Page 103 of Alpha Chase

“Leave her alone!” Chase growls loudly as he springs to his feet, the Alpha command behind his tone making me shudder. I swear it makes Daniel falter, too, but only for a moment. His finger twitches over the trigger as he orders Chase back to his knees and he drops to comply.

“I’m the one you want,” Chase snarls, seething. “Let them go.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Daniel tuts. “The whole point of this little exercise is to make you suffer like I have. You took everything from me that day. My mate. My pack. The madness sets in faster when everything is ripped away at once, did you know? I thought it’d take months without a pack to become a rogue wolf, but I felt mine going feral within weeks.”

Chase’s eyes narrow on Daniel, following his every movement with precision. “We offered surrender. Those that did, we showed mercy to. They were free to return to their home territories, live their lives…”

“Cowards!” Daniel interjects. “All of them! Sniveling little cowards, just like you.” He releases my hair and steps around beside me, taunting Chase by swinging the gun around. “Tell me, boy, do you love her? Does it eat you up inside to watch her bleed? To watch her suffer, knowing you caused her this pain?”

“Yes,” Chase whispers, and my heart starts knocking around in my chest at a crazy rhythm, my eyes snapping to meet his. He stares back into them, and for the first time, it’s like I’m reallyseeinghim, a true peek behind the curtain without his walls up or his defenses in place. It’s just Chase, stripped down and showing me his soul.

“Go on,” Daniel goads, grinning from ear to ear as he turns the gun back on me. “Tell her how you feel about her. I’ll give you this last chance to pour your pathetic little heart out.”

Chase’s eyes are locked on mine as he parts his lips, wetting them with his tongue.

Is he really going to play into this asshole’s twisted games?

“I hate you, Vienna,” Chase growls, and I can’t keep my lips from quirking up into a smirk in response. “I’ve hated you since the first day I laid eyes on you. I’ve never hated anyone like this.” The deep, raspy tone of his voice sends hornets scattering in my belly as his dark eyes bore into mine. “I hate you so much that I can’t fucking stand it.”

My heart swells, my whole body humming despite the gnawing pain in my gut from the bullet embedded there. For the two of us, hate means love; in his coded confession, Chase just laid himself bare to me and handed over his heart.

“I hate you more,” I breathe, baring my soul back to him in my own secret declaration of love. Because in this moment, I know it’s true- it has been for a long time. Chase Walker crept into my heart like a thief in the night and stole it, and as turbulent and chaotic as this thing is between us, it’sours. We’re both fucked up, fractured people with tortured souls, but there’s beauty in the way our broken pieces fit together. Only someone with as much damage as me can love me for it rather than in spite of it, and I love every shattered piece of his soul just the same. “I never wanted to hate you, and sometimes I wish I didn’t hate you so damn much, Chase Walker,” I admit, my chest heaving as I stare into his eyes. “But I’m stupidly in hate with you.”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Daniel mutters, his eyes pinging between the two of us. He growls in frustration, obviously pissed that we’re not playing along.

If only he knew we were.

“She doesn’t have much time, aren’t you going to tell her how you really feel?” he snarls.

Chase smirks, eyes blazing with a deviant gleam as he lifts his chin and dimples sink into his cheeks. “I hate you, baby.”

Daniel groans loudly and begins pacing in frustration. We probably shouldn’t have poked the bear, but damn if it isn’t satisfying. If this guy’s gonna end my life today, at least I had the chance to piss him off along the way.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles, suddenly changing course. All of his nervous, twitchy energy has him practically crawling out of his skin as he continues pacing. “I know it’s true from the way you beat that frat boy’s face in anyway. You not admitting it doesn’t change anything.” He waves a hand dismissively as he treads scuffmarks into the floor. “I was originally going to try to catch you on the top of the ski hill, put a bullet between your eyes,” he reveals. “But that would’ve been anticlimactic, don’t you think? And then I would’ve had to figure out a way to get to the other two…” He points the gun toward Serena and Fallon with a laugh. “It really worked out better this way. All I had to do was take sweet Vienna’s phone, send out a couple of messages, and everything played right into my hands.”

“You did all of this on your own?” Chase asks, and Daniel’s grin widens.

“A real man does his own dirty work,” he replies pompously, as if he wasn’t hiding behind the strength in numbers of the shadow pack for years. “You’ve gotta admit, the poetic justice here is something to be admired, isn’t it? Because it’s not enough to just kill you. No, that wouldn’t have been enough. But watching you lose the woman you love, making you suffer first, that’s true revenge.”

He's rambling, still pacing, and my vision is going a little fuzzy around the edges from the blood loss. A glint of something flashes in Chase’s eyes, like he’s trying to communicate with me. I subtly arch a brow, and that’s when he pounces.

“Now!” Chase bellows as he lands on me, knocking the chair over and taking me down to the ground. The chair splinters into pieces on impact and I cry out as searing pain rips through my body.

What?! Was I supposed to pick up something from that signal he was giving me with his eyes?!

My question is answered by the loud crash of the cabin door tearing from its hinges and hitting the floor, a huge brown wolf landing on it. He’s flanked by two others- a silver wolf and a tri-color wolf, equal in size and just as ferocious. Their teeth are bared, jaws snapping, and before I can even register what’s happening, gunshots pop off, sheer chaos unfolding around me.

Chase covers my body with his own, yanking the splintered pieces of wood out of my binds. He grunts as a bullet tears through the flesh of his shoulder, a spray of blood raining down on me as he grits his teeth in a wince but doesn’t slow down, shielding me while scrabbling to free my arms and legs from the wooden pieces of the chair. In my periphery I see Daniel aiming the gun at Chase again and I muster every ounce of strength I have to shove his huge body off of mine as another shot rings out. It whizzes through the air right above me in the space where Chase just occupied, then he lowers the gun, narrowing his eyes as he points it at my head instead.

One of the wolves lunges between me and Daniel, a sharp whine piercing the air as he takes a bullet for his effort. The other two spring forward to attack in a blur of fur while heavy footsteps drum against the floor, Reid and Gray rushing in behind the wolves and heading straight for Fallon and Serena.

It's the Alphas. All of them.Theo, Jax, and Brock work together in their wolf forms like trained assassins to corral Daniel, sinking their teeth into his flesh in an effort to disarm him. I’m not sure which one of them got shot, but whoever it was isn’t showing any signs of injury as the three of them savagely rip into him as more gunshots pop off.

Chase dives back on top of me to pull the last splintered piece of wood from my binds, planting his hands and knees on either side of my body and pushing up to look into my eyes. “You with me, baby?”

His voice sounds far away, my vision blurring, but I manage to nod my head in response, lifting a hand to cup his jaw. Despite the chaos unfolding in the cabin, for a moment, it’s just us again. Me and Chase.

“I have to get the bullet out,” he growls, rocking back on his heels.

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