Page 80 of Alpha Reid

Our futures depend on it. Our lives depend on it.

Everything depends on it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Serena

I can feel my pulse thrumming in my ears. Reid’s hand wraps around mine and I turn to look at him, my eyes wide and rimmed with fear. The gentle sparks from his touch do little to calm me. My mouth is dry, my heart hammers against my ribs. Nervous energy crackles through my veins, making my fingertips tingle and my head feel like it could float away.

Ready or not, here they come.

Reid yanks me in, arms encircling my body tightly. Grounding me when I need it most. He leans in closer, breath skating across my lips as his blue eyes search mine. Then he kisses me- softly at first, then building in persistence, like he’s trying to memorize the way my lips feel against his. Like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

All around us, bones crack as our cohorts shift to their animal forms, readying themselves to take their positions. I just want to stay here and kiss Reid a little longer, pretend it’s only us and none of this is actually happening. He tries to break the kiss once, twice, and I keep pulling him back in, as if prolonging our kiss will somehow delay the fight. As if it’ll somehow save us all.

When I finally relinquish my grip on Reid and allow him to pull away, he doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. We’ve already talked about what we’re up against and how we feel, and words don’t seem appropriate right now. Instead, his eyes tell me everything his lips don’t. We’re in this together. We’ll come out of this together. It’s him and me, always.

He gives me a nod, and the air around me turns to liquid silver as I shift to take on my wolf form. She emerges proudly, stretching and shaking out a thick coat of red fur, looking over excitedly as Reid shifts into his wolf, large and black and equally intimidating as he is beautiful.

His blue eyes meet mine as his low voice gently slips into my mind.‘Better get into position, little wolf.’

Reid and I did something last night. Something that probably would be frowned upon in other circumstances. Faced with the reality that we’d have no way to communicate while in battle after we shifted to our wolf forms, we privately completed the blood ritual to bind me to the pack and establish the mind-link. We’ll still do a traditional Luna ceremony down the road, but for now, this was necessary to alleviate our anxieties about heading into battle. We both need to focus on the fight, not be distracted wondering how the other is faring while unable to check in.

In a way, it was romantic- just the two of us on the back lawn of the packhouse, sealing our commitment to one another by binding me to Reid’s pack.Ourpack. Even though it was a decision made under pressure, it’s one that I didn’t make lightly- and one that I’d make over again given the chance. I can’t change the past, but Reid’s my future. I hope we get to live it out together after all this.

‘See you on the other side,’I reply through the mind-link, stepping closer and nuzzling into him. I rub the length of my body along his and he nips my flank as I scamper away to take my spot with our team, already in formation. We’ve been over this time and time again- what positions to hold, how our defense will be coordinated. So many times that now it’s practically second nature. I tip my head to Davis and Casey, two squad members on our team that will be flanking me, as I take my position.

It’s quiet. Eerily quiet. Not even the breeze dares to blow through my fur as I crouch down closer to the snow, my thick undercoat keeping me warm. Watching. Waiting.

My heart is pounding; I swear it’s so loud that the sound of it is echoing through the forest around me. Is it starting to beat even louder, even faster? No- that’s not my heart. It’s the drumming of hundreds of paws against the earth, the sound building as they draw closer.

Ready or not…

I’ve known this was coming since before I arrived here, but I never imagined I’d be on this side of things when it happened. So much has changed. I’ve changed. I’ll never be the same girl I once was- the darling daughter of Alpha Gerald, the wild little sister of Alpha Brendan. The naïve princess of the Silvercrest Pack who never imagined how brutal and cruel the world could be. Whose biggest concern was trying to sneak into a nightclub with friends on a Saturday night.

Here they come.

Enemy soldiers spill over the ridge, spreading like ink poured onto the snow. We collectively hold our breath as we lie in wait at the treeline, anticipating their advance and preparing our defense. Choosing our moment.

When Reid gives the signal, some of the shadow pack soldiers are close enough to see the confusion and utter surprise on their faces when we spring out of hiding to ambush them.It fucking worked!I can hardly believe it. We got them to enter the territory from the eastern side, and they didn’t anticipate that we’d be here waiting. We successfully pulled off our plan, taking the element of surprise and turning it around on them.

I don’t have time to celebrate the fact that we’re actually able to get the jump on them, though, because a heartbeat later, our two sides collide in a mess of thrashing limbs and gnashing teeth. We fight in formation, just like we practiced. At first, we’re like a finely tuned machine, taking out their soldiers systematically. But war isn’t clean, and things quickly get messy. We fall out of formation. The enemy soldiers just keep on coming. I lose sight of Reid in the chaos.

There are so many of them, the onslaught seemingly endless. Dark red blood stains the blanket of snow underfoot. An enemy wolf takes me by surprise, leaping on my back from behind and taking me down to the ground. I feel the sharp sting of teeth pierce the back of my neck and a yelp slips from my throat as I struggle to free myself.

He’s strong.I’m stronger.I manage to roll hard enough to get out from underneath him, pinning him down instead. Blood pools in my mouth as I sink my fangs into his throat and tear it out. His body goes limp beneath me.

Before today, I’ve never taken a life. I understood that in joining the fight, I’d have to- that’s the nature of war, after all. But conceptualizing killing and actually carrying out the act are two very different things. In the thick of battle, I somehow detach my conscience from my actions and put myself on autopilot. I lose track of how many lives I extinguish. There’s so much blood on me, around me, and there’s no way to tell how much of it is my own and how much belongs to my victims. My body screams in pain, but I’m running on pure adrenaline.

Everything goes silent. It’s like I’m in the eye of a hurricane, lost in the quiet while the storm rages on all around me. Time stands still. I blink, looking around at the other wolves engaged in battle. On one side of me, an enemy soldier takes Casey down, but Davis is right there, fighting them off of her. On the other, I see Sutton take a bite out of another foe, blood spraying the snow as he falls. It’s complete chaos- so much is going on that I almost miss the small faction of shadow pack soldiers that break off, seemingly abandoning the fight. They aren’t heading back where they came from, though… they’re advancing further into the territory. Heading toward town.

I’m not sure if it’s because Reid and I completed the blood rituals last night to bind me to the pack, but my instinct to protect them surges forward, so strong that it’s nearly blinding. I know Cyrus is there with the volunteer soldiers, ready to fight. I know the plan is to let them handle any shadow pack soldiers that make it past us. But seeing them heading that way, knowing the destruction the shadow pack can cause when they rip through a town, I just can’t stay put. I have to go after them.

Our team seems to have everything well in hand as I break away to follow the enemy soldiers into town. I look for Reid before I go- and when my eyes land on him, I’m momentarily mesmerized by the fluidity of his movements and the effortlessness with which he cuts through the shadow pack fighters. None of them can match him for size, strength, or skill, and the meticulous coordination of his defense against each foe is a thing of beauty. I don’t interrupt him, but instead slip off quietly in pursuit of the group headed toward Stillwater.

It isn’t difficult to pick up their trail, which takes me right to the edge of town. Dread settles in the pit of my stomach as I press forward, wondering how far they made it… and how much destruction I’ll find they’ve left in their wake.

Again, it feels eerily silent, like the eye of a storm. I tread the road deeper into Stillwater, senses on high alert and adrenaline screaming through my veins. I’m not prepared for what I come upon, skidding to a stop when it comes into view. The blood. The bodies. A macabre scene is spread out before me, snow splattered with red, the fallen laid upon it, shifted back to their human forms upon death. Without even seeing their faces, I know they’re pack. I can feel it.

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