Chapter 30

Talon

Liam lunged at me, but my warriors stopped him before he could reach me. They tackled him, and I focused my attention on the other enemy wolves. This was always my strategy. It was stupid to fight another Alpha right from the get-go.

I had trained my warriors very well about how to deplete the energy of the enemy Alpha. And they were doing exactly that. In the meantime, I killed his warriors one by one with nothing but my claws and fangs. I shifted between my wolf and human form to take them accordingly.

Fighting my kind was an art I had acquired after years of practice. I was cold and calculated when it came to the annihilation of my enemy. I wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate Liam. If he had attacked me like this, he must have had numbers. And it showed. However, I wasn’t prepared for him having an ally in the form of Alpha Chuck of the Wildclaw pack.

My warriors gave me enough time to kill many of their warriors, but they kept on coming. Liam was coming fast toward me, but I had another agenda on my mind. Through the chaos of bodies and howls and gashes, I reached Alpha Chuck. His eyes widened in terror, but I didn’t give him time to act and lunged at him, shifting midair, aiming right at his throat. I took him to the ground with the flesh of his throat squelched between my fangs. He let out a blood-curdling scream, thrashing his limbs to claw me, but his life snuffed out a second later. All his pack warriors tucked their tails between their legs and ran to escape. My warriors pounced on them.

With my bloodied maw, I turned my head over my shoulder to look at my fucking cousin. He was the only one who dared to oppose me. The slimy bastard. I would make him pay tonight for what he had done to my mate and me.

In order to let him know I was coming, I tipped my head to the moon and let out a roar. When I looked back at him, he was glaring at me with his muscles bulging. He was panting, his chest rising and falling. Blood ran down from his sides as deep gashes decorated his body. Only his throat was left for me.

I moved stealthily on my paws, leaving blood in my wake. Reaching Liam wasn’t easy. His warriors clawed me at every damn place they could find. It wasn’t just blood. It was my blood, mixed with hate and the years of trauma I had undergone because of him and his father. Hatred for what he tried to do with my mate.

Liam was impatient to get to me, to kill me. And so was I. But there was a difference between how we approached our vengeance. With a roar, he lunged at me and shifted into his wolf, landing right before me.

I dipped my maw and snarled at him. We began circling, looking for weak points. His wolf was clearly tired, but so was I. Suddenly, he lunged at me. I waited for him to come near me and, with precision, I veered right. He landed on all fours and stumbled, and when I turned and bit into his flank, my fangs deeply pierced his flesh. He yelped, and I knew that he was terribly injured. I attacked his throat next. He thrashed his limbs at me, his claws gashing my stomach, but I sank my fangs into his throat and remained like that until he stopped thrashing against me. Until he… died.

As soon as Liam’s last breath faded, Kenzie gave a victory howl toward the moon. My warriors joined in as Liam’s ran for their lives.

But I didn’t stop there. With his throat in my fangs, I dragged his body to the tent where my mate was waiting for me. I wanted to drop his body as an offering to her. She was my everything. My love, my life, and not just in this life, even when we entered the Fade. She had finally accepted that she loved me, and perhaps that was the best day of my life.

When I reached my tent, I saw my warriors lying on the ground, killed or groaning in pain. Confused, I entered and saw she wasn’t there. Shock warred with terror. Terror of losing her. I dropped Liam’s body and shifted.

The shock was immediate and visceral, like a punch to my chest that knocked the air from my lungs. One minute, I was looking forward to a beautiful future, and the next, I was staring at an empty space where she should have been, a rising sense of dread flooding my mind. My heart started racing, a cold sweat forming as my thoughts scrambled to catch up with what was happening.

At first, there was confusion—Where was she? She was just here.

“Kimble?” I called her name, expecting to hear her voice, but the silence was louder than anything I’d ever heard. That’s when the panic started to rise.

A wave of adrenaline hit, and my body trembled. The seconds felt like hours. My mind raced with irrational thoughts, jumping between hope and terror. Was she hurt? What if something terrible had happened?

I sniffed the air, and it was mixed with the scents of Vandil, Jackie, and Kimble along with white snakeroot. “Fuck!” I shouted. “Where is she?”

Kenzie came to me, buttoning his jeans. “Vandil is gone. So is Jackie.”

I curled my hands into tight fists until my knuckles were white. “Vandil has kidnapped Kimble!” I hissed. Raw anger cruised through my veins. My vision turned red. And Vandil was bathed in crimson. How dare he take advantage of the attack? How dare he kidnap my mate? I was going to annihilate him and his family. And then I would capture Jackie and torture her every fucking day of my life. First, she tipped off Liam, and now she’d helped Vandil kidnap my mate. It was evident she was in cahoots with Liam.

“We’re going to the Viking pack!” I growled menacingly. “Get all my warriors and all my allies. We’ll surround them on all sides.”