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I wasn’t an anchor like Drake.
I’d never had a presence like Ebony.
If I died… that would be the smallest piece of the pack to fall away. Maybe they would be fine without me.
And I couldn’t stop hurting her, no matter how hard I tried. She would be better without me. Again, I staggered to my feet and wiped the fluids from my face.
Blood or tears, I wasn’t sure.
It didn’t matter.
I’d go until I couldn’t anymore. I’d break until there was nothing left.
If I survived, maybe there would be something on the other end, something real. Something that was enough for her.
My aura was cracked, frayed and vicious. It was broken… I’d pushed it too far. It was waning.
But I wasn’t done.
The next hit came, sending me into the metal bars. A new, bone deep pain flared across my whole body.
My aura was waning. Too soon. Every hit was like a monster chasing me, ready to catch up. It was then that I realised I might have gone too far. If I let go of my aura now, what would be left?
Only when I reached for it, I felt it shudder.
As it wavered, I choked, something hot and thick coming up my throat, an iron tang on my tongue.
Desperately, I grappled with my aura, needing to hold on, but it was slipping away. Danger sounded in my head. I couldn’t let it go.I couldn’t—
And then, I seized it—clinging to it with a strength I didn’t own. And everything in the world vanished except the hallucination that wasn’t a hallucination.
The raspberry treacle was real.
She was real.
And she was above me. Everywhere.
She was… she was here.
No.
That couldn’t be possible.
It… it couldn’t be.
The alpha auras in here were unhinged, doused in rage, though something about them had shifted, sensing the other energy in here: her.
I heard a low guttural growl above me, resonating into my very soul.
She was a presence, the likes of which I’d never experienced before. Raspberry treacle, but not sweet or nervous—or afraid like she was in my worst moments.
The scent of my mate was edged with fury and danger.
She was everything in that moment: the smell of fresh morning dew on green leaves, of roots diving deep into soft, cool soil, deep and grounding, of the prickles of a raspberry bush. And there was a fiery hot edge to the sweetness that formed her scent, something vicious in it now.
Protective.
So absolute, so all consuming, that it almost froze me completely, down to each breath in my lungs.
