Chapter 17 - Cassandra

“Gah!” I exclaim, scrambling to an upright position as my hand flies up to my throat. Clambering for air, it takes me a few moments of taking deep breaths until I feel stable enough to recognize what is real and what is not.

Pressing the back of my hand on my forehead, the stickiness of cold sweat bedewed on my brows has me frowning.

It must have been a bad dream, with nightmarish visions of blood and gore and horror that had me breaking out in a cold sweat. I don’t remember much, except that the terrified screaming and desperate howls that filled my ears a second ago are what woke me up abruptly.

I take account of my surroundings, recalling everything that happened since I decided to come back. Cyrus dropped me off at home after failing to convince me to go back to his place for the night.

I’d been determined to exercise my boundaries, at least until he came back from tonight’s mission. I came as far as coming back to Mysthaven, only so that he doesn’t have too much on his mind.

His head needs to be clear; I knew that much. Once he returns, I’ll have to cross-examine his motives for claiming that he wants me as his mate.

Perhaps he’d been as impulsive as I was when I left. Deep down, I can only hope that what he said was true. However, the acrid aftertaste of my nightmare swirls on my tongue, leaving me wondering if I’d made the right decision. Frowning, I get off the sofa and head to the kitchen, my bones raging from dosing off in the living room.

It’s not like I was planning on falling asleep. When I watched Cyrus leave for his mission, I was hoping that I’d stay awake and await his return.

Stretching my arms over my head before reaching for a glass, I’m gripped by a montage of the scenes of blood I just woke from. Panic sets in, freezing my fingers around the glass as I stare into the horizon outside the kitchen window.

Something’s wrong. Something is terribly wrong, my heart knocking against my ribcage while the panic rises like bile in my throat.

Everything that’s happened tonight seems to fade into the recesses of my mind, overwhelmed by a foreign, nagging sense of alarm. My gut instincts kick into overdrive, and I surrender to the motions of what feels like my inner wolf as it spurs my feet into movement. I’m pulled outside, but I have no control over what I’m doing until I find myself in the forest, in a clearing between the pine trees.

My brows knit together as I wonder what I’m doing here. Drawn to the woods, the scenes of blood and horrors flash in my mind’s eye, the alarming panic only intensifying.

What’s going on?

Suddenly, the urge to be near Cyrus is back, even in his absence. It confuses me since this aching need is something I’ve only ever felt in his presence. As if my heart is being magnetized forward, a gravitational field that only emerges when he’s near, I walk forward while the owls in the trees hoot to encourage me.

In the distance, I hear the sound of heavy steps crushing the Autumn grass in haste. Growing closer, louder, the unmistakable patter of werewolf paws shudders the ground as if sending an electric current through the earth. It ripples beneath my feet, ruffling the branches and swaying the fern bushes near me, drawing the attention of the most sharpened eyes toward the depth of the forest.

“Cyrus…” my inner wolf voice screams inside my head while all I can do is breathe his name through my human lips. That’s when it hits me—something horrible has happened to the Alpha. As that realization dawns, it springs my wolf to the fore, my limbs distending in the height of panic, throwing me into an urgent sprint forward.

Racing into the clutches of the night, I see a group of wolves speeding toward the south border, where some border patrol wolves rush forward to meet them. My breath comes in hot pants, mouth hanging open to lug in deep breaths as I see a human figure being carried atop the Beta’s wolf form.

“ Cyrus!” my inner wolf cries, recognizing its Alpha’s limp body draped over Jarrod as he bounds toward Mysthaven, breaking from the group in haste.

“ The Alpha is hurt!” the Beta cries out through the mind link, a painful howl slicing through the air and echoing all across the woods. He doesn’t slow down, racing to the pack’s hospital as he calls for the doctor to meet him there.

I kick my hind legs and spin my wolf around, following Jarrod into town. When he nears the hospital building, he shifts and swiftly swoops Cyrus into his arms.

“What happened?!” I cry out behind him, hysteria caught in my throat as I rush forward. With his limp arm dangling from the side, blood trickles and slips between his fingers.

I rush forward and throw open the doors, and Jarrod carries Cyrus into the building. He says nothing as a flurry of hospital staff bursts through the entrance behind us, Doctor Stevens following close behind.

Everything that happens next is a blur. My heart threatens to beat out of my chest as Cyrus is tended to, strapped to a rolling bed, and taken into the closest ward.

***

“... The rogues were rabid as if they’d been enhanced somehow,” Jarrod explains. He’d been recounting the events of their mission, keeled over on the waiting bench while we were waiting for the doctor to come out.

The clinking of metal and beeping of the heart rate monitor from inside the room is the only indication of what’s going on in there. Numb, I can hardly move or offer the beta any sympathy. I’m too stunned to speak, too horrified by what I just witnessed.

The nightmare I had earlier tonight pales in comparison to what the werewolves experienced out there in Wichita Falls. Though they’d successfully extracted Alpha Dorian, the fight wasn’t an easy one.

