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Chapter forty-eight

Derek

T ime stuttered around me. Fragments of moments spliced together. My teeth sinking into flesh. The sweet release of violence.

Blood.

Thick. Metallic. Everywhere. Clinging to my fur. Filling my lungs. Coating my tongue in copper.

The world looked wrong. Colors bled into each other at the edges, then sharpened to painful clarity when I focused. Sounds arrived distorted—heartbeats thundered like war drums, whispers screamed like sirens. Time stretched and compressed. A man falling took an eternity; my teeth ripping through his throat happened between one heartbeat and the next.

A face flickered through the crimson haze. Harris. His name floated up from the depths of my mind. His blood. His death. Wanted him to suffer more. But dead all the same.

Harris touching her. His hands on her body. The rage exploding through me like a supernova.

The memory seared through me, then disappeared. Where was I? What had happened between that moment and now? Bodies littered the floor. My doing? Yes. Mine.

Good.

The others. Men who tried to hurt her.

Her. No name surfaced this time, just a single thought.

Mine.

Pain burned along my ribs. A bullet graze. A knife wound. A deep tear in my shoulder.

Didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Only her. But I didn’t know what she looked like, didn’t know where she was. Just a faint memory of a smile. Of green eyes. Of warmth.

Kill. Hunt. Protect.

The thoughts crashed against each other, contradictory yet somehow the same. I wanted blood. Needed it like oxygen.

Concrete, the killer of soil, stretched before me, strangely distorted. Colors muted, edges sharper. Bodies on the ground, some still pumping out blood, heartbeats fading. The air, thick with gunpowder, sweat, and fear, was a cocktail that made a savage delight surge within me.

I smelled their terror. It lingered even after death, sweet and sharp. It drove me onward, demanding more.

I turned, my breath ragged. Chest heaving. Vision tunneling. Maybe damaged worse than we thought.

I longed to chase, to hunt, to kill. My eyes focused, locking in my next target; my breathing steadied. Now—

Hunt them down. Leave nothing breathing. Threatened what is ours.

Ours? The word jarred something loose. Pack. Something about Pack. About home. But the thought slipped away before I could grasp it.

Something brushed against my consciousness, a tugging sensation, like a half-forgotten song. I growled low, shaking it off. Nothing mattered except finishing this. Except spilling more blood.

A scent cut through the miasma of death. Coffee. Honey. Something else, something that made me pause.

Female.

I turned, snarling, hackles rising as I faced this new presence. Her body was rigid, eyes fixed on mine. Blood trickled down her arm. Her scent—not right, not entirely. Tainted. A male’s stink lingered on her skin.

Harris.

The rage returned tenfold, a crimson tide that threatened to drown whatever fragments of me still clung to my consciousness. I threw back my head and howled—not the controlled sound of a call to Pack, but something ancient and terrible, the promise of vengeance and death.

She didn’t run. Didn’t cower.

Instead, she moved toward me with deliberate steps, her heart racing but her gaze steady. Not afraid. Not prey.

What was she?

Something about her sparked recognition—a brief flash, like lightning illuminating a night landscape before plunging it back into darkness. I knew her. Didn’t I? The thought felt foreign, human, weak. I snarled it away.

Female. Threat. Kill.

But another voice, deeper, more primal: No! Not this one. Never this one.

The conflict tore through me, my muscles bunching, then relaxing, caught between attack and restraint. Her scent called to something beyond the hunt, beyond the kill.

Blood stained her shirt—some hers, most not. She was hurt. I could smell it now, beneath the adrenaline and battle-rage.

Protect.

The imperative overrode everything else. Why? Why this one? All were prey before me.

I moved toward her, tracking her reactions. She tensed but didn’t retreat. Her pulse quickened—not with fear but with something else. Hope? The subtle change in her scent tugged at memories buried deep.

For a heartbeat, a name hovered at the edge of consciousness. I shook it away.

Motion caught my eye—a soldier, half-hidden beneath bodies, still breathing. Still a threat. I growled, lowering my head as I stalked toward him. His blood seeped between his fingers, where he clutched at a stomach wound. Easy kill. Finish it.

A hand touched my fur, gentle but firm. Her scent surrounded me, cutting through the bloodlust.

“Enough, Derek. It’s enough. He’s not a threat. There’s no one left who is a threat.”

Derek. Me? Yes. But also not me. Not now. Now, there was only death.

A flash of memory—her smile, her laugh, her body beneath mine.

I bared my teeth, resistant. The need to kill still pulsed through me, demanding satisfaction.

Her fingers threaded through my fur, finding skin beneath the matted blood.

“Come back to me, Derek. Come back.”

Something inside me shifted, the red haze thinning at the edges. I leaned into her touch, her warmth seeping into me, anchoring me. For a moment, her features sharpened—green eyes, fiery curls, skin that I knew better than my own.

Sofia.

The name rose from the depths like a bubble breaking the surface—there and gone in an instant, but leaving ripples. Who was Sofia? What was she to me?

Everything. She is everything.

A noise cut through my focus—not the dying man, not Sofia. My head snapped up, ears swiveling toward the sound.

Cages. The men inside them watched us, some snarling and throwing themselves against the bars, others simply staring. One caught my attention—skeletal, his eyes sunken but clear. His hands gripped the bars, knuckles white with the effort.

He wasn’t raging like the others. He was watching. Waiting. Hoping I would end it for him.

Something about him—about all of them—called to me. They were wrong. Broken. Their scent corrupted by chemicals and pain. They should be free. They should be running beneath the moon, not trapped in metal cages with poison in their veins.

Her fingers tightened in my fur. “Stay with me,” she whispered.

I breathed her in, letting her scent wash through me, letting it settle inside me. For a moment, the need to kill receded.

Then—engines. Tires screeching. Doors slamming. Footsteps approaching fast.

The rage returned instantly, my muscles coiling as I positioned myself between the female and the new threat. A snarl ripped from my throat, the sound echoing across the blood-soaked tarmac.

Scents hit me—familiar ones, ones of my Pack, but I had no names for them.

A man approached slowly, his hands visible, his movements careful. His eyes moved from the bodies to me, assessing, cautious. Didn’t matter. He would die like the rest.

I bared my fangs, hackles rising. Behind me, the female’s hand found my flank, her touch gentle but insistent.

“Don’t come closer.”

The man stopped, maintaining distance. Smart, but it wouldn’t save him.

“Sofia?”

“He’s in bloodlust.”

A spike of something in his scent. Fear?

Good. He was right to be afraid of me.

He lowered his eyes, not meeting mine. He knew he was prey. “Derek. It’s me. It’s Sam.”

The name meant nothing to me. Blood. I needed more blood. More death. That was what I was for. I was a predator. A hunter. There was only now. Only the hunt. Only the next throat to tear out.

I shook off the female’s hand and attacked.