CHAPTER 18: Let's Get You Home
1129 Words
Aurora’s POV
We were still hiding behind the rock when my wolf started screaming at me.
Fight. We can’t keep hiding. This isn’t what we are.
She pushed at me hard, clawing toward the surface, and for one second I almost let her.
Every part of her wanted to stop crouching in the dirt like prey and turn around and face whatever was coming.
I shoved her back down. Deep, into the furthest corner of my mind, where I could still feel her snarling but not hear her.
Not yet. Not until I knew what we were dealing with.
I pressed myself flat against the cool rock and against Lucas, who had gone still and warm at my back, his arm a solid band across my front. His heart was steady under my shoulder. Mine was not.
The footsteps got closer.
Then they were right in front of the rock.
“I could’ve sworn they came through here.” A man’s voice, rough, close enough that I stopped breathing. “Their car’s still parked up front. They didn’t leave.”
“Then they’re here somewhere.”
A pause. The sound of someone sniffing the air.
“We will take her back with us today. I don’t care how. We are not letting a healer slip through our hands.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. A healer. They knew. They were here for me.
It had been a day since I healed Lucielle’s and already there were strange wolves at the edge of the territory hunting me.
How had it spread so fast?
Lucas’s chest vibrated against my back. A low growl, barely there, more felt than heard. His mouth came down close to my ear.
“Stay here,” he breathed. “I have a plan. Don’t move, no matter what you hear.”
And before I could grab him, before I could tell him no, he was gone.
He stepped out from behind the rock and walked toward them like he’d just wandered up from the water.
I pressed my eye to the gap in the rock and watched.
There were five of them. Big, rough-looking wolves. They turned toward Lucas all at once, and I saw their confusion, the way they looked him over and then looked past him, scanning the trees.
“Sorry.” Lucas stretched, hands going up behind his head like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I was just taking a leak when I heard you lot stomping around. Are you looking for someone?”
“Yeah.” The biggest one stepped forward. “Bring us the girl and you won’t get hurt. We know she’s a healer. We’re not leaving without her.”
“There’s no girl out here.”
“Don’t play dumb.” The man’s lip curled. “Where’s your sister?”
Something changed in Lucas.
It happened slowly. The grin stayed for a second longer, but the warmth behind it drained out, and what was left underneath was something I had never seen on his face before.
“No, no, no.” His voice dropped. Till it was almost gentle. “You’re about to cross a line. A line you are going to regret.” He took one step toward them. “Don’t you ever talk about my sister with your rotten mouths again.”
The big one laughed.
“What are you going to do about it? You’re one wolf. There’s five of us.”
Lucas looked at them.
And the smile fell off his face completely.
I felt a pressure roll out of him immediately, it was thick and heavy, filling the clearing like water filling a glass.
Alpha aura. Raw and crushing. It pressed down on everything, and one by one, the five of them dropped.
They went to their knees in the dirt like their legs had been cut out from under them.
Even from behind the rock I felt the edge of it brush against me, and my wolf … my furious, screaming wolf … went quiet and lowered her head slightly, acknowledging the strength of him. It wasn’t as much as Logan.
Some part of me knew that, even now. But it was enough to put five grown wolves on the ground.
“Shut that disgusting wolf of yours up,” Lucas said to the closest one. “Before I do it for you.”
The big one fought it.
He got one knee up, then a foot, blood already running from his nose and he lunged at Lucas with a snarl.
I started to move.
I got halfway out from behind the rock before I could stop myself, my heart in my throat, because there were five of them and one of him and I couldn’t just sit there and…
I didn’t need to.
Lucas caught the man mid-lunge throwing him to the ground. I flinched as I heard the sound of bone crunching.
He moved through them like they were made of paper. Their speed was too fast for me to keep up with. But I could hear the sound of bone breaking.
He tore them apart, piece by piece, until the clearing was full of broken men crawling and gasping in the dirt, with so much blood.
This is what happens.
“Lucas.” My voice came out shaking. I was fully out from behind the rock now, with both hands up. “Lucas, that’s enough. Let them go. Please.”
He had one of them by the throat, his arm drawn back, and he didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes had gone somewhere else entirely. There was blood across his face and down his shirt and none of it was his.
“Lucas.” I stepped closer. “Look at me. That’s enough.”
For a second I didn’t think I could stop him. For a second it was like he wasn’t Lucas at all, like I was talking to something underneath him that had been waiting a long time to come out.
Then he paused.
His head turned. His eyes found me.
And the smile came back.
It just slid back onto his face like it had never left, easy and warm, and he opened his hand and let the man drop into the dirt.
He straightened up and wiped the back of his wrist across his mouth, smearing the blood, and he looked at me with those soft grey eyes that were nothing like the eyes from one second ago.
“Sorry, sister,” he said gently.
Then he held out his hand to me, blood and all, like we were just two people standing in the woods at sunset.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”
- Writer
