Page 87 of Rising Luna
Another pang in the bonds of yet another death in my pack. I shook from the fury I felt of someone else dying because of this, and I wanted nothing more than to rip Lupe apart.
My pack was growing tired again. An endless sea of enemies surrounded me, and some were trained in unimaginable ways to kill. My power and energy still rang at full, and I bled it into the bonds to give them an advantage. My mates did the same to me, and I growled at them to stop.
No. We are fine. You need to end this and soon.Hunter snapped back.
There was no use in arguing, I knew that. Lupe must have noticed the energy shift I sent out because she was staring off at the battle on the other side of the house. A roar escaped her lips, and she turned back toward me.
“You are going to regret that.”
There was a flicker of something in her hand, and I didn’t have time to see what it was before he charged at me. Pulling on my power again, I bounced over across from where she was to get out of the way. She changed directions and came at me again. There was so much anger in her I could feel it rolling off her every time she came close. A moment of clarity hit me, and I swiped at her face with my claws as I passed through her, only making my paw corporeal to land the swipe.
Lupe did something. Astral should mean no one could hit me. But the bitch punched my body mid trajectory and sent me flying. She shouldn’t have been able to do it. I looked at her fist as I scrambled to my feet and there wasn’t anything different about her. There were shadows flaring around her body, but the moon’s light shined brighter, as if to cancel them out.
“You will bow to me one way or another, Dylan Pierce. You think this fight is hard now? Just wait until your family has to fight you, too.”
What?
Lupe charged at me and whatever was in her hand was still there. I wanted to kick myself for not trying to bite her damn hand to make her drop it. It looked like it had a point, and it had to be the knife she had before. But this was smaller.
What the fuck was it?
I moved away from her, teleporting to a different side so I could try to find my way into ripping her hand off. I was tired of having to evade blades and even more tired of having to fight this titbag. Why the hell won’t she die?
She got close to me again, and I teleported behind her and jumped on her back. Despite falling forward, she managed to keep whatever was in her hand. She spun under me and I snapped at her hand. My pack’s energy felt low again, and I poured more into them to keep them in fighting shape. My energy depleted from me letting them borrow it, but I had Lupe where I wanted her. As long as she didn’t get whatever was in her hand into me, and I went for the throat, this would all be over.
But her fist hit the side of my neck and then something sharp pierced my neck. Fire spread through me as I felt whatever she shoved me into mixed with my system. I yelped and howled, and then it hit me.
She said my family would fight me.
Lupe just stuck me with a damn needle.
And my wolf snarled and fought for control.
Chapter Thirty: Dylan
Lupe had jammed a needle into my skin, and now the serum surged through me like a wildfire. This had to be some kind of sick joke. After everything, after all the battles and sacrifices, how was I now the very thing I’d sworn to destroy?
Pain seared through me, raw and all-consuming. I yowled, my cries torn from my throat as my body convulsed, aching beyond reason. My grip on my form shattered, and I surrendered just enough for my wolf to take hold. She was feral, lost in a whirlwind of rage, her snarls reverberating through my bones as if she were unraveling at the seams. Through the mate bonds, their fury roared, their snarls pressing against me, but I willed a barrier between us, desperate to keep them from witnessing my struggle.
Or worse.
I didn’t want the serum getting into the bonds and taking them over.
The barrier between me and my wolf stretched thin, fragile as a breath. Panic constricted my chest, stealing the air from my lungs as the weight of what had just been injected into me settled. Lupe wouldn’t have chosen something random; she was deliberate, calculated. This was why she had come. She wanted me, and now she had me.
She fucking injected me with the very serum that made everyone under her control. The serum that would make me lose the wall between me and my wolf and made me into one of them.
I screamed.
Agony ignited beneath my skin, a wildfire consuming every nerve. My claws shot forth, sharp and unrelenting, while mybones twisted and snapped, echoing the brutal transformation of my first shift. Pain crashed over me in relentless waves, my body contorting on the ground as if the earth itself rejected me. This was pure, merciless hell, and I was trapped in its grasp with no way to break free.
I was on the verge of losing myself to her. My wolf, wild and unrelenting, would rise as the most powerful Shadowborn, second only to Lupe, and that possibility carried too many dangerous consequences. This couldn’t be happening. Yet the serum coursed through my veins, threading its way into every fiber of my being, and with it came a surge of my wolf’s power, ferocious and untamed, unlike anything I had ever felt before.
It was happening.
Through the bond, I reached for my wolf, desperate to connect with her as I always had, but the control I once wielded was slipping through my fingers. Helplessness coiled around me, tightening its grip as the distance between us grew, leaving her free to take over if she chose. My stomach churned at the thought of her unleashed within this pack, dominant, untouchable, a force no one could rein in. A wolf like mine was a prize, and Lupe knew it. She had done this deliberately, knowing the power that surged through me, the strength I carried simply by being bound to my wolf. That was why I had been the target all along.
I was the missing piece she needed to take over the werewolves.
