Chapter 69 A ROGUE ATTACK
SEBASTIAN’S POV
My lungs feel like they’re on fire.
And I feel like they are.
Not the dramatic kind that poets talk about, no, this is the raw ugly burning kind that crawls up my throat and makes every breath I take taste like metal.
My legs tremble beneath me as I stagger through the last stretch of the course Alisander designed but I'm not sure I can make it.
It's like everyone and everything decided to work against me from the uneven ground slick with damp earth and fallen leaves trapping themselves in my shoes.
“ Again,”his voice urges inside my head. “You’re dropping your center of gravity. Adjust Sebastian.”
“I–” I gasp, stumbling over a low barrier and barely catching myself. “I can’t–”
“You can,” Alisander snaps, sounding sharper now. “You must.”
Ragnar isn’t here.
That fact presses on me harder than exhaustion.
Why would he just dump such crazy news on me and then tell me he's got pack matters and he's busy.
Now there's no steady presence at my back, no quiet correction or reassurance in his eyes. Just me, my failing body, and the annoying wolf in my head who seems to forget conveniently that I am not built like a strong wolf.
I vault over a fallen log too slowly as my foot catches.
I go down quick and hard.
The impact knocks the breath from my lungs in a painful wheeze as dirt and leaves press cold against my cheek.
For a moment I don’t move, I can’t. My arms shake when I try to push myself up and my muscles start screaming in protest.
“Get up,” Alisander orders.
I laugh weakly, the sound breaking apart into something very close to a sob. “No.”
The word echoes louder in my head than it does in the clearing.
“No,” I repeat, rolling onto my back and staring up at the sliver of sky between the trees. It looks impossibly far away. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Sebastian–”
“I am an Omega,” I snap, anger and despair finally tearing loose from me. “No matter how much you yell at me from inside my skull, no matter how much Ragnar believes in me, no matter how much training you force me through, I am still an Omega.”
Silence follows.
“And?” Alisander says finally.
I turn my head, glaring at nothing. “And the Alphas are going to tear me apart.”
“Then we’ll stop playing fair,” he replies flatly.
I frown. “What?”
There’s a pause, then something like resolve coils through him.
“Get up,” he says again, but this time it’s not a command. We’re leaving the course.”
I blink. “Leaving?”
I've never heard such sweet words come from Alisander.
“The obstacles are useful,” he admits. “But they will not be enough. Follow my directions into the woods.”
I push myself up slowly, legs unsteady. “But Ragnar said–”
“Ragnar is not here,” Alisander cuts in. “And if he were, he’d try to stop me. Which is why we do this now.”
That sends a chill down my spine.
Still, I obey.
The forest thickens as we move deeper, the air cooler and heavier with the scent of moss and damp bark.
My footsteps grow slower with fatigue weighing me down until every sound feels too loud and too sharp.
“What are we doing out here?” I ask at last, swiping sweat from my brow.
“Looking for an advantage for you,” Alisander answers. “There are herbs in these woods, old ones.”
I pause. “Herbs?”
“Clusters,” he corrects. “Rare and somewhat difficult to find but its effects are temporary.”
My heart sinks. “You mean stimulants.”
“I mean survival.”
I shake my head immediately. “That’s cheating.”
A low, humorless sound reverberates through my thoughts. “Several Alphas ganging up against one Omega in a so-called ‘honorable challenge’, what do you call that then?”
“That’s–” I falter. “…that’s different.”
“No,” Alisander says coldly. “It is not. They tilt the scales and the chances of winning by birth and rank. I tilt them with knowledge and a little help.”
I swallow hard. “And if Ragnar finds out?”
“Then he’ll hate me,” Alisander replies simply. “I would be the wolf who has corrected his innocent human part and you’ll still be alive.”
We move again.
After several minutes, Alisander slows me with a sharp mental tug. “There.”
I crouch, pushing aside thick leaves until I see it.
It's beautiful.
It's a cluster of dark purple and dark-veined plants nestled near the roots of an ancient tree Alisander says it's Acmonite.
My breath catches. “That’s it?”
“One of them,” he says. “You need to find the rest and to take them all together because it's not safe to only take one.”
I reach out–
–and the forest explodes with a snarl.
I freeze.
And very slowly, I lift my gaze.
The wolf stands barely ten paces away from me.
It’s massive, with ribs showing beneath matted fur and blood dripping thick and dark from its snout and fangs.
Its eyes burn a feral yellow with flies surrounding it but it's gaze is locked entirely on me.
Rogue.
My heart slams violently against my ribs.
“Alisander,” I whisper.
“I see it.” He replies quietly.
The wolf growls, sounding low and hungry, with its paws digging into the earth as it takes another step forward.
I scramble back instinctively, my heel catching on a root. “I can’t fight that,” I hissed.
“You won’t,” Alisander says, his tone shifting from carefree to focused and lethal. “You’ll run exactly when I tell you to.”
“Have you seen the size of that thing?!”
I snarl back mentally in my mind.
The likelihood of myself running away and not getting caught is very, very high.
On a normal day I might have hopes of outrunning it–okay who am I kidding, it'll simply catch up and kill me even on my best day.
Not to talk of today that I'm drained from all of the training and the long walk it took to get here.
The rogue’s lips peel back with back delight as it has saliva stringing between its teeth.
The woods seem to hold their breath as even the crickets go silent.
And suddenly, the herbs at my side feel far less like cheating and more like the reason I might die here today.