Page 65 of Claimed By My Fiancé's Brother

The letters I’d almost trashed a thousand times before sending them to her.

Letters she’d never bothered responding to.

Maybe I should’ve been angry at her silence, but all I felt was a gnawing feeling of dread that was slowly consuming me.

That feeling was so strong that I couldn’t wait another minute to ensure that Eleanor was safe.

“Alexander.” Anastasia latched onto my arm again, but this time it was with desperation rather than seduction.

“You can’t do this now.” Her voice trembled with worry. “In less than four months?—”

I didn’t let her finish.

“I’ll see you at home, Anastasia,” I said, cutting her short and prying her hands off me before leaving the tent.

I was barely a few feet away when I heard a low keening sound behind me.

Anastasia was sobbing.

I’d known Anastasia almost her entire life, and I could count the number of times I’d seen her cry on one hand.

I paused for a moment, and then I continued on.

I reached the border in less than an hour, my urgency to reach Eleanor growing with each step I took.

The Nightshade Pack was expansive, its land mass easily ten times the size of minor packs like the one Eleanor used to belong to. Each generation of Hawthornes added to our lands with at least one “justified” war. As a result, our border was a massive stretch of property.

Instead of the usual route, I felt a mysterious draw that led me to the northeastern border, which was far from the shortest route to enter the pack.

In fact, one might even say it was the most dangerous, due to?—

I smelled the acrid scent of rogue blood as I approached the border.

The monster stirred within me, rattled for some reason.

Maybe it was because the blood was fresh…too fresh.

Or maybe it was because it was too quiet. Did the rogues get past all the sentries and?—

The rich, heady scent of lilacs intertwined with the overpowering smell of blood anddeathhit me hard, and every single cell in my body froze.

Eleanor.

I ran, the image of those green eyes haunting me, regrets piled upon regrets. No. No.No.

I cleared the border and just beyond the fountains, there they were.

Or rather, there they laid.

There wasn’t a single person or beast left standing in the clearing.

The rogues were scattered over the ground in a distinctively macabre fashion–both in wolf and human form, whole and in pieces.

It took me a moment to process exactly what I was seeing. There were no sentries, and only one person had faced down all these rogues with no backup—my mate.

My unconscious mate, who was currently bleeding out on the forest floor.

“Eleanor!” I shouted, oblivious to anything else as I closed the distance between us and took her into my arms.

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