Page 80 of Sold to Three Alpha Kings

The second my head pops out onto the surface, I gasp for air, salt water in my eyes. My pulse is racing, my heart is hammering, and I think to myself that this is how I die.

Rain hammers down sideways, driven hard by wind that rips the breath right out of my mouth.

Waves shove me under and spit me back up in the same breath. Somewhere close, a woman is screaming a name over and over.

A trunk bobs past me, then a barrel, then someone’s shoe, the ship’s cargo scattered wide across the churning water like the sea has already picked it apart.

I spot a crate floating a few feet off, half-submerged, and throw myself toward it before another swell can take me under again.

My fingers close around the wood and hold.

Lightning splits the sky, and in that single flash I see land—small, rocky, distant, my only chance.

I swim because I can’t let myself die like this. If I die, the child in me dies as well. And I can’t allow that. I won’t.

So I swim toward the island, arms burning, legs kicking long after they should have given out, some desperate animal instinct refusing to let me stop.

I drag myself onto the rocks sometime later, coughing seawater, shaking too hard to stand. I lay on my back at the shore, the waves washing over me as I stare at the sky that’s now gradually becoming clear again.

My breathing is heavy, and every muscle in my body is aching. I’m so parched my throat is dry. The ocean water isn’t healthy to drink, but at this point, I may resort to it because I don’t have a choice.

The island is small. Barren, mostly, a few twisted trees clinging to rock, no shelter from the wind still howling off the retreating storm.

I lay there, struggling to keep my eyes open, teeth chattering as I fight to stay awake. I don’t move. I can’t.

My eyes are drifting shut, my limbs too heavy to obey me anymore. And the edges of everything are starting to go soft and distant, like the world is retreating somewhere I can’t follow.

Then, in a heartbeat, my eyes close.

I’m standing somewhere else—a clearing, moonlit, silver grass underfoot that isn’t really there. And across from me, watching with clear blue eyes that mirror my own, sits a wolf with the deep red of my hair.

“You’re not done yet,” she says.

Her mouth doesn’t move, the words arriving somewhere behind my ribs instead of through my ears, not after everything it took to get here.

I don’t need anyone to tell me what that creature is. That’s my wolf. She looks weak but awake, those striking blue eyes boring into mine.

“This is not how you die, Charlize.” She rises, gigantic, steady on four legs.

I watch her close the distance between us until her nose nearly touches my chest.

“This whole time, you’ve been strong on your own. Allow me to carry us both the rest of the way.”

Warmth floods in behind her words, spreading fast from somewhere deep and forgotten, chasing the cold out of my fingers, my toes, the frozen ache behind my eyes.

“Wake up, Charlize,” she says, one last time, gentler now. “We have a child to protect.”

My eyes snap open to the real sky, stars scattered thick above the clearing storm. By now heat is already flooding back into my limbs like something long dormant finally remembered how to burn.

I press a hand to my stomach and feel steadier than I have in hours.

“We’re alive,” I whisper, to the child, to myself, to whatever small, stubborn thing just clawed its way back to life inside me. “We’re not dead.”

I think about the red wolf I saw in my trance and how beautiful she actually looked. Mine. She’s awake. Weak—but awake. And her warmth is what saved my life.

I hear Sinth’s voice before I see him, calling my name across the rocks, raw with something close to panic.

Then Wayne, then Chris, all three of them scrambling down toward where I’m lying on the shore, soaked and shivering.