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the rogue fight
calder
Sina didn’t trust me.
I balled my hands into fists and paced around my bedroom, breathing in her thick scent drifting underneath my closed door. All the others had gone to bed hours ago, but I couldn’t sleep tonight. It seemed that all I could think about was how terrible I had been.
Why hadn’t I noticed that Sina was being abused for years—for fucking years? Had I been that bad of a mate, that bad of an alpha, that I couldn’t figure out that Sina being sick was just her father’s disgusting excuse for being a piece of shit?
My chest tightened, my throat closing. I should’ve fucking been there. I should’ve taken the pain away from her, just like I had tried to take all the pain from the guys these past four years. It was the least I could’ve fucking done. And I had fucking failed at that.
I’d failed my mate.
After tearing off my clothes, I sprinted down the stairs, out the back door, and into the woods, like I had done every night for a year straight after we lost Sina the first time. I ran through the forest, toward enemy territory, and lurked through the thick fog. If I strayed too far from Durnbone, then I’d enter the Vaneroy Forest, where all types of monsters hunted.
A pack of rogues stalked along the edge of Durnbone’s forest, howling and searching for prey to feast on for tonight. Instead of watching them carefully, like I had learned to do these past four years, I ran right out into the open, where they could see me, and growled menacingly at them.
Anger and rage and fury pumped through my veins. I wanted them to hurt me. I wanted them to cut my fucking flesh to pieces. I was a shitty alpha and a shitty mate after all these years. I fucking deserved it.
Licking their lips hungrily, five rogues surrounded me. I growled again and bared my teeth, wanting one of these smaller wolves to pounce on me so they all would. They thought they had found an alpha they could feast on tonight.
But I had found five lone wolves that nobody gave a fuck about that I could kill.
Fucking finally, the leader sprinted at me. I let him sink his teeth into my shoulder and rip out a piece of my flesh. Pain shot through my body—that familiar feeling that I had come to love. Another jumped on me, slicing his claws through my side and right over my ribs.
Before I knew it, all five were on top of me, biting and scratching and chewing on an alpha’s flesh. They probably thought that I was some weak man that they could overtake, and they’d be right about the first part.
I was weak as fuck.
Collapsing to the ground, I barely held my head up straight. Blood pooled out of my body from various open wounds. When I closed my eyes, I saw Sina smiling at Darius, Gaian, and Thayer and not even sparing me a glance.
While my nightmares used to be about Sina’s father tearing her away from me, all I had been dreaming of lately was Sina hating me for the rest of my shitty life. She’d always turn in the other direction, smile, and laugh with the others, leaving me the fuck out.
Someone pierced their claws into my neck, dangerously close to my artery. I growled in response, kicking the guy off me and killing him instantly. The other four came at me harder and faster. My vision blurred with the blood loss, so I had to make this quick.
From either side of me, two jumped toward me. I stepped out of the way, letting them smash into each other, and then I slashed their throats and killed them too. Stars filled my vision, and I knew that if I didn’t heal soon, I’d pass the fuck out for real.
After tearing into the fourth’s underbelly until his guts spilled out, I turned toward their leader and sank my teeth into his neck, ripping out his pathetic throat. And when I had killed the last rogue, I shifted into my human and collapsed in a puddle of their blood in the middle of the forest, where nobody would ever find me. No sane wolf came down to these parts of the woods that surrounded Durnbone.
I curled my knees to my tightening chest and stared through watery eyes at the moon. The Moon Goddess would be so fucking disappointed in the mate and man that I was. I couldn’t protect my mate then, and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to protect her now.
No matter what my pack thought, no matter what the guys thought, no matter what Sina thought, I wasn’t a strong alpha. I couldn’t do half the shit that I promised. I feared that everything would crumble for a second time.
Sina deserved more than me. She knew it. The guys knew it. Everyone fucking knew it.
“I’m no good for her,” I whispered, shaking my head and letting a single fucking tear fall.
Nobody knew how many times I had cried these past four years. Every day that passed without seeing Sina, my heart had shattered just a bit more. And now that she was finally back, I couldn’t be the man she needed because I had been the alpha the guys needed.
I had been strong and protected them when they were broken. But nobody ever asked how I was. Nobody ever fucking asked if I was okay. Nobody fucking cared about me the way that I cared about them, especially not Sina now.
As I lay helpless in the middle of the forest, my wounds from the rogue fight began healing. And I cursed my enhanced wolf senses. All I wanted was to feel the pain, to simmer in it for a few moments longer.
So, I lengthened one of my nails into a talon and cut through the wound to keep it open. Blood slowly seeped out of it, drooling from the wound and onto the twigs and leaves underneath me.
I closed my eyes, finally feeling my body relax and letting another tear fall down my cheek. “I love her so much,” I whispered to myself. “And I can’t do anything about it anymore. I can’t even make her happy.”
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