He bashes the butt of the gun into my eye, causing me to recoil and yip with pain. Fueled by the power of the whole pack, he plants one foot into my stomach and shoves me off him.
The Alpha raises the gun again, pointing it at Callie who looks at him with unabashed rage, and the wind howls louder. Branches rip away from the surrounding trees, thrashing in the air and into anything in its way. Lightning and thunder shake the heavens, as she plays chicken with a bullet.
I scramble back to my feet, and with a powerful snap of my jaw, bite through his forearm, the copper taste of blood flooding my mouth and dripping down my jowls. Snarling and growling, I jerk my head side to side, his flesh tearing along my teeth.
“Think you can take me?” he heaves through gritted teeth, dropping the gun. “You’ll never beat me.”
“No,” Callie screams, and in a split second, there’s another pop of the gun, and it feels like a spike laced with acid stabs me in the gut.
The world begins to sway beneath me, and my jaw relaxes as I fall over. In his uninjured hand is the gun that I now know is filled with silver bullets. Blood coats my underbelly, and though this isn’t a killing shot, I’ll grow weaker by the second as long as the bullet stays inside me.
“Now your turn,” the Alpha snarls at Callie, struggling to sit up and hold the gun steady.
The frost is no longer in my imagination, instead crusting the ground, the trees, and crawling toward the Alpha, while pellet sized hail rains from the sky. In the center of the chaos, barefoot and wrapped in my flannel, she stands with her arms outstretched in a wide V.
“No, it’s your turn,” she announces, the wind swelling with her words, “and I judge you lacking.”
Suddenly there’s a bright light, a searing pain across my left shoulder, and I’m thrown several feet before losing consciousness.
∞∞∞
I don’t know how long I was out, only that for the first few seconds I’m awake I’m completely blinded. The air is filled with an overwhelming collection of scents: violent rainstorms, burnt air, ash, plants growing from damp earth, and something I have no name for, but it’s pure and welcoming. I sneeze, shaking my head and blinking.
When I can see again, it’s like the whole world stopped. The sky is clear and silent. No lightning. No thunder. No wind. No hail. Or any other type of weather. It’s so quiet, that if it weren’t for my own ragged breaths, I’d think I’d gone deaf.
I shift back to my human form, glad the ground is no longer ice. Gritting my teeth so hard a normal person would be worried about chipping a tooth, I dig for the bullet in my lower stomach and with a few clawed fingers, successfully remove it. The silver burns in my hand as I fling itinto the brush. Warm blood pools on my abs and drips down my hip.
Painfully, I roll to my hands and knees and start searching for the Alpha, but there’s no sign of him. Only a large straight path that seems to go on forever cut through the forest with no sign of the trees that once stood.
At first I fear that he got away and I’m going to have to hunt him down before he sicks the entire pack on Callie and me, when in the distance, the howls of over a hundred wolves shake the darkness. What once felt like lost threads now surge to thick ropes tying me to each one of them and them to me. The Alpha is dead. I am the new Alpha.
Shit. What did she do?
Immediately, I search for Callie and find her collapsed several feet away at the base of the large boulder that marks the traditional path into the forest. There’s a dark smear of blood down the rock face. Terror claws through me, because she’s not moving and doesn’t look to be breathing.
I scramble to my feet, trying to get to her as fast as possible, and skin my knees as I stumble to the ground next to her. Quickly, I gather her into my arms, and she hangs limp and unmoving, her eyes staring emptily at the sky.No, this can’t be happening. Not now. Not after all this.
“Reina,” I shout, frantically shaking her. Obscene amounts of blood coat half her face, soak the flannel shirt she’s wearing, and begin to drip along my fingers and down my arms. Begging, I whisper into her hair, “Come back. Please.No me dejes.”
Relief so powerful I nearly collapse washes through me, when a wet wheeze passes between her lips. I pull back to look into her eyes, and she slowly blinks back at me.
“Callie?” I breathe, unsure what to say or do. She should be fine. She should be healing, but blood continues to drip down my arm.
“You’re hurt,” she murmurs, her weak fingers reaching for my shoulder.
I catch her hand, holding it in my own before she gets too far. It’s only because she points it out, that I realize there’s still a hot pain there, which makes no sense. I shifted.
“I’m okay,” I tell her, unsure if it’s true, but there are bigger concerns. Like why isn’tshehealing?
She nods, no more than a subtle shift of her chin up and down. Her gaze drifts back to the sky and tears slowly begin to leak down her face. I don’t know what to do. I need to get her help, but I don’t know where is safe.
“What happened?” I ask, glancing at the unnerving emptiness where innumerable amounts of trees, brush, and wildlife once lived.
“Guided my magic and let go,” she answers to the sky, her husky voice thick.
That doesn’t really tell me what happened to the Alpha, but we’ll figure out that answer later.
“Callie,” I utter as calmly as possible, while panic snakes through me over a completely different threat. “Tell everyone I killed the Alpha. Do you understand? I killed the Alpha.”
