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This wasn’t going to be a simple execution, she then realized. This was a beating. A punishment. Alex’s beast wouldn’t stop until the male was reduced to a pathetic chew toy.
Hissing furiously, Paxton awkwardly jumped to his feet. “You’re dead.” Then, well, he went at the beast like it had fucked his mother. Punched, kicked, clawed.
Paxton was faster and stronger than she’d expected. But the wolverine withstood every blow, lashing out with his own claws and getting in plenty of good licks.
Beneath the coppery scent of blood lay the smells of pain, rage, and hatred. All incited her cat, who hissed and snarled, urging the wolverine on. Bree would swear those bloodcurdling growls of his rattled her bones.
Dimitri sidled up to her and Vinnie. “Here.” He effortlessly sliced through the ropes binding Bree. “No material is wolverine-shifter resistant, no matter what other species say.”
Even as she and her Alpha shook away the ropes, Bree didn’t move her eyes from the brawling shifters. It literally hurt her back and joints to straighten and stand on her own two feet, but she shelved the pain, just as she shelved the godawful pins-and-needles sensations as the blood rushed back to her extremities. Her focus was on the fight.
Eyes gleaming with rage, Paxton charged at the wolverine, his claws extended. The beast stood on his hind legs and swiped out his large, webbed paw, backhanding the other male hard. Paxton hit the ground like a rock.
The wolverine didn’t give him the chance to rise. Back on all fours, the beast pounced on Paxton’s stomach and raked him with his curved claws again and again, hooking the skin and tearing strips of it off.
“Oh, now he’s getting down to business,” said Vinnie.
Writhing and roaring in pain, Paxton brought his knee up hard, slamming it into the wolverine’s gut. The beast barely flinched, but Paxton didn’t give up. He punched and clawed the beast’s snout, head, neck, and flanks.
Bree winced each time Paxton viciously dug his claws deep into her mate. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was all that thick fur and that tough hide, but the wolverine powered through the pain and fought on.
Growling low and deep in his throat, the wolverine savaged his prey—and he very clearly enjoyed it. Those long claws sliced, stabbed, and shredded. Those razor-sharp teeth sank into flesh and crunched bone.
Soon, Paxton’s angry roars turned into gut-wrenching cries of sheer agony. His movements became slower, his strikes became weaker, and his heartbeat turned sluggish. Then even his screams seemed to lose their strength.
Bleeding heavily and barely holding on, he looked at Bree, his usual dead eyes alive with so much pain. And she knew he wanted her to watch him die. Knew he wanted that moment to haunt her.
She looked at Alex instead … just in time to watch as the wolverine stomped hard on Paxton’s head, crushing his skull like it was a pumpkin.
Well, all right then.
She waited for some elemental part of her to feel something close to grief—Paxton had been her predestined mate, after all. But there was none. She was relieved that he was gone, because she’d never viewed him as hers.
The wolverine backed away from the dead, mangled body, his chest heaving with his heavy breaths. He turned to Bree, blood staining his snout and fur. Expecting fear or rejection? She hoped not.
Bree crouched down and smiled as he padded toward her. She stroked blood-free patches of his fur. “Thank you for coming for me. Again.”
He licked his bloody muzzle and grunted. Maybe it was a “you’re welcome,” she wasn’t sure. Bones cracked and popped as he shifted. And then Alex was there. He pulled her close and hugged the shit out of her, burying his face in her neck and breathing deep.
She hugged him back, though not as tightly, fearful of chafing his injuries. Her cat pressed against him, wanting to soothe. “We need to get you to a healer.”
“Shut up,” he said, gruff as ever. For Alex, that was really the equivalent of “I’m so glad you’re alive, I can’t live without you.”
She pressed a kiss to the side of his face. “As I already said to your beast, thank you for coming for me.”
“Stop talking.”
Her mouth curved. “Okay.”
Vinnie stepped toward them. “We need to get you to Helena or Sam so those wounds can be healed, Alex. They’re not too bad, but there’s a lot of them. You’re losing a fair amount of blood.”
“Bah,” scoffed Sergei. “He is wolverine. Blood loss does not slow us down. You dumb cats know nothing.”
“I don’t think you want to be referring to my kind as ‘dumb’ while Alex is feeling uber protective of his mate right now,” said Vinnie. “Or did you forget she’s a cat, too?”
Sergei leveled an even look at him. “Breasha is not cat. She is wolverine.”
