Page 55 of Alpha Exile

But I don't let in, bending my muzzle towards the back of his neck and digging my fangs into the loose skin there. I shake my powerful jaw back and forth, tearing open skin and filling my mouth with his blood.

The sound he makes is pitiful and angry, his back legs kicking out to scratch at me. I feel the flare of pain and dig my teeth in more, getting a firm grip on the side of his neck and tearing him open there as well.

Then I push my back paws onto his haunches and kick back, sinking my claws into his muscles and gouging them.

It's the pant of weary exhaustion, the trembling struggling beneath me, that makes me stop, step back, and prowl around to watch him push himself up towards his feet.

Our eyes meet, his moon-glowing, the air filled with the stench of sickness, his blood coating my mouth.

He growls, the sound quieter than before, his lips pulling back from his teeth.

Then he stumbles forward, favoring his back left haunch, swings his head around, and limps off into the darkness.

After a moment or two he begins to run, his gait lopsided, a trail of blood spilling wherever his paws hit the ground.

I watch him go, heart aching, wondering how we're going to bringthathome and call him our Roarke.

Twenty-Three

Delilah

My heart is fragile and full of rage.

I want to burn this world down, to destroy everything and everyone in it. The only thing that keeps me from doing so is the knowledge that my mates live here too—and they would burn just as much as the rest.

I fucking hate Delphine.

Prowling through the woods in our wolf forms, we follow the scent of Roarke's blood trail. Kieran's distress is a constant ache in the back of my mind, his guilt and shame overlaid with his joy at seeing Roarke alive and his fear that he'll never get his best friend back.

A fear that I share, because the Roarke who attacked Kieran is not the man I know. Even the scent of his blood is off, laced with a too-sweet smell that wrinkles my nose and sets my teeth on edge.

We have to drag him back and make him whole. I'm determined to do that, to find him, lay some kind of spell on him, and figure out a way to restore his soul and return our mate bond to the way it was meant to be.

Only at some point, the trail of blood stops.

I circle the spot where it trails off, then pace away, twitching my tail impatiently.Finn, can you catch the scent?

Let me try.

He prowls around the small clearing we're in, lifting his nose to scent the air, then dragging it down to inhale near the earth. His ears twitch in concentration, his lips chuffing as he inhales deeply and tries to catch the scent again.

After several long, agonizing moments, he stops in one place and swings his sorrowful gaze towards me.I'm sorry, Delilah. The scent trail ends here. It's almost as if...

Almost as if magic erased it off the earth completely.

As if Delphine snatched him back up, swept him away, and erased the last trail of him from this earth so we would never find him again. She's probably used that spell again to travel across the territory, and could even now be anywhere, doing god knows what to him.

No. I won't let her have him.

Shaking myself off, I study each of my mates, their determined stances filling me with hope. Even Kieran, whose shoulders are hunched, his ears pinned back and tail despondent, raises his eyes to meet mine and shakes his dreariness off.

We're going to fight,I tell them,with everything we've got. If we can't get Roarke, then we'll get that bitch Delphine, andmakeher tell us where he is.

Turning around, I race flat-out towards the mountains. My mates follow close at my heels, strong and fleet-footed, well-rested even after just half a night of sleep. Around us, the darkness lifts towards dawn, and restless creatures stir.

None of them as restless as the vengeful monster deep within me who hungers to taste Delphine's blood, to rip her limb from limb and scatter her ashes across the earth.

I lead my mates towards the foot of the mountains, past our campsite and around the places we scouted the past few days. My heart tells me that we have to get to the center of that cavern, to find the magic that Delphine used to take Roarke, because it may be the only way to get him back.

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