“It was a tough fight, and Cyrus fought hard. He didn’t see it coming,” Jarrod winces. “The leader got away. But not before tackling our Alpha.”

“The leader of the rogues did this…?”

Jarrod confirms this with a nod. “He’s no ordinary wolf, Cassie. He’s a hybrid of some kind, a vile creature that stands on two legs and fights with blackened claws.”

A shiver of fear trickles down my spine, sending a shudder through me. I can’t even imagine what they’d been through tonight, the product of the tragedies of the war, lying on a hospital bed right now.

“He’s stable,” Doctor Stevens informs us as he leaves the room. “But the Alpha remains unconscious.”

Jarrod and I exchange worried glances before turning back to the doctor.

“What about his Alpha blood?” Jarrod frowns at the doctor. “Shouldn’t he be healing already? Awake by now?”

The doctor shakes his head grimly. “Unfortunately, he was hit in a main artery. His lung was punctured, too. We’ve been able to stitch him up as best as we can. We’ll just have to wait for his healing abilities to do the rest.”

“Fuck!” Jarrod slams a fist into the wall behind us, his rage too imminent to be contained. While his chest heaves with uncontrollable breaths, his ears turn fiery, and I can sense his wolf straining to get out.

“Go, Jarrod,” I suggest, getting to my feet and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. I didn’t think that I was of much help until now when the Beta’s anger pulses in the air around us.

Somehow, I’ve managed to find compassion for the Moon Shine wolf despite my own need for comfort. He nods appreciatively, his eyes glimmering with steam that needs to be burned off.

“I’ll check on Cyrus,” I assure him. “You need to refuel.”

The Beta clenches his fists as he storms out of the hospital. I sent Dakota a mind link message to inform her that the Beta needs her now more than ever.

I’ll leave the explanation for some other time. She’ll probably wonder what I’m doing back here when I abruptly left two weeks ago.

It doesn’t matter. I switch my mind off, disconnecting from the mind link the way I trained myself to do so when I left the pack nine years ago. It was a trick I learned from the pages of the bound books in the pack library. It came in handy when I needed to sever ties with the pack I was leading.

Right now, the only reason I need to disconnect from the telepathic pathways of communication is to give all my attention to the Alpha. Taking a deep breath, I steel my resolve as I enter the ward, where he lies on a bed.

I gulp when I enter. The image of a powerful man weakened by such heinous crimes against our kind becomes a tough pill to swallow. Seeing him in this position, my heart softens and my eyes well with tears.

“Cyrus…” I murmur, though his unmoving form indicates that he can’t hear me. But it’s a natural reaction when a stray tear slips down my cheek.

He’d sustained injuries to his left side, his arm secured in a cast while his thigh was wrapped in bandages sticking out from the white sheet that covered the good side of his body. Wiping at my cheek, I drift closer and gently take his hand in mine.

“Please wake up,” I plead, lifting his hand to my lips, where I press a lingering kiss on his knuckles. My heart squeezes in my chest as the weight of what his unconscious form means to me.

I love this man.

I love Cyrus Rudolph.

The realization crashes into me with more tears flowing down my cheeks, a sob escaping my throat.

That’s why I’m back here.

That’s why I left. Both times.

I have always loved him; that’s why I’d been drawn to him from the very beginning.

As I sink onto the chair beside the bed, I stare at his face, etching the intricate details of his facial features to memory over the memories I already have of him. This time, fueled by the truth of my feelings for him, the image I cast into my mind is woven through my heart with thick, golden threads that tether my love to this man for eternity.

I should have recognized my feelings before, but they’d been distorted by all the bitter words he’d uttered in his own attempt to deny what he felt. I know he feels the same. I’m sure of it. Even if he’s not awake yet, I can feel that love pulsing through his veins as I clutch his hand.

“I love you, Cyrus,” I profess to the man who isn’t awake yet. Perhaps I dare to say these words right now only because he can’t hear me.

Everything that’s happened between us seems redundant now, leaving behind only the importance of our passion and the inability to keep away from each other.

That’s why he’d found me in the human world and why he apologized so gallantly when he admitted that he wanted me as his mate.

The nine years I spent away from the pack prove that I had wanted only him, unable to be with another man while I was away. Despite his mistreatment in the past, he made up for it last night when he came to me, when he found me and asked me to come home.

Home.

I never felt like any particular place was home. When I left Mysthaven before, I didn’t feel the grief of breaking away from a place that would have been considered “home.”

Instead, I broke down because I severed ties with the pack and with Cyrus. It broke me apart when I left a second time after forming a bond with him through the passion we shared on that mountaintop.

That’s when I discovered what “home” truly is. It’s the person I love and the person I shed tears for, praying to the Moon Goddess that he wakes up so that we may bask in the feelings we’d been denying ourselves for so long.