Page 60 of Sold to the Alpha Wolf

The fury swelled, the pounding in my brain flaring right along with it. The welling pressure in my mind just grew and grew. I expected my vision to white out, to go blurry, and it nearly did. Overlays of all my previous visions played over my eyes, blocking out the world around me.

Seeing it all again forced a scream from my lungs. The pack decimated, Jet dead, and me alone again; it was all there. Tears stung in my eyes, bleeding down my cheeks where they froze in the frigid cold.

“No!”

Eons of pain and doubt and cruel necessity scorched my veins. An ancient force swam through my blood, and they were there inside me—the Völva. Wolfless shifters who'd come before were in my DNA. I was a part of them, and they were a part of me.

My eyes flared, and I held out my hands without even realizing it, something taking over me from deep within.

“Stop!”

My voice wasn’t wholly my own, and something inside me snapped. The feeling deep in my mind, in my being, connected to that surge of power associated with a vision just…popped.

No, it exploded.

A tsunami of energy soared out from me as the pressure finally hit its breaking point. Like a shockwave, the flare that radiated out, with me as the center point, spread across the clearing in a massive circle. In every inch of space that it passed through, something changed.

I could see it. Lines of shimmering, pale gold energy that branched out from me in a spiraling latticework—an orb weaver spider’s web.

For a moment, I thought nothing had truly happened, just this crescendo of energy. Everything looked the same—or did it?

The snowflakes that had been falling around hung suspended in the air, nearly imperceptibly moving. It was silent except for an odd, low hum, and Terrance wasn’t any closer to me. I looked around, turning my body like I was swimming through thick, cold water.

It was like I was moving incredibly fast, or the world was moving incredibly slow. I could see each fraction of a second play out in bullet time. The ripples of momentum translucently shimmered in the air behind Terrance. I made some as I turned this way and that.

What’s more, I could sense how the strange shift was tied to my energy. I could feel it draining me, exhaustion crawling through my veins and threatening to make me drop more and more with each frozen second. This was fucking hard, demanding practically all of my energy to maintain.

It became worse as I tried to move and get to Jet. Focusing on holding time in this stasis and walking while I was doing it was too much for my brain. But this was it. This was how I saved Jet. What was I supposed to do if I couldn’t get to him?

My mind pinged, and I looked just behind me to the right. Kaiden was there, stuck in the grip I had over the timeframe, just like Jet and Terrance. But what if he wasn’t? Could I?

I reached out, using all my might to touch Kaiden’s extended fingers with my own. As soon as our skin connected, he stumbled forward. Kaiden looked around in shock, trying to reason out what had just happened.

“I—time—my powers…” Talking was horrendous, the drain on my strength nearly knocking me to my knees.

Kaiden seemed less affected. He wasn’t holding the timeframe steady, after all.

“Senna? You’re…what do we do? Can you hold this so I can get to Terrance?”

Nodding only an inch, I tested letting go of him. He remained connected to me, and I sucked in a breath through my nose—too much iron mixed with Jet’s leather and pine in the air.

“Yes. I think…hurry…this is…”

Before I could even hope to finish, Kaiden was turning for Terrance. He pulled off his coat and shirt, shoving down his pants as quickly as he could, and then he was shifting.

Kaiden’s wolf roared to life as he let it take over, and as he leaped forward, sprinting across the snow, I silently marveled at his gorgeous gray and red fur. He was huge, nearly as big as Jet, and as he charged Terrance, he opened his jaws wide in a terrible growl.

My entire body shook as I held onto whatever power was giving me this insane ability. It took so much strength to maintain concentration, and I fell to my knees, my arms outstretched as I watched Kaiden barrel toward my former alpha.

He jumped into the air on his last stride, soaring into Terrance’s body. It was like watching a dog go after a toy. Terrance remained nearly frozen, his reactions moving slower than molasses. Kaiden sank his fangs into the asshole’s neck, tearing free a large chunk of flesh and sending blood spraying out across the snow in a wide arch that slowly coasted down to the ground.

But Kaiden didn’t stop there.

His massive wolf shape took Terrance to the ground. The man coughed and sputtered as he came free of the time slow. Blood gurgled from his lips as he tried and failed to clutch at his throat. Kaiden’s fangs tore into the man’s hands, freeing fingers from his palm and ripping through the flesh covering his arms.

Kaiden’s claws slashed through Terrance’s chest, more crimson liquid gushing out of the once proud alpha and staining the snow. I couldn’t hold the power steady any longer, though, and it snapped free from my control. The horrible screams and chaotic swirl of limbs being broken and fabric being shredded echoed around me.

Then stillness.

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