For Your Brother

For Your Brother
MAX

My footsteps thunder along the rise in the hill, the briars and brambles tearing into my hind legs as I crash through all the places that I don't take the time to navigate properly. Pain beats along my insides, sluicing through me with a cold sort of dread that dribbles likes sand in an hourglass that have nearly been entirely spent.
She is close. I can feel her. But...just barely.
If I lose her...if she dies...
Goddess please. I am sorry. Please...don't take her from me. Don't.
The sound of my companions behind me wafts like the buzzing of bees past my ears as somewhere in my head I'm allowed to acknowledge the fact that although I leapt from the car without warning, the three men with me remain stapled to my heels as if they, themselves, have a vested interest in my sweet Blanca.
The very moment I scent the blood on the wind, an impulsive whine leaves my chest.
Because...I know that blood. I have tasted it in the air before. On the night of her execution. After my entire pack stoned her upon the dais.
Damn it! No. Please!
A savage roar releases from my lungs as I charge around the bend and onto the dirt backroad that Corlys would have taken from the Alpha Estate. The very moment I do, I see them. The bastards.
My eyes quickly flicker over every soul that stands on the outside of the vehicle, committing their faces to memory and searching with a stuttered, panicked gaze for Blanca, my Blanca.
But...I don't see her.
Where is she?
WHERE IS SHE?!
The men gathered about the back of the dark Suburban have yet to notice the rabid, intentional, wolves that are bearing down on them from their rear side and even though our initial plan had been to cut them off at the flank and the front side, that course crumbles with the dirt beneath my claws as it becomes apparent that they are no longer driving. And now, I am being made to watch as Gamma Corlys kicks at something in gravel. Something in the pebbled street.
No. Not something.
Someone.
Blanca.
My soul howls at the sight and as the young trainees stand about and watch their teacher mangle my girl, and a departed rage finds me, floating above and beyond like the shadow of the devil as I shift back into myself not a hundred feet from where they stand and I scream, "Corlys! Stop!"
The man in question freezes mid kick and the entirety of his assembled brigade gasps in surprise on my approach.
"Alpha Max!" I hear one of them cry out as he, and the rest of them step back away from the carnage that lay at their mentor's booted feet.
"Max..." Corlys' low growl reaches my ears as he turns away from Blanca's body and positions himself in front of her still form. His ice cold eyes meet mine and I see it right away, the disappointment, the anger...the contempt that he has for me as he puffs his chest out and grants me that age old look of a father that thinks he knows best.
But he's not my father and he doesn't know best and I mean to make that fact unequivocal.
"Step away from her!" I shout, now only twenty feet from my angel on the ground. Even though I have shifted back, I have not slowed my steps and I notice the very moment that Coprlys sees this and my heart skitters when it becomes clear that he has decided to sign his very own death warrant.
Time slows as Corlys lifts one foot, holding it over my sweet Blanca's head as if he plans to stomp her into the ground. As if he intends to smash her head in. "I'm doing this for you, Max, and for your brother. It's for the best."
"Nooooo!" I roar, leaping off of my feet in an attempt to clear the ground between us before Corlys manages to end my angel's life.
But...I'm too far away and as a spike moves straight through my heart my eyes seal on Blanca's bloodied, unrecognizable face caked with thorns and red mud.
I'm not going to make it.
I'm not.
A scream rends the air and my movements falter, my gaze snapping upward as a young man dives forth from somewhere near the rear of the vehicle and drops his entire form atop my battered girl, effectively knocking Gamma Corlys into my waiting arms and, of course, his imminent death.
The feel of the old bastard's muscles cinching within my iron hold as he attempts to shift, a roar of anger leaving his soon to be severed throat, is all that I focus on as the pair of us crash into the back of the Suburban and I take one meaningful look into his cold hard eyes before grasping his neck and spinning in a complete circle, whispering in a voice only meant for him to hear as I snap his fucking neck, "She's my mate."
Then I rip his head free of his shoulders and throw it into the brambles, dropping to my knees completely painted in his traitorous blood.