Page 111 of The Alpha's Bullied Rejected Mate
Chapter 21 - Marcus
The evening air blew thick. Marcus sat at one end of the table, dressed cleanly in gray pants and a white T-shirt with sleeves that clung tightly to his forearms. A slight breeze tugged at the corner of the cloth he had laid out on the table—he had gone all out this time, but his dinner preparations lay there on the table, untouched.
He glanced at the silver watch on his left wrist.
Thirty-five minutes had passed since the agreed-upon time, and Athena hadn’t shown up.
She never ran late.
She had never stood him up before, either. Not even once. She always showed up for him, even when she had no reason to.
His mind raced back to when he was attacked by dark forces. She had been furious with him the previous night, yet she showed up to help him out of an ambush and saved his life. She was by his side all night, tending to his injuries. That was the kind of person she was, and now?
She was thirty-seven minutes late for their dinner date.
Something was definitely wrong.
Marcus’s brows drew together in a tight knot of worry as his wolf paced uneasily beneath his skin.
His fingers tapped in a frantic rhythm against the table before he curled them into a fist, growing more and more restless.
He couldn’t just sit here and wait any longer. He had to find her.
Marcus was on his way to find Athena when he sensed a sudden thrill of magic in the air that made him stop in his tracks.
What was that?
He wondered, before brushing it off as magic from the witches’ training in the camp.
Suddenly, the sky rattled with another shockwave. The grounds beneath his feet trembled faintly, like the blow of a wind, but it was enough to make his instincts jolt.
That was not ordinary.
That wasn’t training magic.
His senses snapped alert.
Without wasting any time, Marcus raised his communicator and shot an alarm across the camp, before he began running toward the energy’s center.
Marcus sprinted across the campgrounds, his boots thundering heavily against the ground with every step.
He could still feel the sharp surge of power as he trailed the energy until he stood in front of an abandoned wooden warehouse, somewhere behind the courtyard.
And then what he saw next made his heart race to his throat.
Athena.
Their gazes locked together through the window-like opening.
“Marcus!” she screamed.
But before she could say anything else, a cloaked hand wrapped around her throat, lifting her high off the ground.
His eyes dropped to the hand.
The nails were dark, rotted, and steaming with dirt against the gray skin that held them in place.
A demon.
