Page 7 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

Finally, her better judgment won out. She raced across the cave and stepped on the bottom half of her dress. It was old and the cotton tore clean away. She wadded up the cloth and stuffed it against the gaping wound, pressing hard. “Help me!” she screamed.

Someone moved. A young woman. She placed her hands over the quickly reddening fabric. By the look on her face, that wolf was her mate.

“You’ll need something else to stop the bleeding.” Prairie Rose jerked herself upright, head swimming violently with the effort of too much movement.

She wouldn’t let her body go down again. Another wolf flew off of Agnar, steeling her determination. There was just enough of him showing that she could see the multiple wounds where he bled from. Bite marks and claw marks both. He looked half ripped apart. Blood pooled around him as the other wolves battled.

A second wolf was flipped and pinned in the struggle. It came back, its shaggy brown fur matted in blood. Agnar whirled on it again, throwing off the gray and black wolves both. The three circled and attacked as a set, but Agnar caught one by the throat. He shook the black wolf until it lay limply on the ground and a red lake seeped out beneath it. She watched in amazement, while it was an unfair fight, it was clear how Agnar became alpha. He might have been trying to steer his pack away from the old ways, but underneath he was a true warrior. The remaining two wolves attacked together, taking Agnar down to the ground. Prairie Rose closed her eyes, unable to watch her mate die. It shouldn’t have mattered, a stranger who she was bound to by obligation and an oath, and not by her heart, but that very organ clenched in her chest, bleeding for a man who deserved a better death.

A wicked scream pierced the air. Her eyes flew open. Wolf. Not human. And not Agnar. There was only one wolf still attacking, and that one was quickly pinned. Agnar grasped it by the throat, his muzzle soaked a purple red, and he finished the job. The light went out of that last wolf’s eyes.

Agnar, triumphant, lifted his head and howled his mournful cry to the roof of the cave. It was such a lonely sound, forsaken and heartbroken, that it nearly cracked her ribs to hear it. Bloody spittle dribbled from her mate’s mouth. There wasn’t an inch of his fur that was brown anymore. He was a living, breathing bloodbath. He’d slaughtered his own packmates. He was the kind of man who would be haunted by this night for a long time to come, she thought, even if it was necessary for his own survival.

Those five young and unseasoned, cocksure youths had wanted a taste of death. Some of them got it.

Limping and swaying, but somehow still upright, Agnar turned and walked past the fire. The cave was so silent she could hear people sucking in their breath as he passed.

Instinct more than obligation pulled Prairie Rose in the direction of her mate. She followed in the bloody wake he left, his paw prints red on red dirt, his blood purple black in the ghostly firelight. She didn’t look at anyone else as they walked. She had no idea if Agnar could make it back to his home or even where that was. Why was no one helping? Why was no one doing anything?

An older man who carried himself half like a prince and half like a solider moved off the wall. He was going to do something. He was going to help. Gratitude fluttered inside of her, crashing down all around her so that her eyes filled up with tears.

But then the man turned. She saw his face, and it was like looking at a ghost.

That man was an older version of Castor. The father who tried to murder his own son by torturing him to death. The father who whispered poisonous words of treason and betrayal in his alpha’s ear until a good man rescinded the oath he’d made and handed Castor over to his beta.

Alexander. He could be no other.

Prairie Rose surged forward, walking unsteadily, wavering a little and swaying, but she propelled herself in the right direction. A scream tore out of her throat when she saw the silver flash of a blade pulled from Alexander’s boot. “Agnar!”

He was either too hurt or too weary to turn. He just stopped, swaying and bleeding, only an animal strength and an iron will at the core of him kept him upright. He looked like a deer that had been set on by a pack of wolves and had managed to get away only to die slowly and painfully as it bled out.

She’d never seen cruelty like this.

It sharpened her mind. Honed her vision.

The weapons had been set aside. She noticed that when she entered the cave. She caught the gleam of a giant battle axe, scrolled with ancient runes down the handle and twisted designs on the blade. She lunged for it, her adrenaline and need to fight overpowering the drugs that slowed her. The axe was heavy. It took all her strength to heft it, and when she turned, she stumbled. She flew blindly forward, yelling out as she did.

“Alexander Phaethon!” He turned at the last second and dodged, the raised blade that he’d intended to sink into his alpha glistening above his head, ready for her instead.

The axe fell first. She couldn’t hold it any longer and gravity did what she didn’t have the strength to do. It plunged into Alexander’s arm, cutting him so deeply that he dropped the knife and screamed in horror.

Blood spurted from the wound, dousing her in a wet, violently hot spray. She tasted the metal salt of it in her mouth as it landed on her lips, painting the whole of her red. She had no idea blood could be so hot when it exited the body.

She swayed to the side, in shock or something else. She fell to her hands and knees, her vision shuttering and growing dim. She clawed her fingers and pulled herself through the dirt. Closer. If only she could reach Agnar. She couldn’t let him die. She’d get to him, and she’d lay herself over him and that would stop the bleeding. Her body alone would be enough to heal him.

Chapter 4

Agnar

Blake and Levi hovered over the prone form of the sleeping woman. This wasn’t how he wanted to introduce their new mother, but then, the night had gone straight to hell quickly and it was a miracle they were getting an introduction at all.

He’d shifted, and even bloody and barely standing, his whole body a prison of sheer torture, he’d taken up his unconscious mate and carried her out of the cave. He’d walked them through the desert, naked, all the way back to his house. The boys locked the door when he wasn’t there, and he’d had to bang on it severely before a sleepy-eyed, grouchy Blake tore it open. He’d been shocked to see his father in the state he was in, but at ten, he knew how brutal their life could be and he’d wordlessly opened the door and locked it after he’d stumbled in.

Agnar deposited Prairie Rose onto his bed and then he’d gone straight to the kitchen where he had a whole cabinet of medical supplies.

By then, Blake had shaken his brother awake and Levi was there, chestnut hair pushed up on the one side of his head, rubbing sleep out of the stark gray eyes that were so much like his father’s.

Blake had a change of clothes in hand. Agnar was good at shutting down any kind of emotion, but he couldn’t stop the twinge of pride and pain he felt at his son acting so grown up. A ten-year-old shouldn’t have to witness his own father torn half apart and find it so ordinary that they didn’t ask a single question before immediately throwing himself into cleanup mode.

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