Page 108 of Wolf's Endgame

I’d been eager to leave. Landon was not and never would be my priority. I’d done this for my mate, and when she asked me, I would be able to tell her I got him. That was enough.

In wolf form, I had fought several of Bale’s pack inside the compound, separated from my pack. I had held my own as I searched the halls for Bale himself. He wasn’t there, and I had gone outside, ready to tear the place apart until I found him, vowing to myself that he would never hurt my mate again.

When I heard Leo tell me he had Kezia, fury unlike any other had descended over me. What the fuck was I fighting to keep her safe for if she was willing to throw herself into danger?

She’d left my pack defenseless. She was an alpha now, and I had trusted her to serve my pack as I did.

I still remembered her guilt and regret as she cowered at my feet. Part of me knew I was harsh, but my pack was everything. They were here fighting for her, and she had thrown it back in their faces.

My eyes closed as I remembered the way she had looked at me. If I had been softer, gentler, and kept her with me, she wouldn’t be lying in this bed, unmoving and lifeless.

When I had left her, I’d seen Ned struggling with three pack against him. I saw the glint of silver, and I’d charged forward. When I got there, another two enemy shifters attacked me. I heard Cass scream.

I snorted in the quiet of the room. Luna herself would have heard Cass’s scream.

A wolf almost as big as me had taken a chunk from my leg, and as I spun to face him, I saw her. A white wolf streaking across the battleground. She dodged and evaded everyone. She was mesmerizing. I fought to see what she was racing towards, and I saw Bale with his children defeated at his feet, and then I saw the crumpled form of Kris’s wolf.

I had no recollection of how the shifters who fought me died. I saw Kezia pounce and tackle Bale to the ground, and I fought like a man possessed to clear a space to get to her. Royce told me later that I took down so many he’d never seen anything like it, but I could only see Kezia. When Bale threw her away from him, I saw nothing but his death.

He should have been taken prisoner.

We should have contained him.

He needed to answer for his crimes against pack law. He held the answers to so many questions, but when I saw her white coat turning red with blood, all I’d seen was his death.

I didn’t regret the fact I’d killed him. I’d kill him over and over for what he had done to my mate. But I couldn’t. He was dead and Kezia lay unmoving beside me.

Her body… I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to erase the sight of her broken and bleeding in front of me, but the picture wouldn’t fade no matter how hard I tried to rub it away.

I’d made her shift. Over and over. I didn’t think of the silver. The weapon he had used against all of us, and I had forgotten about the silver. His claws were tipped with it. I didn’t know how that was possible, I didn’t want to know how it was possible, and yet it was.

When he had sliced into her tiny body, again and again, he’d poisoned her with silver.

Silver binds.

It was a miracle I got her to shift as many times as I had, and then when she was unable to shift again, Kris told me we needed to combine Wills. I didn’t know we could. I doubted he did. It was a move of desperation, and I wasn’t sure it worked.

She’d shifted to her wolf, and the magic of Luna healed more of her body, and we’d forced the shift back, but when we did, Kezia was gone. I didn’t know where her spirit was.

Where was my mate?

The body that lay in the bed was a shell.

Her soul was gone, and I had no idea how to get her back.

I woke up to see the shaman in the room. He looked frailer, older. He looked like he had fought the pack war.

“Any change?” I asked him, straightening in my chair.

“It’s been two weeks, Alpha,” he told me, crushing herbs with a pestle and mortar. “I’ll let you know when there’s a change with Kezia.”

I bit my tongue. He was older and frailer and also grumpier. He’d also unhooked her from the ventilator and snorted when Kezia breathed fine on her own. Doc hadn’t returned after witnessing that.

“Your pack is restless.”

“My pack is fine.”

He looked at me with a disapproving stare. “Your pack needs their alpha.”

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