enough room to scramble backward toward the pool of blood. My hand fell into it and down through the concrete.

Could my entire body wiggle down there? Could I escape through this hole?

I didn’t really have time to react before something was thrust into my hands. I grabbed it as hard as I could, yanked it out of the puddle of blood, and slammed a silver knife deep into the alpha’s throat.

He screamed as the silver burned through his flesh, just like it had with his son. All the blood in the room suddenly evaporated, being pulled into the silver knife quicker and quicker and quicker and then pushed through his body.

The knife drew more blood from all directions of the room, sinking through the walls, running through the concrete, drifting through the air to fill it. I didn’t know how it got there. I didn’t know where it came from. But I didn’t care.

I was going to kill this fucker right here, right now.

I pulled the knife out and stabbed him again—this time right in the cervical spine.

His entire body thrashed, and then his spine shattered. Not just one bone. All of them. Just like his son. It shook the knife uncontrollably, but I held on to it with two hands and secured it deep inside him.

My breaths came out ragged, and I stood over his corpse.