Page 22 of The Alpha's Fated Destiny

I blindly reach out and grab Alex’s arm, my claws digging into his skin, drawing blood. “D-Dark magic. The barrier. It's the barrier.”

Whoever is attacking the barrier—no, it’s not one person. It can't be.

I can barely form any coherent thoughts right now.

It feels like my skin will melt. My wolf is snarling, pushing aside my human consciousness. Before I can stop it, my survival instincts are taking over, and I transform into my wolf form.

I howl in fury and pain.

With my wolf in control, the agony inside me decreases in volume. It’s still there, but I can manage it.

In my wolf form, there is clarity within me. My barrier is being attacked and not just from one side.

It’s not one person but multiple individuals. My magic flows through me, and I blink. Suddenly, I’m no longer looking at the people standing in the clearing before me. I can see the barrier or maybe the barrier is acting as my eyes. I can see the cloaked figures surrounding it, their hands outstretched, their dirty magic being thrown against my barrier.

I growl.

My wolf is raging.

How dare they? How dare they try and attack me?

In my human form, my magic is restrained. In my wolf form, it flows freely. With my wolf at the forefront, its control of my magic is beyond anything I could have imagined. I reinforce the barrier that I created, sending out tendrils of my magic. One of the cloaked figures falls to their knees.

I pour more and more magic into the barrier, and another cloaked figure collapses.

Somebody is touching me. Somebody is calling my name. But I need to focus. I need to get rid of the enemy. Burn them. Kill them. They are a threat to me and my mate.

The figures fall one by one, and my body moves toward the barrier. In my human form, I couldn’t see the barrier. But now I can.

Suddenly, my head whips to the side.

One of them is not like the other. They’re more powerful. Whoever that person is, they’re managing to create a gap in my barrier.

I turn my attention toward the threat, but I’m being assaulted from all sides.

Growling, I run along the length of the shield, trying to find the culprit responsible for the crack in my magic. I can’t find them. Suddenly, something whooshes past me. Alex grunts, and I abandon my pursuit, turning around for my mate, fear sour on my tongue.

There’s an arrow protruding from his left shoulder.

A black arrow.

He’s about to grab it when I run toward him, shifting into my human form in mid-air. "Don't touch that!"

I’ve seen that arrow before. I saw it in Drew's back.

Poison.

I had smelled it then, the night I had escaped from Robert Black's control. I don't know who had shot the arrow, but Drew had been poisoned.

Before Alex’s hand can even touch it, I grab it with my right hand and yank it out. My skin sizzles, but I don’t care. My other hand comes to rest on Alex’s wound, and I pour every ounce of healing magic I have into it.

I'm not taking any chances.

But in my haste, it didn’t occur to me that, with all my magic being focused on Alex, my barrier is growing weaker. I can see the grayish hue around Alex’s mouth, and he tries to tell me to stop, but I know poison when I see it. When I worked for Elsa at the bar, she used to collect herbs and talk to me about different poisons. At the time, I had just chalked it up to her having a weird hobby, but I’d also been morbidly fascinated by the topic.

Thank the Goddess I paid attention!

I can feel the cracks appearing in my barrier, but nothing is more important to me than my mate's life. He has to live.

---