Page 31 of Bond & Protect

But as Amos and Liam both rise up as well, I start to feel a whole lot better. All the pressure isn’t so much on me anymore. The guys are up on their feet and can fight… as long as they shake off the sensation of being under a fog, it will be fine. I still need to keep up a little bit of a fight until I know they got themselves back completely.

‘Please, guys… please, stop this. Please get rid of this monster. Please, do this. Unity. We have the unity now. We’re all here. We’re all together. We have something to fight for. Us. Our mating round. Don’t let us lose the most magical thing of our entire lives.’

The monster lets out the cruelest laugh I have ever heard in my life. It burns in my blood. It makes me feel sick to my stomach, makes me feel inhuman. I really do lose myself along the way. I can feel the monster stealing everything, and I’m just giving it over to him willingly. It’s almost as if he knows that he’s won. He knows that he’s killed us all.

And by killing us all, the monster can kill everyone else as well. The town will be gone, the people all around here will die, and then the evil will spread. There will be nothing left.

Just as my eyes feel like they’re about to close for good, something else happens. Something shocking. The beast charges towards me at the speed of light and before I can even take a moment to defend myself, the monster snaps at my flesh, and draws blood.

The howl that comes flying out of my mouth is nothing compared to the intense pain that now ricochets through my body. Fuck, this really might be the thing that kills me.

13

LIAM

The scent of Mila’s blood enters my nostrils and I snap out of my trance so quickly I almost snap my neck. Fucking hell, what just happened to me? That’s the emptiest I have ever felt in my life! I feel like I’ve been stripped down to my core and nothing is left.

I don’t even know what the monster has taken from me. I just know that I’m empty, numb, hopeless. The man that I used to be has vanished into nothingness.

But with Mila in my eye line, and my protective side shining through, at least I have something to cling to. I have something to fight for, and right now, that’s better than nothing. That causes me to bear my teeth and to growl at the creature looming over me. I might be foggy, and all messed up inside, but I know that I need to attack with everything within me. I can’t let this monster win.

‘What is going on?’ Elias’s voice is weak, barely getting through, but I can hear it. ‘Where are we? What the fuck has this monster done to us?’

‘What has he done to Mila?’ Amos jumps in, panic bouncing all over him. ‘We left her, we wanted to keep her safe, and we failed. She’s here. She’s hurt.’

Sydney says nothing. I can tell he’s struggling to connect himself with the planet right now. The monster has stolen more from him than everyone else. Seeing his face makes me recall something about myself. Makes me feel even more protective. Because I am a protective person, aren’t I? I always have been. I have a duty of care to patients. I work at the hospital. I have people who need me to make them better. I can’t let them down.

With my patients as something else to fight for, and Mila too, I try to take a step towards the monster, but it’s like I’m trying to wade through deep water. I’m fighting against something invisible, which only makes it harder to battle. This fucking monster is still fighting against us, despite the unity. I’m starting to wonder if unity is the answer after all.

Lethargy overcomes me, and I can see it doing the same to the rest of the pack. Even Mila isn’t moving. She’s lying on the floor, looking like she might never move again. I don’t know what happened to her. I don’t know how much blood is pouring out of her, but it’s enough to make me feel ill. Any blood coming out of Mila is horrible. She doesn’t deserve that.

‘Fuck you,’ I growl in my head to the monster. ‘Fuck you. You’re an asshole who doesn’t belong here. Who doesn’t belong in this world. You need to go back through The Rift.’

The monster continues with this stomach-churning laugh. It’s evil sounding and nasty like it wants to cut me to the core. I won’t let it cut me to the core. No way.

The Rift tears open a little bit. I don’t know if he’s about to fall back through it or not, but I intend to lead him that way. I need to take this chance while it’s right here in front of me, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. The other wolves are also struggling to move, but we’re all moving through the fog as much as we can to push the monster backward…

But my feet stop moving the moment I see The Rift. It’s a weird, glowing light split through the sky, tearing the atmosphere in a very unique way. It’s unnatural, which might be why I can’t take my eyes off of it. That’s why it ebbs and flows, parting a little.

‘Oh shit.’ I get a glimpse through the crack and what I see absolutely chills me to the bone. On the other side of The Rift is actually hell. It’s full of monsters. They all want to come through to this side. They want to escape the hell that they’re in, to come here. I can sense that now. I can feel it. The monster isn’t heading back into The Rift. He’s threatening us. He’s showing us what might come here as soon as we collapse in a heap and give up.

I glance over to the other guys and they all see it too. The hell that’s there. It could come here.

I worry it might be too late. We might have already lost this fight. We might already be at the end of what we can handle. Panic strikes me. It coils through me like a nasty snake making me feel ill, which isn’t great because the heaviness that overcame me earlier on––the trance-like state––it’s coming for me again. But not just from this monster, from all of them.

It’s too much. It’s too powerful. I can’t stand it any longer…

We hardly fought off one of them. It took Mila’s blood to snap us out of that trance. There would have to be rivers of blood to end this here. I can’t bear rivers of blood shrouding us.

‘Stop this,’ I try and call out weakly. ‘Please, don’t do this to us, don’t.’

‘Pathetic. I told you, Liam, that you are pathetic and I can see it right now. I can see how pitiful and weak you are. It’s embarrassing. Just give up. Let us have you. Let us all have you.’

Fuck, it’s tempting, way too tempting. It would be so easy to just give up right now, to collapse on the floor and to take the easy way out. There’s a part of me that just knows we’re going to lose, so I want to cave. If it wasn’t for Mila, I would. If it was just us, I don’t think the unity would be enough to sustain us. I don’t think it could keep us upright. We aren’t united enough.

But we have love now. We have something wonderful. We have something to fight for. I just need to scrabble around to find that strength. I turn my head, trying my hardest to fight against the stream of pain coming my way, which is more like a hurricane now, to see Mila.

Much to my surprise, Mila isn’t down anymore. She isn’t struggling against the pain like me and the rest of the wolves are. She’s up and staring the monster down. She’s the strongest person I have ever met in my entire life. I’m in awe of her. She inspires me. She wants me to stand upright. She needs me to fight alongside her as well. I really need to do that for her.

---