Page 19 of Her Eternal Mate

“It doesn’t matter,” the soldier said. “Within a week, there will be no werewolves in or around Fiddler’s Green. Blair has created an entire army full of soldiers like us, all of whom have one purpose—to kill all the werewolves in Fiddler’s Green. Eventually, we’ll spread out throughout the country and kill all of your kind. That’s the kind of man our leader is. He’s devoted, fanatic, passionate, strong, and intelligent! He wants to reclaim this country from the horrible beasts who killed his father and who have been terrorizing these lands all this time.”

“You think we terrorize these lands? We settled these lands. We never terrorized anybody. It was Blair, with his propaganda, that terrorized the people. His father kept me as a prisoner for more than seventy years. That’s why I killed him. For my life! Don’t come here and talk to me about what’s fair and what’s not. You don’t know the half of it. You’re just a foot soldier in a deranged lunatic’s chaotic game of chess, and you don’t even know it,” I said.

“That’s it. I’ve had it!” the soldier said, then quickly put on his helmet. The rest of the soldiers copied him, armoring up and picking up their weapons. What they didn’t count on was my rage for retribution. I shifted immediately, and behind me, all the wolves did the same. With five of us on one side of the field and the ten soldiers on the other side, it didn’t feel like a fair battle.

We’d win without a doubt.

I pounced on the soldiers standing closest to me, using all my feral strength to jam my claws into their throats. Sludge-like blood spouted from their jugular veins as they fell to the ground. This left only eight more. Through this attack, I had just learned one of the most powerful techniques for fighting these soldiers—their armors were weakest at the necks.

Alexis and Vince leaped from behind me, falling on two more soldiers and tackling them. The other two wolves who had come with us did the same with the rank of soldiers behind the tent.

Perhaps it was because the wolves were greater in number, or perhaps because we’d caught the soldiers off guard, but this fight did not take as long as I had expected. I killed two more of them using their own grenades against them by pulling the pins and pushing them off the forest slope. As they rolled backward, their grenades exploded, killing them that very instant.

In the time that I’d killed four, the rest of the pack had taken care of the remaining six. This left only one soldier who had refused to come out and join the fight, Agent Bert.

I entered the tent in my human form and saw him standing there with Maliha in front of him. Agent Bert held Maliha by the throat and had a gun to her head.

“Move one step closer, and I’ll fucking blow her brains out!” he yelled. I could see now that Alexis was right about him being utterly deranged.

“Will! What is happening?” Maliha whimpered.

“Shh. It’s okay,” I said, raising my hands.

“Don’t lie to her. I’ll kill her first, and then I’ll kill you!” Agent Bert said, his eyes glowing fiercely.

Before he could make good on this threat, the tent opened up from behind him, and Alexis pounced at him from behind in her wolf form, catching him off guard. Agent Bert hadn’t been wearing his helmet. As he turned around, Alexis bit down on his head and ripped it off his neck.

“Holy fuck!” Maliha yelled as she witnessed this macabre spectacle of a larger-than-life wolf beheading a maniacal soldier. She came running to me and then hid behind me, peeking from under my arms. “What is my life right now? What is happening?”

And then, Alexis, now done with dismembering Agent Bert, shifted back into her human form. “There’s something I have to tell you, Maliha.”

“Alexis?” Maliha stuttered, then swooned and fell unconscious.

I looked at Alexis and said, “I can understand how it can be hard for someone to see their best friend shifting from a wolf.”

Alexis sighed, then lifted Maliha in her arms. “She’s had a hell of a day. I’m going to take her back to her apartment and wait for her to wake up. Then I’ll explain everything to her and swear her to secrecy.”

“Take Vince and the others with you. I will not let you go without protection. It’s not safe out there,” I said.

“What about you?”

“As you can see, I can take care of myself,” I said, pumping my muscles in the air and waving my arms at the fallen soldiers. “They’re not hard to beat once you learn the trick.”

“Hit ‘em in the neck?” Alexis asked.

“That’s my girl!” I said, patting her head.

She grinned at me, then delivered a quick peck to my cheek before exiting the tent.

I, in the meantime, looked around the tent to figure out what the soldiers were doing here and what kind of weaponry they had left behind. It would prove to be very useful if we could use their weapons against them.

Once all the werewolves were gone, and I was left entirely alone in the clearing, I did something I’d intended to do ever since I’d laid my eyes on it. On every soldier’s body, there was a comm that was still working. A comm that undoubtedly connected to Blair. I picked one up and pushed its button. Static noises came from the other side.

“Hello?” I spoke.

The static continued for a whole minute, and then a voice spoke from the other end of the line. “Well, well, if it isn’t Wilhelm Grimm.”

“Don’t you dare take my name with your filthy mouth,” I said.

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