The Alpha's Doomed Mate

Chapter 7: Clicks

POV: Asha

I heard Hera scream, but I felt frozen where I sat on the stone walkway.

Everything happened in a flash.

Zade intercepted the man mid-air with a snarl and slammed him into the ground just inches away, hard enough to split the earth beneath them. I scrambled backward on shaking hands, my heart hammered against my ribs and drummed in my ears so loudly it drowned out everything else.

Instead of fighting back as any wolf should, he twisted. His shoulders bent and snapped in the wrongest of angles.

Click.

His spine arched and just kept going past what even my spine could do.

There came that clicking sound again, making me almost certain that it had snapped.

One arm folded beneath his body at another impossible angle.

Click again.

My stomach turned.

He shouldn’t have been moving, or even still alive at that point, but he tried to drag himself forward anyway. His claws buried deep into the soil leading up to the stone walkway as he pulled himself toward me inch by inch.

Zade planted one clawed hand around his throat, pinning him down to the ground.

Only then did I notice that Zade had half-shifted. His eyes, which had turned crimson red, found mine.

Something in that stare made my breath stop.

For one terrible second, I couldn’t tell if he had just saved me from the being beneath him, or was deciding whether I was next.

“Zade, he smells like rot…” Hera trailed off as she moved closer to them.

“Hera,” Zade growled without looking away. “Stay back.”

“It smells like a rogue…” she ignored him, circling cautiously. “...but it smells so wrong.”

I couldn't smell like she could without werewolf senses and Rylie nowhere to be found, but I could certainly tell what she meant.

Those eyes fit the description of a rogue wolf, but the actions didn’t.

Footsteps thundered from the treeline again. A man with chestnut-brown hair broke through first. He looked no older than Zade as he hurried toward us, flanked by two other guys.

“Dante,” Hera breathed out, her gaze on the man with chestnut-brown hair.

“That’s the rogue we got notified of,” Dante said slowly, his emerald-green eyes narrowing in suspicion. “But why the hell is it moving like that?”

Zade growled, tightening his grip instead of responding.

The rogue’s chest rattled. His limbs slowed, then stilled, then twitched once more, as if his body hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was already dead.

His eyes rolled upward until it all turned black.

A low, wet hiss slipped from his throat, and his fingers began clawing even more at the dirt, dragging his own body forward an inch toward me despite Zade’s grip crushing his windpipe.

“Why isn't it dying?” I whispered my thoughts out loud, my breathing uneven.

Nobody answered.

A sound rose from the rogue’s throat.

Click. Click. Click.

Without hesitation, Zade seized the rogue's head and, with one brutal twist, snapped the rogue’s neck the rest of the way.

The clearing fell deathly quiet as the clicking stopped.

Zade’s chest heaved, a low growl still rolling in his throat. His claws were fully extended, as if the fight hadn’t actually ended for him.

I held my breath and glanced at the now-dead rogue.

My gaze returned to Zade. His eyes met mine, and for a moment, his expression softened before his jaw clenched shut again.

As his claws began to retract, he looked away.

“Get her inside,” Zade said.

I wasn't sure who he was speaking to until someone pulled me up by the arm.

Hera.

My knees wobbled, but I let her lead me away from the body, away from him.

“We were patrolling the inner woods when we got a whiff of a rogue,” one of the guys muttered behind us. “The border patrol didn’t even flag him until—”

“Until he was already inside,” Dante finished grimly.

“How did it get this far inside the territory?”

I didn’t hear the rest. Hera’s grip tightened, and she quickened her pace, guiding me through the trees toward the pack house.

We climbed the stairs in silence. My mind kept replaying the same image, over and over: Zade’s crimson eyes locked on me.

When we reached the room I had been in earlier, the wind hit us first.

The heavy oak door I had locked before stepping on the window ledge was still on the floor, splintered.

My gaze shifted to the window I had smashed to threaten Zade into letting me leave. It was still open, boarded only halfway, which allowed the wind to slice through the gap and rattled the loose fabric of the curtains.

Hera cursed under her breath and went still, her eyes glazing for half a second. I could instantly tell she was mind linking.

“He wants me to move you,” she said finally. “Come on.”

We stepped back into the corridor. My gaze snagged on a heavy oak door a few feet down that looked like the fallen one in the previous room.

“What’s in there?” I asked, nodding at it as we passed.

“His study,” Hera said simply.

Further down, two more doors sat closed, unmarked, giving nothing away.

“And those?”

“That’s for him to explain, not me,” she said, not unkindly, though her tone made it clear I wouldn’t get anything else.

She led me into a new room, smaller but warmer than the last. This door and window, at least, were still intact, with furs across the bed thick enough to trap heat.

“You can stay here,” Hera said, already turning for the door.

I caught her wrist before she could leave.

She raised a brow at me almost immediately.

“He came straight for me. He was pinned down, and he didn’t even look at who had him that way. He just kept trying to get to me.”

Hera frowned.

“Is that normal here?”

She simply stared at me.

“A rogue should’ve died after his body bent like that,” I whispered, releasing her wrist.

“I know.”

My stomach dropped. “Then, why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” she responded as she opened the door. “And that’s what bothers me.”

With that, she walked out and shut the door behind her.

I exhaled slowly, biting the inside of my cheek as I stared at the door.

Click.

I froze.

The sound had come from somewhere behind me.

Slowly, I turned around—