Page 34 of Shadowlands Sector

Chapter 10

Dušan

Meira is a half-breed.Fuck!There’s no way I can send her to Ander now, so trying to keep my word has been a damn waste of time. He won’t accept her…not many will. She’s a liability if her wolf does decide to come out. It will rip out of her body, killing her, but the beast that remains will be a savage brute that will kill everyone in sight.

This is why other packs kill half-breeds who haven’t transformed once they hit puberty.

My wolf rumbles in my chest, shoving, pining for Meira. And I didn’t want to see the truth smacking me in the face, didn’t want to admit that fate had finally paid me a visit.

Her wolf has connected with mine… the precursor for a mating for life. Now I feel the need in my bones, in the way my wolf hums in her presence, at how my body lights awake at the mere thought of her. Back in the bathroom, I barely held it together to stop myself from claiming her. I’d hoped it was nothing more than lust because the growing desire inside me will soon make her insatiable to me. But she poses a grave danger to my pack. So I’ll have to make sure she is always with an Alpha when not closed off in her room.

I scrub a hand down my face. How is this going to work, anyway? An Alpha with a weak half-breed, who’s a time-bomb waiting to go off? I promised my pack safety. So why did the fates bring me together with Meira this way?

I pace up and down my office, fury burning through me.

“You will never amount to anything. No one will mate with you.”

Father’s words flare over my mind. With them comes rage, and I clench my fists. I promised myself I would make a difference to my pack, not become their burden like my father did to his.

Memories roll right over me, giving me no chance to shove them aside.

“Don’t,” I yell, lunging at my father who raises another hand to my mother. She’s on the floor, bleeding and bruised, gasping for air. Her eyes turn to me as she mouths, ‘run.’

The thought of her suffering excited him. I see it in his dark eyes. “I warned you.”

I threw myself into my monster of a father, a burly shifter, still even my thin ten-year old body shoved him into a sideways stumble. Fury takes me, and I drive everything I have into him—punches, kicks, teeth. My fury simmers to boiling point.

He shoves a hand behind me and snatches me by the scruff and hurls me across the room like I weigh nothing. I slam into the wall and slide down, my lungs gasping for air. I wipe away the useless tears…

“This is your fault,” he growls, glaring at my mother “You made him weak and useless.”

His hand raises again, curled into a fist as he leans over my mother.

“Don’t touch her,” I scream, scrambling to my feet, but it’s too late.

Everything is too late.

My world dies in that moment, ripped out from under me, and I know nothing will ever be the same.

The punches begin again and don’t stop. The dull whacks soon turn to moist thuds.

The room tilts under me. My stomach lurches, and I run out of the room as I hurl out everything in my stomach.

Even today I feel the hollowness inside me, my muscles so tense, they might snap. My throat thickens at the memory I’ve tried so hard to bury away. To push the images of the blood seeping over the stone floor. That isn’t how I want to remember my mother… but instead as the caring woman who loved me, who hid me, who protected me.

As broken as Meira is, as unpredictable as her wolf is, I can’t push her away.

Whether she accepts it or not, she’s in trouble, and I will help her.

I try to clear my head and make sense of what to do next. To push away the feeling of emptiness.

This was why I stepped up to the role of Alpha. Shifters now turn to me when they have a problem, when they need help.

A howl comes from somewhere in the woods outside. The wolf run is on tonight—at the full moon, when we are all at our wildest. When even my rules won’t tame the wolves in my pack. This is a night of recklessness, of releasing and being one with our true nature.

And it’s the perfect time to see how much her wolf controls her.

I can’t stop seeing the blood in the trashcan from her sickness. So much of it, and any human with this illness wouldn’t have many days left. I suspect her wolf side has kept her alive, but for how much longer?

---