Page 3 of Resisted

The voice was impossible to ignore. The sweet melody lulled me and called to my beast as no female had before. Beside me, my pack howled, their wolves feeling it too. The drive to save her, to protect her, was suddenly stronger. We stalked forward in unison, our eyes never leaving the threat. He stepped back a step, then another, dragging the female with him.

But we were predators, trained by instinct that ran through our veins. Our night vision was near perfect, our senses finely tuned. He would not escape. He could not run. He could only buy himself seconds, maybe minutes, to prolong his life before his flesh was torn brutally from his bones and his body was tossed around between us until his heart stopped indefinitely and his shell became unrecognizable.

Save her.

Anything. I’d do anything she asked. I would single-handedly move a mountain, raise water, destroy any obstacle that threatened her happiness. I would save her. I knew this as fact. There was no other choice, none I was willing to accept, and judging by my subpack’s growls, I knew they felt the same.

Save her.

“Don’t come closer,” he demanded, as if that would stop us. Chances were he wouldn’t even nick us with the silver blade, and if he did? The damage would be so minimal, it wouldn’t take long to heal. It would hurt like a bitch, but it would heal. As far as burying that blade into our flesh, that could be deadly. But he wouldn’t get it far. Never. We were too fast for that to happen. Too skilled. Too prepared to die.

Save her.

The faint chanting of the female’s voice whispered in a loop in my head. I would save her. There was nothing I was surer of. Vince’s wolf broke formation. The large gray animal paced in a circle around the tree that the man and woman backed against. He circled around, making the man’s attention waiver from Boyce and me to the wolf, who repeatedly went out of view. The stench of urine and fear permeated the air as he quivered in front of us.

He opened his mouth, one last objection on his tongue, when I pounced. My teeth snapped once as a warning before I dove at his neck. He dodged to the left, throwing me off my mark enough to make my teeth dig into his shoulders. His arms flared wildly before Boyce joined in, his teeth landing in the man’s torso as Vince attacked the man’s neck from behind.

Save her.

The voice, spoken softer this time, caused us all to freeze. The flesh between our teeth dropped away as we took a step back. The man would die now, whether or not we continued our attack. But the woman? Her voice was so faint, fading. For the first time, I felt it, felt a searing pain in my chest, and when my eyes fell to hers as she knelt on a pile of pine needles and branches, holding the silver blade that protruded from her chest, I knew. Without a moment’s doubt, we all knew.

Her body slumped forward, sliding in a pool of her own blood mixed with that of the man next to her. Boyce shifted in an instant, his arms braced to catch her. She fell against him, her words a gurgle as she spoke out loud the words she had been silently chanting. “Save her.”

Then she was gone. Our mate. The woman I had been waiting for, dreaming of, begging the fates to gift me lay in Boyce’s arms. We’d all failed her. Every one of her mates had failed her.

In a blink, Vince and I shifted to human, both of us on our knees next to them. “It can’t be true.”

Vince was mumbling to himself as his fingers roamed over her body, searching for her marks of fate. But I didn’t have to see it to know the truth. Our mate lay dead, our one chance at happiness bled out at our feet, and we’d let it happen. Somehow, we were too consumed by our need to end the human’s life that we’d missed the viability of his threat. Now we would forever pay for our oversight.

Vince’s hand bunched in her hair, his fingers holding tight as he swept it off her neck, exposing the truth to us. She was ours. At least she would have been, if fate hadn’t played a cruel hand and stolen her away. The mark, so much like ours, was etched into the side of her neck. A beacon that would have called to us, if given the chance. But that chance died with her, along with her name and any piece we could have held on to.

Vincent dropped his hold and stood. “I’m going to be sick.”

He walked away, and fuck, I knew the feeling. Nausea churned inside of me too. Our once chance, gone. I stood, and Boyce followed. “What do we do?”

“There is nothing we can fucking do. She’s gone.” I was trying not to let my anger show. He was just a kid, barely old enough to be out here. Barely old enough to understand just what had happened here, just how great of a loss we suffered. What a fucking shit show his first time out in the field was. “I guess we go through the bodies first and find some IDs. Maybe we can track down her family. Vince, go through their carts.”

Vince waved a hand in response from where he was slumped a few meters away, a single hand leaning against a tree as he breathed hard. He’d been waiting a lifetime, a good twenty years longer than I had, and after waiting all those years, this was the outcome. A destiny worse than death—to die alone.

Boyce and I began searching the bodies, and when he was ready, Vince searched their belongings. It was a lifetime, or maybe mere minutes, before Vince shouted, “I fucking found something.”

His voice sounded strained, with a hint of panic. Just as we reached the wagon, his feet were touching the ground as he jumped out, his jacket held tight in his arms. I cleared my throat, confused. “What did you find exactly?”

His hands were shaking. A sight I thought I would never see in a man who gave no fucks about much and was as solid as they came. He pushed the jacket toward me, and I took it. “What is it?”

“Just fucking look.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot, either from nerves or excitement. I couldn’t tell which.

I was terrified to look inside. Something that got Vince feeling all sorts of ways had to be big, at least bigger than we’d seen in a while. Still, curiosity got the best of me, and I pulled at the leather, peeling the material away. When I saw it, my heart stopped, and it took so long to reboot, I feared I might have died on the spot.

But then, the all too familiar beat thrummed, and I looked between both the men. “It’s a baby. A living pup.”

The little thing whimpered as it shifted in its sleep, and under the moonlit sky, a shiny piece of metal caught my eye. A collar? I fucking hoped not. Still, I reached my hand down to the metal pendant attached to a delicate chain. Not a collar. A necklace. A necklace with the name ‘Bella’ engraved on a metal disc.

“Bella.” I said the name out loud, tasting the vowels on my tongue. “More like Belladonna,” I mumbled, because without a doubt, I knew. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on the sleeping pup that she would be my poison. My weakness. Too high a dose of her, and I was doomed.

“What do we do with her?” Boyce asked from the side, and damnit, I’d forgotten that this was all a teaching moment for him.

“Normally, we would find her family and reunite her, but these poachers have nothing, not a single useful paper on them.” I paused because there weren’t such things as an orphanage for shifters. “We find her a home until we get it straightened out.”

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