Chapter 35: Alexis

Chapter 35: Alexis

My mate lay fading in my arms while his murderer stood beside me, laughing, holding the emptied syringe in his hands. It was beyond my comprehension how the course of the night could turn so quickly. Just a few minutes ago, we were celebrating our victory, and here, now, I sat defeated on the floor with Will’s body.

“Did your precious little mate think that a fall would kill me? It takes much more to take down Blair Beckett. Well, at least now we know that the serum works. It’s too bad that this was the only working prototype of Wolf’s Bane in existence. But, oh well. I’ll make more. And when I do, you’re next,” he said.

I could not hear the rest of what he said over the sounds of Will wheezing and struggling to breathe. His entire body was burning up, making it impossible for me to hold on to him. This was not how this was supposed to happen. Will could not die. I’d somehow save him. There had to be a way. There must be some form of antidote in the laboratory inside. This was not the end. My mate had yet to live a long and happy life with me. If anything, this was merely a small hitch.

“Oy, wake up!” Blair boomed from behind me.

Through tears dripping down my face, I turned and saw that Maurice and Ralph were slowly moving and getting up.

“I’ve done your job for you,” Blair said, lending a hand to Maurice and then lifting Ralph. “He’s dead. The serum works. Look. Look at his pathetic little slut, holding him, crying, thinking that her tears are going to heal him or something. This ain’t Harry Potter, bitch. True love doesn’t exist in real life!”

They were meaningless. His words, the fact that Maurice and Ralph were still alive—it was all meaningless. I had to save Will. Every vein on his body had turned dark, creating a horrific web of dark lines. The tan that he had sported as a result of working on his ship in the noon and training the troops in the morning was gone, and all that was left was ashen skin, pale as the moonlight. The reddish hue of his lips was replaced by a cold blue.

Even as his body singed me, I lifted him in my arms and raced towards the doorway. If only I could get him to the laboratory, I’d fix him.

“Stay with me, Will!” I said, not knowing whether he could hear me.

“Run, Alexis, Run!” Blair called from behind. Then a gunshot roared from behind, followed by a bullet whirring past me.

I slammed through the door, almost toppling over as I entered the staircase. I raced past the door leading to the top floor, not knowing where the laboratory was. It had to be somewhere here. I had to hide. Had to save Will. This was unacceptable.

I could hear the three men chasing me through the building, now following me inside. I barged through door after door on the top floor, desperately clinging on to Will and holding on to hope, hope that the laboratory was somewhere here, somewhere near.

At the last juncture, when it became physically impossible to hold onto Will’s hot body any longer, I came upon a small room that resembled a laboratory. I rushed inside and jammed the door shut.

Once I lay Will down on the floor, I tried to think of what I could do with the equipment that surrounded me to save his life. There were just more syringes, more vials, all of them a reminder of the poison that coursed through Will’s body.

“Will, would you please hold on just a little longer?” I begged, giving him chest compressions in the midst of my panic. His heart did not seem to respond. From the shelf above me, I took out a syringe containing adrenaline and jammed it into his chest, emptying its contents into him.

Will did not budge. His mouth was covered in froth, and his eyes had rolled up. Whereas his body had been immensely hot just moments ago, it was now starting to grow cold. With my hand, I felt his pulse and became submerged in shock as I realized that it was fading.

“Please, please, don’t you die on me right now!” I moaned, putting my head on his chest, hoping to hear some heartbeat. There were just a few weak beats that were more a prelude to death than a sign of life.

I joined my hands in a fist and brought them down on his chest one last time and then provided him CPR by giving him the kiss of life, all to no avail.

“You cannot leave me alone in this world. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. Will, please.” My voice was breaking, and my throat was getting clogged up. I could taste the bitter froth from Will’s lips on my mouth, feel it numbing my tongue.

And then, miraculously, Will opened his eyes briefly. He looked up at me, a very faint smile on the verge of his lips. The story his face told was completely different from the one his body was telling. He still had a weak pulse and was not coming back to life. How was he cognizant, then?

Will’s lips moved ever so feebly, whispering something. I leaned in close to his face to hear him better. All he managed to say amid his death throes was one word.

“Ariana.”

