Chapter 24: Healing For The First Time

"You alright, Alpha Dylan?"

Twigs snapped as Diana inched herself closer to the unmoving werewolf. Now crouching a mere meter from the heaving furred beast before her, she poked the werewolf's tail with a stick she happened to pick up.

‘Is there really no one around? Where are the goddamn gammas when I need them?’

Dian felt that there was more than meets the eye in this situation.

With her chin atop her knees, Diana's right arm trembled when she dared push the tail away from the convulsing rogue's rear.

"Fuck. Hey, can you hear me? Should I call your people? Where are they? Is this a part of your plan of some sort?" Diana half yelled – though it was all in her head since her supposed yell was only a tone higher than her whisper by a hairbreadth.

Diana cocked her head and mumbled to herself. "I am sure that I met his gaze earlier." Biting her lower lip, she inched her bare feet closer – enough for her to poke his back.

A cluster of clouds moved, paving the way for a single ray of light to kiss the meadow. Under the moonlit sheen showed Diana a clearer view of an adult wolf. Though littered with bite marks and blood, the apex predator could not hide its silky black fur. Diana leaned more. Her gaze fixated on her mate’s eyes. She could vividly remember its smoldering blue electric blue eyes, which reminded her of the azure ocean when the sun kissed its sea surface.

Amid the faint whistle of the western wind and the diminishing hoots of the owl around them, Diana's ears twitched. She could hear his heartbeat slowing down. Diana's gaze wandered frantically.

She wanted to save him!

Though she was yet to come into terms with him as her mate, he was not bad to her generally.

Alpha Dylan Cain was not a good person. She also did not know if he would be a better mate to her. But she damn well knew that he was the best alpha out there.

A soft escaped from her lips upon seeing the periwinkles dying around the black wolf's body. The stench of death hovered over him, making her wolf listless.

Her wolf continued to pace inside Diana, scratching the surface and howling mournfully.

"So that is why you are running from them, Alpha Dylan. You were poisoned," said Diana. After being poisoned, the werewolf could not contain the multiple wounds from the five rogues.

Gone was the distance she conjured between her and the dying mate. Diana hovered over the heaving alpha. The werewolf's tongue hung to the side of its mouth, a clear indication that if she would not move now, then it would be too late.

‘Can I do this?’ Diana clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white.

After a moment of hesitation, her gaze flickered with determination later on.

She would not let him die. He was the best mate candidate out there! He could very well the golden thigh she could hang onto during her revenge.

Nodding her head, she finally found a reason to convince herself that she was not saving him because she cared for him but because his death was an inconvenience for Diana.

“Let’s do it! There will always be a first time to everything.”

‘I can do this. I got this. You got this Diana. I should trust my friend better than this.’ Diana kept on chanting at the back of her tumultuous mind.

Without letting go of the stick she had used to poke the poor beast, Diana reached out. Her trembling fingers reached for the black wolf's ear only to stop when she asked herself one daunting question.

‘Should I use my healing magic for the first time? Or should I leave and call for help to the professionals?’

Diana looked around, hoping that the gammas were coming.

What welcomed Diana's unfocused gaze was mere silence.

Releasing a shaking breath, Diana Ritchell reached out her trembling fingers again.

It was a magical moment of wonder and fear. As the cocoon of tears loomed at the apex of the meadow, the moonlit sheen paved a way to draw out hundreds – if not thousands – of fireflies around the two silhouettes at the very heart of the forest. None of the owls' hoots and the crickets buzzing noise faltered the ashen Diana from her decision.

Diana's pounding heart never seized. Instead, it resonated with every fiber of her being. Like a siren's call to a nomad, like a moth to a flame, Diana was irrefutably drawn to the heaving furred beast before her – to her mate. Though hundreds of answers filled her frantic mind, one was certain – destiny was a choice.

Diana, a believer of destiny, knew that whatever Alpha Dylan Cain was doing before her hours before the Welcoming Ceremony, the Moon Goddess willed it to be.

She, a woman who earned a second shot in life, was the only healer around that could bring him back from the throes of black and white. She placed both of her palms an inch above the humongous wolf’s head, her poking stick long forgotten before she muttered under her breath.

"Faurereium."

Faurereium, an ancient word for ‘heal’. Since her friend used the old language to perform her magic spells during her first life, Diana would often ask it to her due to curiosity. Who would have known that such curiosity would save her mate tonight.

Though the healing spell she conjured was an art lost to the new world. Ever since the gods of olds cursed destiny and time, the ancient civilization of gold and glory was lost. What remained was a mere relic of the glorious old-world. It was now a world of eat or be eaten.

This was why Diana would not dare to let her enemies live. Being merciful to her enemies was being merciless to herself. Anastasia and Axel should die or else Diana would be the one dying, this time, the second around. The evidence of brutality was heaving for life beneath her.

The warmth traveled like slithering vines from her heart to her palms, giving an equally comforting illumination to the werewolf who had stopped heaving and was now breathing normally. And slowly, as the embers of Diana's healing magic dwindle, what was lying on the ground with his silky black fur turned into a man with raven hair in his splendid naked glory. His face was against Diana.

