AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Atlas has clearly come to the same conclusion, and although his eyes are hard as he stands, I can feel his grief. He didn’t know this male, yet he still mourns for one of his kin.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only dead witch we find as we work our way farther into Haven, a name that feels mocking in the current circumstance. The majority of the bodies are female, and all have their throats torn out. It’s easy to see why Luna was so spooked when she found us. She grew up here and knew these people her whole life. It’s her home, and now it’s being desecrated. Atlas had a different upbringing and spent much of his life outside of Haven, so while he’s struggling with this, it doesn’t impact him as strongly as it does his cousin.
We’re almost at the centre of Haven when a terrified scream fills the air, the sound seeming to go on forever thanks to the echoing effect of the cavernous hallway. We race down the corridor. We may give away our advantage, but we’re not willing to allow these monsters to slaughter anyone else. These witches are innocents, they don’t deserve this.
When we round the corner to the main corridor, I stumble to a stop at what I see, Syn crashing into my back. Abhorrence and horror seem to freeze me in my tracks.
A female witch is pinned against the wall by a male werewolf. She is literally pinned by his shifted hand, his long claws extending through her body and into the stone wall behind her, her feet lifted from the floor. The only sounds coming from her are awful, gulping gasps as she struggles to breathe. I’m not a medical expert by any means, but I would guess that the foul beast’s claws have punctured her lungs.
Her face shows her terror as the werewolf presses himself against her, his mouth moving against her neck like a tender lover’s kiss. I can see now that he’s slashed the top of her dress open, exposing her chest and leaving three long slashes across her collarbone and over her shoulder. With sickness in my stomach, I realise what he’s doing at her neck. He’s drinking her blood like something out of a horror movie.
This is what finally snaps me from my shock. Witch, werewolf, human, no one deserves to be terrorised like this. This issick. He’s not defending himself from an attack, no, he pinned her to the fucking wall so she couldn’t fight back, exposed her so she felt vulnerable, and is now stretching out her terror. Werewolves don’t drink blood, and there is no such thing as vampires. This male is just twisted and getting off on her fear.
“Get the fuck off her.” I hardly recognise my voice as it’s amplified by both my anger and the acoustics of the hallway.
The werewolf had been so distracted by his disgusting acts that he hadn’t heard us coming. He stiffens, but as he pulls back, he glances over his shoulder and laughs as he spots me, his eyes lighting up. It’s Grove, the sick, twisted alpha who tried to get me killed during the werewolf trials.
He looks just the same as the last time I saw him, time doing nothing to take away the feeling of disgust I get every time I think of him. Tall and spindly, he almost looks emaciated. He uses that to his advantage, though, and is deceptively strong and fast. He looks like a hobo, so you would never expect him to be one of the strongest alphas in the country.
“Laelia…” He stretches my name out as though tasting the word on his tongue, his eyes roving over my body. I’m disgusted, but not because he’s objectifying me. No, he doesn’t want me sexually, he’s probably just imagining all the twisted things he wants to do to me. For Grove, torture is a form of foreplay.
Grinning, he yanks his claws from his victim who falls to the ground like a discarded toy. “Bates is looking for you.”
Both Atlas and Nicolai instinctively start to move towards the fallen woman but stop when Grove makes a high-pitched whistle. Four lanky forms appear at the end of the corridor, two in wolf form while the other two are bipedal, loping towards their alpha. There are five of them now, making the odds of us getting past them to save the woman very low. They all have the same lanky form as their alpha, and blood splatters their bodies and faces, telling me they were following Grove’s example.
My heart goes out to the woman now convulsing on the floor, but as soon as Grove mentioned Bates, icy rage moved through me, my vision focused on the alpha.
Bates. Star growls at my side, her fur standing on end at his name. Alpha Bates is a dangerous male who’s been trying to kill me since he learned of my existence. My anger doesn’t stem from his continued attacks or attempts on my life, but what he told me the last time we saw each other. With the help of the scientists back in the werewolves’ home city, he’s created a virus that has been genetically modified to attack werewolves. Currently, it can only be passed on by injection, but they were working on making it airborne.
He was the reason Nicolai died and was reborn.Hekilled my mate. I want my vengeance. Glancing at Nicolai to check he’s okay, I see his face is a hard mask as he stares at Grove. I wish I could reach out and reassure him, take his hand in mine, but it will just be seen as a sign of weakness, one the enemy alpha is sure to use against us.
Grove follows my gaze, his eyes widening in delighted surprise, and he crows out another laugh. “You survived! Now that’s a twist I didn’t see coming.” He leers and tilts his head to one side as he studies Nicolai, as though the answer to his rebirth is written on his body somewhere. “You would make for an interesting specimen.”
An animalistic snarl rips out of me as I take a threatening step forward, Star right beside me. So long for not giving away my feelings, but I’ve been overly protective of Nicolai since I lost him. I didn’t just think he was dead, hediddie. It’s only through our loving goddess’s blessing that he was offered the chance to come back.
A hand reaches out and grabs my wrist to stop me from going further, but that was never my plan. I’m not angry enough to lose my senses, and I know I’m not strong enough to fight Grove and his wolves alone. Instead, I take a step to the side, shielding Nicolai with my body.
“You won’t touch a fucking hair on his body,” I snarl, still not quite recognising the person I’ve turned into. I’m not upset about the change though, it makes me sound powerful. All it took to wake it was threatening my mates.
“It seems like the little wolf is all grown up,” Grove muses, the sneer I’m used to seeing on his face finally back in place.
I don’t know what he’s waiting for. Surrounded by his backup, he’s got enough numbers to attempt to take us on, yet he’s just standing around making small talk. It puts me on edge. Is he waiting for something? Whatever it is, it seems like Atlas has had enough of waiting for the big reveal.
“You made a mistake coming here, and I shall enjoy peeling your skin from your body, one little piece at a time.” Icy cold magic swirls around us, and ice starts to form on the ground, crawling towards Grove and his wolves. There’s a strain and a tug in my chest from his bond, which takes me by surprise. Atlas is immensely powerful, and I’ve seen him do far more with his magic and never feel drained like this, but I’m not about to give that piece of information away to Grove and his cronies.
As it is, surprise appears on their faces, and they share a confused and alarmed look. If the situation wasn’t so dire, I might snort a laugh. Are they so stupid that they didn’t expect us to retaliate? They attacked the home of thewitches, using magic is what they do.
“What did you expect?” Atlas bites out, a mocking smile tugging at his lips. “For us just to lie down and not use our magic to protect ourselves?”
Grove is snarling now, the smile wiped from his face as he backs away from the approaching ice. “How—”
“Laelia, I can’t access my magic!” Luna cries in alarm, her voice tight and verging on panic.
“Interesting,” Grove comments, stretching out the word as he tilts his head to one side, his disgusting gaze roving over Luna before flicking back to me. “Magic should have been blocked. All the witches I’ve come across so far have been powerless, including your little friend.”
Oh shit. That explains why so many are dead and we’ve not come across any werewolf bodies. Without their magic, witches are basically human. I assumed that the witches were taken by surprise, and that was why they were suffering a higher body count. Without their power, it’s going to be a massacre. I’m not sure when I started caring about the witches’ lives to the point where I would defend them against my own kind, but this is an all-out attack against innocents. There is no way that I’d associate myself with the monsters behind this attack.
Grove is still watching me like I’m an insect he can’t wait to dissect, his sick desires rooting him in place while his fellow wolves continue to back away from the icy magic reaching for them.
