Chapter 193: Protect Her
Back in Aethelwulf, Braxton and his men moved through the ruined hotel, tracing Claudia’s scent through the reek of blood that hung heavy in the air.
He rounded a corner into a long, dimly lit corridor and found her at the far end, lying motionless in a pool of her own blood.
The sight struck Braxton right in the chest, pushing the air out of his lungs. He rushed forward and dropped to his knees beside her and pressed two fingers to her throat.
There was a faint pulse. like the fluttering wings of a dying bird, but it was there. Relief washed over him.
"Claudia! Open your eyes, Claudia!"
Her eyelids fluttered, lifting slowly. For a moment, her gaze was unfocused, staring at the ceiling, but then she looked at Braxton. A smile tugged at the corners of her blood-flecked lips.
"Alpha," she breathed, weak as a dying candle. "She knows now. She knows everything."
"Where is she?" Braxton asked, leaning close. "Where’s my sister?"
"Gone, I think. Back to Dravengard, if she made it out." Claudia swallowed with effort and forced her hand upward, her fingers weakly clutching at the sleeve of his jacket.
"You must join forces with her now. The two of you, side by side. Fight that monster Rolf and take back what was always your mother’s. Her inheritance. It belongs to you both."
Braxton gritted his teeth, shifting his arms underneath her to lift her up. "I am not talking about inheritances right now. I am taking you home to get medical treatment. You are not dying in this hallway."
But Claudia shook her head with what little strength she had left, her brow furrowing in irritation. "You need to go find your sister. I don’t think she has had enough formal combat training."
"She had killed most of these dark creatures through sheer will and fury, Alpha. She won’t be able to fight off more if she is left alone out there. Go. She needs you right now. Protect her from them."
She paused, coughing weakly, before her grip on his sleeve tightened
"Protect her, Alpha. Even from the King. We need to know that we can actually trust him, and we must make sure she is not in harm’s way when he finally finds out who she really is. Power... power turns men into monsters."
Braxton shook his head fiercely, hot tears springing to his eyes and blurring his vision. He hated feeling helpless, and seeing the formidable woman who had helped raise him reduced to this was breaking something inside him.
"I am not leaving you here to bleed out, Claudia. Stop talking."
"You stubborn, stubborn boy." The faintest fond exasperation touched Claudia’s voice, her eyes beginning to drift closed. "Leave me be. Go to her."
"Claudia! Stay awake!" Braxton snapped, turning his head over his shoulder to look at his beta, who was standing a few feet away with a tense, worried expression.
"Take her and some of the men back to our pack immediately! Get her the best medical treatment we have. I don’t care what it takes, make sure you get her home alive."
The beta nodded quickly, carefully scooping the unconscious woman into his arms and rushing toward the exit. Braxton watched them go, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand before turning to another remaining guard.
"Find Milo," Braxton ordered, his voice dropping into a low growl. "He was supposed to be shadowing my sister. I want to know exactly where he lost her."
***
Back in Dravengard, the great ward was very busy.
Lycans were magnificent creatures with great healing abilities, meaning most of the injured guards were already recovering from their shallow lacerations, but the room was still thick with nurses and doctors hurrying in and out, stitching gashes, wrapping bandages, carrying out cognitive checks on the worst of the dazed.
The injured gammas had all been placed together in one large ward.
In Derek’s own head, Leo would not settle. The beast snarled and growled and paced behind his eyes, restless and furious, mirroring the man.
Derek paced the length of the ward, his phone in one hand, his left arm bound in a cast against his chest.
For what felt like the hundredth time, he tapped his wife’s contact and pressed it to his ear. It rang. And rang. And went straight to voicemail.
He ended the call and immediately pressed it once more, as if sheer stubbornness might force a different result. He got the same result.
"Dammit, Kira," he muttered under his breath, slamming the phone down against his thigh.
He had wanted to drive to Aethelwulf himself, the moment he heard. But Dr Lorenzo had set himself firmly in the way, insisting that although there was no brain injury, no bleed, nothing lasting, his body had taken a terrible trauma and needed rest before it gave out entirely.
So he had sent men instead to find Kira. News was already trickling in from Aethewulf; one of the Western Alphas had already officially reported the chaos that had taken place at the hotel where most of the Lunas were staying, after his own panicked wife had called him to tell him.
And now Derek was running out of patience entirely.
He had just come off a call with the gammas he had dispatched to the Central, and their report had been the worst kind. No trace of Kira. She had simply vanished from the bloodbath.
He looked over at Connor.
His most steadfast gamma lay unconscious in a hospital bed near the window, an oxygen mask fogging up over his nose and mouth with every shallow breath.
His entire torso and arms were covered in wicked claw marks which the doctors had finally managed to stop from bleeding.
Derek let out a heavy sigh. Braxton had been the one to bring Connor back after accidentally stumbling upon the scene,
Whatever had happened in that hotel, Connor had fought through every inch of it. He had fought valiantly, to the very end of his strength.
He spun on his heel and started to march out of the room. He could not stand here with his arms folded while his wife was out there somewhere, lost, alone, and probably suffering.
"Your body is going to give out soon if you don’t sit down and rest, you know," a dry, exhausted voice called out, halting Derek right in his tracks.
He spun around to face his Beta, his face twisted in a scowl. Declan was propped up on a bed against the far wall. He looked less like a fearsome Beta and more like a poorly wrapped mummy.
His head and wrist were enveloped in white bandages, his neck supported by a neck brace and his left leg was propped up in a cast.
"Easier for you to say," Derek ground out, his amber eyes flashing with dangerous heat. "You’re not the one whose wife is currently missing."
"He’s right, though," Kai put in from the next bed over.
His reopened chest wound had been stitched up again, and he lay sprawled across the bed beside his brother Tan’s.
"We’ve been watching you since you got back," Tan said, adjusting his own position. He had sustained several nasty bruises, and his leg was firmly trapped in a cast. "You’ve not once sat down, except when Dr Lorenzo was assessing you. You’re running on nothing, Derek."
"Tan," Derek said. "I swore an oath to die serving this pack, remember? If I, as the King, sit down and take a casual nap when the kingdom is in shambles, what does that make me?"
Kai tilted his head. "Uhm...I always thought that oath was meant figuratively."
Tan reached over and smacked Kai across the shoulder. "Don’t try to be funny right now, you idiot."
"But I’m not." Kai feigned a wounded wince, rubbing his shoulder. "Ow! Are you still mad at me, big bro?"
Tan only eyed him for a long moment. Then he pushed himself upright.
"It’s funny that you can laugh and joke about it now," he said. "What if something had actually happened to you? You didn’t only risk your own neck, Kai. You put your soulbond’s life in danger too."
"Soulbond?" Declan turned his bandaged head slowly to look at the two brothers.
"Yes," Tan said, shooting Kai another pointed look. "Jessica is Kai’s soulbond."
Declan’s brow creased. "Who’s Jessica?" A beat. "Wait. The werewolf girl?"
Kai nodded.
Declan let out a long sigh. "The goddess must be a comedian. She’s pairing werewolves with Lycans now, is she? What next. Are we going to be bonding with vampires?"
"She is not ’pairing’ anything, Declan," Kai grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. "It just happens. It’s fate."
"I’m fairly certain Kai and Jessica aren’t the first Lycan and werewolf soulbond in all of history," Tan said with a shrug. "We’ll all survive it."
As the three of them continued to bicker and argue over the ridiculousness of pack politics and divine matchmaking, none of them noticed Derek leaving the room.