"Alpha Dylan, you are pretty cute when you are not showing your imposing side."

When her hands stopped emitting magic, Diana stripped all the anxiety fiddling at the back of her mind as she reached out to touch his hair that covered half of his face – exposing his face to her. This was the first time she let her inhibitions ran free.

Diana cocked her head. Gaze transfixed to the ethereal being before her, she could compare his beauty to the sirens of the west. Diana remembered what his father and mother would say about mates. She also remembered how her father would say that in a mate’s eyes, their other half would be the most important entity.

But Diana never forgot how Alpha Dylan Cain was the renowned brutal alpha of the Blood Claws Pack. He was the nightmare on every pup’s dreams.

Alphas were supposed to be dominant-looking – strong and brute. But now, gone was the alpha who was merciless and ruthless. Instead, in front of her was a werewolf that gave off an air of elegance and softness.

Under the moonlight and the hundreds of glowing fireflies around them, Diana observed as his tanned skin started to come back to its original form – free of wounds he sustained from the five rogues.

Diana watched more.

His nose was not like her father's or Axel’s; it was not strong-looking. Instead, it was elegant, as if the old gods took their sweet time crafting just his nose. Chiseled jaws and prominent cheekbones paired with his long and lush lashes and perfectly carved eyebrows, Diana traced her fingers atop his brows. She wanted to make sure if he was indeed real. Or else, she would suspect that he was only a figment of her imagination.

The longer Diana touched the sleeping and naked alpha, the more his brows twitched. It was a warning of nature for the omega like Diana to leave the beast like it should be. But the stinging of her heart which she endured, calmed down the moment her fingertips made contact with his skin. Like a feather kiss to a snow, it was both real and surreal for her.

Diana's train of thoughts snapped when a warm hand pulled her wrist away from his face. A growl followed, then a deep snarling voice resonated – a complete contradiction to his pretty face. "Y-You!"

She could not help but gasp even when she somehow expected it already. Her red-ish brown eyes dilated the moment it met a pair of glowing and dangerous blue eyes once more. On cue, Diana pointed at herself. Her ears twitched. "Me?"

Diana's line of sight flipped.

The moon was openly staring at her the next thing she knew before a shadow loomed over her. Her arms raised above her head as he pinned her wrists with his left hand. Veins protruded around her wrists when Diana tugged them away from his tight grasp. Fixated by the thought of fleeing, she failed to notice his elongated canines nearing her bare neck.

"Are you goig to kill your savior, Alpha Dylan?" A knot lodged between her bushy brows upon feeling the graze of his canines at the slopes of her neck, eliciting a hushed gasp from Diana. Shivers wrecked havoc down her spine upon the contact of danger, but a throbbing ache emerged instead of fear – something Diana was not unfamiliar with.

"Where are they?" With the darkness that covered his splendid glory, his deranged, wild blue orbs were the only ones that pulled her focus.

Diana realized that the side effects of the poison was still clouding Alpha Dylan’s mind. The clash of the past events and the present was something that he could not endure for now.

Hovering over her like hope but never a promise, her alpha mate stared down at her. "But why do I want to see you struggle more beneath me, little lamb? Who are you? Are you one of those rogues? Are they fucking trying to use a honey trap on me of all people?" His clawed right hand traced her lower lip to her throat down to her wool-covered chest. "Why does your frantic little beating heart fascinates me so? I’ll be damn! This honey trap is indeed dangerous."

Reflected beneath his electric blue eyes were two things – madness and wonder. For Diana, she was torn between running away while making use of the fact that he was still not in his right mind or waking him up by kissing him which she badly wanted – her wolf she meant, or so she thought.

Right now, she was trapped within his lean arms, and yet no hint of fear overlapped with her frenzied heart. Instead, the ache inside Diana had howled along with the wind of the forest, which grew like flames on a haystack.

"Are you in pain, Alpha Dylan?"

The raven-haired werewolf drew back his head and released a howl of laughter, breaking the silence of the quiet night. "Aren't you scared to die? Worry for your life, for my business is my own – never yours."

 "All life is temporary, Alpha Dylan. I am not scared to die. It is in how I will die that worries me." She reached out for his protruding canines. A nagging voice at the back of her head wanted to make sure that he would not be able to harm his pale lips even when she knew it was absurd to think about it for a predator who was aiming for a kill. Diana continued sighing when his mate, whose eyes pinned on her, nipped her fingers. "All things, great and worst, die, Alpha Dylan. You and I are not the exceptions."

She wanted to make use of this time. She knew that when he became sober once more, she would not have the chance to do this.

  Upon her words, her alpha’s gaze sharpened. Veins popped around the werewolf's neck as if he was fighting a battle that only he knew about. His hold against her wrists tightened that Diana had to bite the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from releasing a pained gasp. She did not want to satisfy the madness in him.

Jaws clenched, he raised his right arm for a strike. Claws protruded, and now the alpha’s blue eyes gleamed with carnage.

"So it seems!"

Before his claws could rip Diana to shreds, the raven-haired werewolf froze.