Page 21 of Ruled By The Alpha

Which seems a far more satisfying end than he could have ever hoped for.

AX2 releases her wrists and steps back. When he grabs for his weapon, the agony in his brain nearly blinds him, but he still presses the barrel of his gun to her forehead.

Her breathing quickens, her sobs pitching higher as she squeezes her eyes shut.

He has killed so many times before. She has given the order for most of them on the orders of someone else. They are both cogs in the same machine.

He stares down at her tear-stricken face and the wild, dark hair he has only seen smoothed back and tight against her skull before.

She has been here for days. She has been at that now-dead alpha’smercy fordays, and the proof of what has been done to her during that time is caked to her skin and smeared over the sheets beneath her.

Perhaps she has longed for death for some time.

“God,”she croaks. “Please!”

God.He doesn’t know if he has ever believed in God, or heaven. He certainly doesn’t now, and hearingheruse that word is startling. But there is no god here, and no salvation. Only him.

His finger twitches on the trigger.

Save her.

The image flashes through his brain on the tail-end of the command—a flimsy, unbidden vision: His lips against the scabbed-over scar on her neck. His teeth digging in. The taste of her blood spilling into his mouth and the sensation of iron hooks burrowing into his heart.

There isoneway to save her.

His gun slips from his hand and clatters to the ground as he jolts back, away from the bed.

No. No, no, no!

But it’s too late. He doesn’t know what nightmare the knowledge comes from—what deeply buried instinct forced its way to the surface before he could take his freedom, or why it has—but he can’t unknow it now.

His ragged breath shudders out of his lungs as he stares down at the monster who has broken him beyond the bounds of humanity.

Thereisa way to save a woman from the loss of her alpha—he must replace her broken bond with another.

Chapter 10

AX2

Save her.

No. Stars above,no!

AX2’s eyes are wide as he stares down at the broken woman before him, his heart thumping fast and unevenly behind his ribs. He can’t wrap his mind around the concept, but it’s there, no matter how hard he tries to make it disappear.

If he mates her—if he claims her as his—she will survive. He knows it in the marrow of his bones.

His chip fires angrily through his brain, the command like a hammer rather than a spike, now that he sees a way to obey both sets of orders. It urges him on, zinging against his nervous system with the demand tosave her. Make her pain stop.

If he does this, she will be a part of him in ways far more horrific, far more intimate, than what she has done to him before. The very last vestiges of his mind will be hers too.

No.Not this. This he can’t do. He won’t.

AX2 bends for his gun, but his fingers slip on the metal and he stumbles forward, only barely catching himself against the bed.

Shit.He tries again, but the shock of the chip turns his vision white.

He can’t kill her now that he knows that doing so isn’t saving her. He missed his chance.

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