Filed to story: The Alphas Contract Novel by Taylor West
Linking Neah, I ask if she is free to talk. I wanted to tell her about the strange interaction I had with Abraxas. She tells me she will be over as soon as she can.
Getting to my feet, I smell smoke and burning wood. Peering around my house, Wolves and Lycans are running out of the forest, scooping up younger children and hurrying them out of the way as flames lick the tree trunks.
Many of the Wolves threw themselves into action, making sure everyone was as far away as possible while others charged into the trees to tackle the blaze. But the fire grows, spreading like crazy through the forest.
A hand locks around my wrist, pulling me back as embers fall on my house, igniting the roof in seconds. Everything I had built in the last couple of years goes up in flames right before my eyes.
“You need to move.” The man holding my wrist mutters.
I look up to see Ryken, Blair’s stepfather, I don’t even know where he came from, but he tugs me backwards, away from the fire when I see familiar waves of red hair backing in to the fire.
“MADDIE!”
****
Trigger warning. Suicide. ****
Abraxas
Fire licks at my own skin as I rush forward to help. I wasn’t even within touching distance of the fire, and nothing was happening to me, yet it burned me as though I am in the middle of it. This has never happened before.
I see Ryken holding on to Mallory, stopping her from running into the flames as she screams out for Maddie over and over. She tries to pull herself free, though Ryken keeps a firm grip on her.
Act first, think later. Mallory was prone to it and I’m almost grateful there is someone keeping her from running into the fire.
She was one of the few Lycans I could tolerate.
Sweat drips from me as my skin heats up. Smoke leaks up into the atmosphere as the Wolves and Lycans surrounding me rapidly try to put the fire out or pull young Wolves and Lycans away. Any time something dies down, something else goes up in thick orange flames, sending more dense smoke into the air.
If we weren’t careful and quick. The smoke may draw the attention of unwanted bypassers.
Neah and Dane run past me. He joins the chain with others, throwing water on the roaring flames. Neah grabs hold of Mallory and with the help of Ryken, drags her further back, away from her burning home.
There is something different about Neah. The black ring around her soul isn’t as dark and it isn’t pulsating like it usually is. But every crack is filled with black, almost making her soul look as if the cracks had cleared. She had let her Lycan win or she had given up.
I didn’t want to put a bullet in her, but I can’t allow another Rogue to wander this Earth.
Mallory’s scream refocuses my attention “She’s your mate!” She cries at me. “You are just letting her die!”
Ryken frowns, confused by Mallory’s declaration
“She isn’t my mate.” I say for the thousandth time and turn my attention to the forest. I see Madison’s red hair, she’s close to the ground and more fire runs up my back.
“Mallory. Mallory, look at me.” Neah mutters, grabbing the Lycans face and forcing Mallory to look at her. “This isn’t your fault.”
As Neah talks to her, I slip away. Entering a part of the forest that had already been put out.
Madison’s jasmine scent is easy to pick up, quickly followed by the sound of her crying. She lets out a scream and I feel the flesh on my back burn. “Madison!” She doesn’t answer and I’m forced to call to her again. Even if it momentarily stops her from hurting herself.
Her chestnut eyes briefly pause on me. “No, not you. I don’t need you. Go!” She whimpers from the ground. She’s laid on her stomach, the back of her shirt almost completely burnt off, while her back is laced with black seared flesh and wide open wounds that are fighting to knit themselves together.
She rolls over, pulling faces through the pain and purposely forces her own arm into the fire. Madison lets out a gut wrenching scream that makes my heart freeze as I feel the fire smoulder up my own arm. It was strange, feeling something that wasn’t happening to me. hadn’t even felt this with Dorothy’s mother.
Grabbing Madison’s feet, I drag her from the flames. She needed time to heal. But she tries to kick me. Shouting at me and demanding to let her go. “You have to stop!” I snap
“I can’t live like this. It’s to hard!”
I pull the small hand gun from my hip and thrust it at her. “Go on then, be my guest, do it.” I was calling her bluff.
Her eyes widen as they dance between the gun, my face and the fire.
“It will be a lot quicker and less painful. Well, if you do it right.”
She reaches up for the gun. A move that I wasn’t expecting, though I manage to pull it just from her reach. She was willing to kill herself over all of this
“Screw you.” She growls at me,
“You’ve been torturing me for over a month, do you know how it feels, knowing ‘m mated to you of all people. Now let me go!” She tries to kick I me again, I block her with ease, already anticipating her next move asa foot comes towards my dick. “Just let me go. Please!”
“I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
She stares at me with her wide chestnut eyes, trying to understand me. I spot the matches nearby with a small aerosol can.
“You started the fire, didn’t you?” I ask as the flames move from one charcoaled tree to the next.
“No.” She mutters, but her answer comes out full of desperation and sadness. As if she was a child being scolded over spilt milk
“Your soul tells me differently. The evidence tells me differently”
She turns from me and starts crawling back towards the fire, dragging herself across the forest floor and ignoring every bit of pain she is feeling.
Pinning her to the ground, I straddle her hips as she lets out a sob.
“Why?” I demand. “Why would you do this to the person that took you in?”
“What do you mean?” Tears trickle over her soot smudged face.
“You’ve burned Mallory’s house down.”
“I didn’t….”
“I’ve seen it. You’ve taken away the home of a pregnant woman.”
“No.” She whimpers. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to be me.”
Her heart races and she squeezes her eyes tight. Her sorrow and her pain weighed heavily on her.
“It wasn’t supposed to get so big.” She pushes against me, but she’s weak and exhausted. The flesh on her arms is already healing. “You should have killed me when you shot Enzo. Please, just do it.” She struggles against me. “Or let me go. It will be easier for you.”
“So you can walk into the fire, never to be seen again? I don’t think so Madison. Not while I feel the fire licking at my skin like it is me that is walking through the flames.”
She manages to grab my hand with the gun, and pulls it under her chin, locking her hands tightly over mine “I can’t live in fear anymore. Please just kill me?” She tries to squeeze my finger over the trigger, though her weakness barely makes my finger move.
Death is what she is hoping for. Death was a way to escape me, but I wasn’t letting her go anywhere. Not yet.
“I am not going to kill you, not yet. But you keep your mouth shut about what happened and how the fire started. Do you understand?”
Lifting her from the ground, I cradle her in my arms as she hooks a burnt arm over my shoulder. It had been years since I had held another female like this. Her jasmine invades every inch of me. I hated it and I loved it.
I couldn’t admit what she was to me, but I couldn’t let her do something so reckless either.
Raven and Neah come rushing forward when they see us. Raven demands for me to put Madison down so she could check her over while Neah stares at me with a knowing look.
She pulls me to one side. “You saved her?”
“Clearly.” I mutter back, throwing a glance over my shoulder to check Madison.
“Didn’t think you liked Lycans?” Neah blocks my gaze as she folds her arms across her chest and narrows her eyes at me. She wasn’t going to let this go anytime soon.
“I don’t.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Have you accepted her?”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” She gives me that same knowing look. I turn the conversation to her. “What about you. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Cut the crap, Neah.”
“You don’t want to talk about
Maddie. I don’t want to talk about
I
what you claim you can see. But what I can do is order Maddie to tell me what happened in the forest. Actually, I think that is a good idea. I do need to test myself a bit more.” She smiles at me and her brilliant blue eyes widen with excitement.
“Is Nyx in control?”
Blair
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?