MATED TO THE MAFIA ALPHA

Chapter 6 - Hunted

I don't make it far. The pain from the rejection has settled into something worse than agony now a hollowing-out, like my body has started forgetting how to hold itself together. My legs give out against a fallen tree, and I go down hard, palms scraping against bark and stone, and by the time I force myself back up onto shaking knees, the rogues have already closed the distance. They ring around me in a loose, unhurried circle, four of them, maybe five I can't even tell anymore, my vision keeps doubling at the edges. Their eyes catch what little moonlight filters through the canopy, flat and hungry, and none of them are in any rush at all. Why would they be. I'm not a threat. I'm barely a meal that wouldn’t even be enough.

"Well, well, well." The one who speaks is broad-shouldered, scarred along one side of his jaw, and he circles closer with the loose, rolling gait of someone enjoying himself. "A lone wolf on rogue territory and weak, too. Smell that?" He inhales theatrically, and the others echo him, low chuckles rippling through the circle. "Rejected, Dying and barely worth the effort." "Then don't bother," I manage, though my voice comes out thin and cracked, nothing like the steadiness I want it to have. "Just let me go." That gets an actual laugh out of him ugly, delighted. "Sweetheart, you wandered into our territory covered in fresh heartbreak and no pack to answer if you disappear. You're not a threat. You're a gift." A gift offered to by the Moon Goddess herself. I try to back away and my heel catches on a root, and the stumble is enough, one of them lunges, fast and low, and I throw my arms up on pure animal instinct with no wolf underneath it to make the gesture matter. Claws rake close enough that I feel the wind of it against my forearm, and I go down again, breath knocked out of me, dirt and leaves filling my mouth. Above me, the scarred one crouches, unhurried, savoring it. "Let's not drag this out," he says, and there's nothing in his voice but bored, practical cruelty. "You're already halfway gone. We'll just finish the job." I stare up at him at all of them, enclosing on me, teeth already lengthening, shapes flickering at the edges between man and something else and some strangely stubborn part of me that hasn't given up yet decides to look for anything, any weapon, any option, and finds nothing. No wolf to call. No pack to hear me. No mate bond left to even scream through, because that's been severed too, cut clean and left me alone in every sense the word can hold. This is how it ends, I think, strangely calm in the middle of the terror, like calm before a raging storm, the way I've heard people describe the last seconds before a crash. Not at the altar. Not even in my own territory. Here, in the dirt, in a forest that was never mine to run to. The scarred rogue raises a hand, sharp claws fully extended now, catching the moonlight in five wicked points, and I close my eyes because I don't want the last thing I see to be his monstrous face.

A gunshot splits the night apart. It's so loud it doesn't even register as sound at first, just a physical shock, a concussive crack that sends birds screaming up out of the canopy and drops the rogue's raised arm mid-motion, a spray of dark blood arcing out where his shoulder used to be whole. He howls, staggering back, and the circle around me breaks apart in an instant, snarls turning to confusion, confusion turning to panic as a second shot cracks through the trees and drops another rogue where he stands. I don't understand what's happening. I don't have the strength left to understand anything. I just curl up against the ground, arms over my head, while chaos detonates around me, more snarls and growls, the wet heavy sound of something large and fast moving through the underbrush with terrifying purpose. Through the ringing in my ears and my blurry vision, I catch a silhouttes stepping out of the tree line into what little moonlight reaches the clearing tall, broad, moving with a controlled, deliberate power that makes the remaining rogues scatter rather than fight. A gun still smoking in one hand. Eyes that shines brightly under the moon, gold and strangely beautiful. Whoever or whatever that just found me, the rogues are more afraid of it than I was of them moment ago.

The last thing I register before the darkness finally takes me under is a voice, low and rough and startlingly close, kneeling over me like the rest of the world has simply stopped existing. "Mine," it says, and I don't know if I imagine the disbelief underneath the word. "She's mine."