My hand was still on his chest when his heartbeat for the last time. My face was still close to his face when his cold, final breath brushed against my cheek. I wrapped my hand around his wrist, feeling for any signs of life but not finding any. I let go of his wrist and watched with hopelessness as his hand fell limply to his side.

Then the pain started settling in my body, mind, and the deepest part of my soul. Not only was my mate dead, but the last thing he had said aloud was not my name but Ariana’s. She was on his mind as he died, not his actual fated mate who had been by his side all along. It tore my heart, this unknowing as to what to be more dejected about; the fact that Will now lay dead in front of me or that after all that we had been through, after all our confessions and professing of love and devotion and duty, he had never really accepted me. His utterance of Ariana’s name was a rejection in itself. He had rejected me once in life, and now, he rejected me again in death.

Sorrow and horror competed in my brain for the position of the most felt emotion. Sorrow won; the horror came second, followed by pain at a close third. Anguish jarred my senses, freezing me to the spot next to my dead mate. From beyond the glass of the laboratory door, I could see Ralph, Maurice, and Blair approaching. But there was nowhere for me to go.

What existence did I deserve if it was an existence without my mate? What purpose did my life hold if the man I had loved professed his true feelings for another woman at the time of his death?

The glass panel in the door clattered and shattered on the floor as Maurice shot at it.

“Would you look at that?” Blair sneered. “She tried to do her best, you guys. She tried to save him. Oh, that’s adorable. Look, she even used some adrenaline. This ain’t intro to pharmacology 101, kid. When I make a serum to kill a werewolf, I make it without an antidote. You better believe it. Your mate’s dead. That’s what you get for messing with the top dog.”

I cast one last look at Will’s corpse before getting up and running in the opposite direction, hoping to find a passage that would save me from those who had usurped me of everything in one night.

More gunshots rang through the laboratory as I fled with what little force I had left in my broken body. Even as I tried to escape, I found myself lacking the will to do so. Without my mate, existence seemed like a barren prospect. Even though the sun was coming up from behind the horizon, the world could not look bleaker.

Part of me wanted to run back and fend them off Will’s body. He deserved a funeral. I had to take him back to Grimm Abode and arrange a proper burial. He could be buried next to Ariana for all it mattered, but his body deserved dignity. Dignity that I doubted Maurice, Ralph, or Blair would grant him.

But even as I turned to go back, Maurice came running from the other end of the corridor, holding his gun in front of him. He shot at me but missed from that far off. I had never wished more for a bullet to hit me straight in the heart and end my misery. Then, Blair and Ralph emerged from the corridor, and my suicidality was replaced by the urge to run and live to fight another day. If I could not have Will back, at least I could avenge him. Alone, broken, and cornered, I had no way of avenging him. I could come back with reinforcements of my own. Vince would help me. The rest of the pack would want to fight for their fallen alpha.

No matter how I tried to rationalize it, the pain of Will’s passing stung me, stupefying my body, slowing me down, forcing me to think about him lying on the laboratory floor, dying, saying Ariana’s name.

There was nowhere to go ahead. This hallway came to an abrupt halt with a long glass window at its end. I stood with my back against the window as Maurice came towards me, followed by Blair and Ralph.

“Stay back!”

“Or what? You’re going to shift? That’s not how it works. Your mate’s dead. Your bond is severed. You’re going to wilt. Go ahead. Try it. Shift. Turn into a fucking wolf. By all means, I’ll wait,” Maurice snarled.

I tried to shift. It was the only way I could get past the three men blocking my way. But as I tried to muster the strength to morph into my true form, I found myself unable to do so. I could not shift. With what little vestiges of resolve I had left, I tried one last time to shift and failed again.

“You’re as good as dead,” Maurice sneered. “Consider this a mercy.”

He lifted his gun and aimed it at me. There it was back again, that urge for everything to end. The inane desire for death. I closed my eyes with my back against the glass.

First, there was the sound of gunfire, followed by the strident sensation of burning lead penetrating my body. As warm blood pulsed from the bullet hole, the glass window behind me shattered when the bullet went straight through me.

With nothing holding me back, I fell off the top floor of Beckett Pharma, a fatal bullet wound in my body and my alpha’s remembrance in my mind.

Thank you and hope you enjoyed your reading!

Book 2 - Rescuing Her Mate is coming soon!