Page 107 of The Alpha King's Curse: Part One

“Go,” he commanded.

He walked further into the trees where his Beta wouldn’t see him take his clothes off if he happened to look back. He lifted his t-shirt and peeled off the dressing Diedre had applied. Even with her magical intervention, the bite still looked infected, even though it was barely an hour old. Diedre said it should heal in time, maybe at the speed of a human’s wound, and she’d assured him he hadn’t been infected by some unmentionable flesh-eating disease.

Still hurt like a bitch, though.

That was all he fucking needed on top of everything else. How was he supposed to explain any of that to Layla?

It wasn’t going to happen again, though. As he took his clothes off and scanned his home, the place he knew like the back of his hand, he felt Cain’s anger matching his own. There would be nothing left alive in there that wasn’t supposed to be by the time he was done.

He rolled his neck and shoulders and let his beast take control. They were on the same page for now. These rogues and their master had to go.

He shifted, and his senses became amplified. The rogues could mask themselves all they wanted, but he would always be able to scent the dark magic. Maybe because his soul was as dark as they came. Like called to like.

As he ran through his woods, his domain, he picked up the faint trace of the Circle’s dark magic. But there was more. Ahead of him in the woods, hiding, maybe waiting for their next commands, he sensed the presence of several rogues. They were so confident in their master’s ability to protect them that they didn’t realise he had caught them until he had the first head rolling from his jaws.

There were about six of them, all masked within the darkness that he ruled. Scentless, motionless, practically dead, as if only their master could animate them.

And animate them she did. As soon as he growled, they all turned to look in his direction, and their eyes glowed a bright blue. He could sense the evil around them as they stepped out of the shadows and started surrounding him. They were different sizes, but some were bigger than the wolf that almost killed Layla.

Rage started to fill him. It washed through his whole body until the need to paint the woods red with their blood was all that remained of him.

The demon of the forest.

He bared his teeth, and his hackles rose as he lowered his head and picked his second target. The wolf was down before the other realised he had moved. He had a chunk of his torso in his mouth by the time they started to attack.

Without Layla being too close to the fight for him to worry about, he let all his rage go. Limb after limb. Head after head. He didn’t give the dirty rogues a chance to bite him again.

As the last wolf lay bleeding out at his feet, he looked it in its eyes, the eyes of its master and growled a warning. Whoever it was was too much of a coward to face him, so they used other wolves, and that pissed him off more than anything.

How could they claim to be any better than him when they were taking innocent lives, too?

He finished off the wolf and then stood quietly among the wreckage. There were more little groups like this scattered all over his land. They would all perish tonight.

By the time Jackson shifted and walked to his clothes in the middle of the night, he was bloody, scratched and only half satisfied. He’d become angrier the more wolves he had found. When had they all hidden on his land? How long had this plan been in motion? And worse still, what else would this witch throw at him?

When he dressed and walked out of the woods, Micah was waiting for him. His Head Warrior gave him a respectful nod before he gestured to some of his men to go and retrieve the last bodies so they could burn them.

His first stop was Layla’s old room, where he threw his dirty clothes in the trash and took a long, soothing shower. A few times, he accidentally touched his bite wound and winced. Shifting hadn’t sped up the healing at all as he had hoped. Once he was dry, he found another dressing in the first aid kit in the cabinet before he made his way to his room.

Layla’s heartbeat was still steady, but when he opened the door, one of the bedside lamps was on, and she was wide awake, inspecting the ring on her finger.

Her mood changed when she saw him. That fear returned to her eyes. But he ignored it and dropped the towel around his waist before he slid into bed beside her. Layla’s eyes widened, and she put some space between them.

“I can’t...” she started.

“I know. I’m not a monster, Layla.”

Debatable.

He fluffed his pillow and got comfortable, but he knew he would never really have a restful sleep again. He had months to live with this gut-wrenching fear that, at any moment, this half-blood mate of his would be taken from him.

“Goodnight, Layla,” he said gently.

There was a brief pause before she answered.

“Goodnight, Jackson.”

Chapter 57

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