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Eliana’s fur was stained a dark wine red. She had gone for Garth, just as Lucas had expected. They weren’t rolling around the way they had on the golf course. She was in control, which made her even more terrifying than she had been before.
She dodged his desperate clamps. Eliana toyed with him, growling and snapping until she could no longer take the game.
Lucas crawled to his feet as the wet hot blood poured out of his throat. He didn’t know if she was going to be the last sight of his life, so he wanted to get a good view. He crawled, stumbled, and then eventually settled onto a soft bed of sand. He watched Eliana move in slow motion, a magnificent warrior, one that, in his mind, he had given his heart to long ago.
She had spun him around by his tail, making the psychopath shifter whimper. That had satisfied Lucas, then he watched as Eliana smacked him to the ground with a loud slap of her paw. His face thudded into the sand hard, his lips painted candy apple red.
Lucas could feel all of her sadness and grief boiling inside her as she stood over Garth, leaning her paws on his throat just as he had on the golf course. She stared at him, snarling with a guttural rumble, and all Lucas could hear was her voice inside his mind, focused and keen with her love and convictions.
“This is for Phil. For my dad, for my mother, for the pack. For Lucas.”
Garth tried to wiggle out from under her weight. She used her paws to keep him pinned, then lowered the guillotine of her claws, winking in the sunlight.
Eliana struck his throat only once with a quick slice. Garth’s whimpering turned into wet grumbles, struggling beneath Eliana’s weight. She watched him with her snout digging into his as the life drained from his eyes.
Lucas smiled in his heart and mind. She had to be the one to do it. It was the only way she would be able to let go of the agony of her losses. And it solidified her as a proper alpha leader.
The cerebral gurgling sounds slowly came to a halt, and Lucas noticed that the rest of the battle had halted too. He struggled to turn his head to the shoreline, startled by the sight of rivers of blood, but an honorable victory.
The rest of Garth’s minions, who hadn’t been killed, fled once their leader had been destroyed. Lucas only had time to lay his head in the sand and peer at his beloved before everything went black.
“Lucas!”
At least he had found her. His fated mate.
TWENTY-ONE
ELIANA
Eliana felt Lucas’s life fading before she saw him caked in her enemy’s blood that had sprayed like a fountain from his jugular. The feeling was something she wasn’t able to describe with words if someone asked her to; it was a simple knowing, an awareness forged through fated mates’ eternal tethering.
She ran to him, calling his name telepathically. Everyone on the battlefield was panting, the minions of Garth having fled once he was eradicated from existence. She leapt to him, her beloved, pinning her snout against his and whimpering frantically.
He had passed out from the slash to his throat, but there was still time to save him. Shifters had incredible healing ability, plus, with the aid of their hospital team, he would surely recover in no time.
Eliana said these words to herself like a mantra. In a flash of movements, Tao and the other alphas from the packs and pride came to her in their human form, covered in the blood and bone fragments of their enemies.
“We will take care of him, Eliana,” Tao said softly.
She lifted her snout from the limp Lucas, the sight of his rag-doll body felt like a thousand stabs to her heart. He would likely shift back soon once he came to, and she would be there with him, right by his side.
Tao and the alphas carried Lucas through the streets, with women and children from the packs and pride coming forth and ushering them toward the shifter hospital wing. One even placed the delicate wolf in the back of their car while a half-naked Tao rode along with them.
Eliana galloped to the restaurant and shifted, where her mother waited impatiently. She clapped her hands over her mouth when she saw the blood staining her fur.
“Eliana,” Bria said, trying to grab her wolf daughter.
Eliana struggled, then shifted into her mother’s arms, naked as the day she was born. She nearly collapsed from the emotional and physical exhaustion of the day.
Her mother held her, solid and firm, like she always had and always would.
“Eliana, what happened?” she implored.
“Garth … he’s dead. Lucas is badly hurt.”
The image of her beloved lying still on pearl-colored sand shot through her like a gun, and she frantically tried to push past her mother and into the streets.
“No, no, honey,” Bria said, stifling a laugh. “Let’s get you some clothes, and I will drive us there.”
