The Alpha Rejected A Moon Goddess

Chapter 4

The first wolf was not the one chasing me, and that was somehow worse, because I had spent the entire f*****g run through the forest believing the pack warriors were behind me, when the thing that finally stepped into the moonlight had never belonged to them at all.

I froze so hard that my injured ankle nearly gave out beneath me, and I caught myself against a tree with both hands while staring at the enormous black wolf standing several feet away, its shoulders rising and falling as it watched me with yellow eyes that were far too calm for something that had blood dripping from its mouth.

Then another growl came from behind me.

I turned, and another wolf stepped between the trees.

Then another one moved on my left.

Then two more appeared farther back, spreading themselves around me so slowly that I understood what they were doing only when there was nowhere left for me to run.

These weren't Asher's warriors.

These weren't the men who had been chasing me from the territory.

These wolves had come for me.

"Oh, you have got to be f*****g kidding me," I whispered, although my voice shook so badly that it barely sounded like mine, and when the wolf closest to me lowered its head and showed me a mouth full of teeth.

The wolf lunged.

I threw myself sideways just before its claws tore through the tree where my head had been, and the impact sent bark flying into my face while I scrambled across the dirt, kicked wildly at its ribs when it came around again.

I actually smiled for half a second.

Then another wolf hit me from behind.

My face slammed into the ground so violently that my teeth clicked together, and before I could push myself up, claws ripped across my back, tearing through my already damaged dress and opening hot lines of pain across my skin.

I screamed and twisted.

I rolled away, coughing dirt, blood already running down my back, and for one stupid second I thought I had actually managed enough to escape.

Then the black wolf charged again.

I raised the knife.

Its paw knocked my hand sideways with such force that the knife flew into the darkness, and the next thing I felt was a heavy body crashing into my chest and pinning me beneath it while its claws pressed against my shoulders.

I kicked.

I punched.

I grabbed its fur and pulled until my fingers burned.

Nothing worked.

The wolf opened its jaws above my face, and I shoved both hands beneath its throat, trying desperately to keep its teeth away from me while every muscle in my body screamed from the effort.

"Get off me, you filthy f*****g animal, because…."

Its jaws snapped toward my face.

I turned my head.

The teeth sank into my shoulder instead.

Pain exploded through me so violently that my hands went numb, and when the wolf tore away, I felt something warm pouring down my arm.

I stared at the blood.

There was too much of it.

"No, no, no, no, please," I gasped as I pushed myself backward, but my hands slipped underneath me because the ground had become wet with my own blood, and the wolves were already moving again.

I tried to stand.

My ankle collapsed.

I crawled.

I don't even know where I thought I was going, because every direction looked the same in the darkness, but I dragged myself forward anyway, using tree roots and stones to pull my body through the leaves while the wolves followed at an almost insulting pace.

They didn't need to hurry.

They knew I couldn't escape.

One of them caught my leg.

I screamed and kicked at its face, but another wolf slammed into my side and sent me rolling down a small slope, my body bouncing against roots and rocks until my head struck something hard enough to make the entire forest spin.

When I tried to breathe, something wet filled my throat.

I coughed.

Blood came out.

I touched my neck and felt the torn flesh beneath my fingers, and suddenly the panic became so enormous that I couldn't even scream properly anymore because the wound had opened across my throat and every breath felt like I was dragging air through a hole that shouldn't have existed.

I pressed both hands against it.

The blood kept coming.

The wolves gathered around me.

I could hear their growls, their paws moving through the leaves, their breathing becoming louder while my own became weaker, and somewhere in the back of my mind I understood that this was it.

I wasn't getting up again. I wasn't going back to Asher.

I wasn't getting revenge on the people who had spent twenty-one years making me feel worthless.

I wasn't even going to make it far enough to hate them properly.

My fingers slipped from my throat.

My vision blurred. Then something strange happened.

The wolves stopped, and I had no idea why. I hadn't moved, nobody had come, they just stopped.

Every single wolf froze around me, their heads turning toward the sky at almost the exact same moment.

I followed their eyes because I had nothing else left to do.

The moon was changing.

The pale light that had been spilling between the trees suddenly became brighter, so bright that I had to squeeze my eyes shut, and then the forest filled with a low vibrating sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The wolf standing closest to my body backed away.

Another followed.

Then another.

One of them tried to growl, but the sound broke halfway through and became something almost frightened.

I opened my eyes again.

The moon above the trees no longer looked white.

It had turned silver.

A strange light spilled down through the branches and landed directly on my bloodied body, and where that light touched the ground beneath me, a faint circular mark began appearing in the dirt.

The wolves saw it too.

The largest one suddenly staggered backward, staring at the symbol as though it had seen something it was never supposed to see, while another wolf lowered its head toward the ground without understanding why its legs were shaking.

I couldn't understand any of it.

I couldn't even feel most of my body anymore. But then the mark beneath me began to glow.

The trees trembled. The wolves scattered.

And somewhere deep inside my dying body, something ancient opened its eyes.