Page 8 of Beyond the Grasslands

I had no control over what happened next. One minute I was in my human form, making a plan to storm the pack of my enemy. The next moment, I landed on all four paws and ran full-tilt toward my mate.

Mate!

My mate!

That thought blocked out all other voices, reasoning, and the ability to care about the ramifications of what my wolf was about to do.

He leaped into the air and landed on Nika. She was knocked back and obviously in a weakened state. The minute her head hit the ground, I fought to pull the wolf back and take my human form. She already didn’t look good, and my wolf seemed to be making everything worse.

He didn’t care. The only thing on his mind was to mark her. We had to mark her before she was taken from us again. He had a single-minded agenda that didn’t even take into account her safety or the people from my pack who surrounded us. Vaguely, I thought I heard shouts of distress come from my pack, but it was all white noise in the background as our fangs slid none-to-gently into the side of her neck and left the mating mark there. As my wolf pulled his bloody muzzle back, I was finally able to push him down and bring my human side to the forefront.

When I wrestled control back, the damage had already been done. My wolf had claimed Nika, but what felt like an easy, graceful, calm claiming when in the wolf’s mind, appeared so much worse in reality. Nika’s neck was ravaged. She must have fought the mark and we didn’t even realize it as my wolf had total control and only saw what he wanted to.

“Nika!” I growled. “Oh God, I am so sorry, Nika, baby.” I pulled her to me and held her in my arms as I inspected the mark. It was raw, and instead of two clean punctures, strands of flesh hung from the ravaged area. The bleeding had already slowed but there was far more blood for some reason than seemed necessary for the mark. When I removed my hand from behind my mate’s head, I realized why.

I turned her gently and saw that she had a head wound, probably from when she was kidnaped, that had been reopened when my wolf pounced on her.

“We need a doctor for her.”

“You have to force her to shift, Thorin,” My beta stated coolly. “I don’t know what the hell just happened with you, but we’ll figure that out later, for now, force her shift.”

I did as my Beta demanded and forced my mate to shift to her wolf. The minute she did, we all heard her wolf’s whine of agony and my soul was torn in two at that very moment. She would never forgive me for forcing a claim on her when she couldn’t consent, let alone the way my wolf attacked her. Nika would never understand what happened, and even if I could make her understand, she would never choose a mate with an unstable wolf.

Chapter 5

Mating Marks

NIKA

After I moveda bunch of rocks and one very heavy boulder onto the hatch I’d come through, I continued to follow Brennan’s advice and ran straight, though I wasn’t sure if it was in the direction I was meant to go as the dizziness and disorientation from the bright sun made it hard to determine.

The hatch had come out at the edge of the forest, so running straight meant that I ran through a heavily wooded area. Adrenaline was the only thing that kept me upright as I stumbled through another thicket of brush that was taller than I was. The sticks and thorns from a few blackberry bushes had scratched and scraped the skin of my arms and legs, but I didn’t care.

I carried on until I managed to push my way through, only on the other side I was greeted by what looked like half an army. I could feel Thorin before my eyes were able to track him.

Just before I could get his name free of my lips, his wolf lunged for me. I stumbled back a step, but the thick brush at my back held me in place until Thorin’s wolf knocked me flat to the ground. My head bounced off the ground and made my vision swim even worse than before.

“Thorin! No!” I heard someone shout.

Before I could clear my head from the pain and swirly feeling caused by the impact, teeth gnashed and then clamped down where my shoulder met my neck.

It wasn’t the sweet, lust-fueled bite you were supposed to receive from your mate. I felt my flesh rip apart beneath the wolf’s teeth as his warm breath spread out around the spot. My heart hammered in my chest, which assisted in pushing more blood from my body. My vision swam once again. It all happened in the matter of a few horrifically strung-together moments.

“Thorin!” That name was shouted again. I thought it might have come from Warren, the Beta of the Grasslands’ Pack. I wasn’t able to verify that because the darkness claimed me into the abyss before the pain of my fall and the unwelcome bite became too much to bear.

It was good that my mind seemed to fade away to darkness because I had just been betrayed by the one male shifter I had grown to trust. Thorin hadn’t come to rescue me. My rescuer came from within Aiden’s pack and Thorin ended up becoming another attacker. Another Alpha who felt entitled to take what they wanted. It didn’t matter that I agreed to mate him before. I would never agree to mate with someone in such a traumatic way. Never.

Eventually,I was moved, though I hadn’t been aware of it happening. The first time I woke, it was to find myself in the back seat of a van being driven by Warren.

“No,” I managed to whimper past my cracked lips and ravaged throat. Thorn hadn’t torn into the important parts of mythroat, but apparently my screams - that I didn’t even remember - were enough to damage something.

My head throbbed almost as much as the wound at my neck. A woman who I didn’t recognize leaned over and looked down into my eyes with pity and something else that seemed a lot like disapproval. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to earn it, but there was no time to ask the question as she pushed a needle into my arm and dropped the plunger.

Warmth ran through my veins and then whatever had been in that needle worked. Between the sweet relief of the medicine and the van’s movements that rocked me back and forth on that bumpy road, I was out for the duration of the trip.

“Now you understand.”The woman’s voice called to me from somewhere in the distance. I couldn’t make anything out in the dark, though the voice sounded familiar. Slowly, the moon peeked out from behind a set of heavy, dark clouds that shifted. I glanced up and heard the voice inside my head again.

“I’m so sorry, sweet girl. You have been through enough already, and I’m sure this seems like a step too far.”

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