Chapter 158

CLAUDIA.

Achilles.

His name and his scent swirl around me like a tornado, making me gasp with both fear and excitement. If he’s here, then that means it’s not a hopeless case after all. But at the same time, it would also mean that he’s in danger.

But just to be sure, even though Tristan is about to crash into me, I try to connect to Achilles and really know if he’s there. “Achilles… if you’re there, I need you to know that I—”

“I’m coming to save you,” he declares, and a crash in the distance echoes through the halls of the cave. This makes Tristan stop, staring at me like this is all my doing. He shrinks back to his human form, and as he does so, I see him smiling at me.

Before I can move out of his way, he rams into me, making my body slam against the floor. My head hits a rock and my vision starts to sprout black spots. I blink rapidly, trying to push Tristan off me and fight back somehow, but it’s useless. He gets on top of me before I can move, pinning my hands down with his knees and shifting partially.

I have never seen that before. When Wolves shift, it has to be done by the entire body. But apparently, not for him. He raises his hand and only that shifts into a somewhat Rogue form. It’s basically a smaller version of his claws, and he’s lowering his nail against my cheek.

“It’s a shame that I need to hurt you,” he whispers. “It’s a shame that you have to come to me as an enemy when we could be ruling together at the top, repopulating the world with the best creatures ever to exist. The only reason my kind was eradicated was because all of you were threatened by our power, but that doesn’t have to happen again. This time, we can win. And no one would be able to stop us. But now you’re fighting me. Do you really think you can beat me?”

Tristan makes a wild swipe that ends up wounding my other cheek. This time, however, I feel no pain. Not a single sting. My skin is thick and numb with this quiet sort of power, a cold kind of aggression that’s turning my vision black instead of red.

I look into Tristan’s eyes, and all the initial sympathy I have felt for him and what he went through vanishes in one second.

This man is evil. Even before he suffered, he was already like this. No amount of sympathy and understanding can save him.

And the only way to ease his misery is to end his life, and it has to be done by me.

Before he can react, I snatch his wrist and tug at it, bending it into an awkward angle. I feel something snap in his wrist, a bone sliding out of position. He growls, his hand going back to its normal form.

Tristan tries to slap me, but I get up and switch places with him. I push him hard on the ground, slamming his head on the rocks as strongly as I can, watching in dark satisfaction when I see the faint trace of scarlet on the floor, signaling that I broke skin and made his head bleed.

“No, I don’t think I can beat you,” I growl at her. “I know I can end you.”

With that, I shift into my wolf form. Only this time, it’s different.

It’s not a matter of giving my wolf control now. It’s no longer me surrendering our shared form to her. I can feel myself morphing into our white wolf, with my body growing bigger and stronger than ever, but this time, we’re both in charge.

At this moment, my wolf is me, and I am her. And the only thing we have in mind is killing Tristan.

I just raise my paw and scratch at him as she scrambles to his feet. My nails dig into her back as he tries to run, his clothes taking most of the impact and disintegrating into slivers of fabric. Still, the tip of my nails catches his skin, drawing blood. The coppery scent of it fills the air, bringing me satisfaction.

Tristan stumbles forward, landing on the floor. I see my opportunity to break him into submission, but he just shifts back into his wolf form.

He growls at me, and slowly, surprisingly, he starts to grow in size until he’s almost as big as I am.

He’s more hideous in this form. I can see his eyes, milky white and bloodshot at the same time, staring into me blankly but still communicating so much malice. He growls and snarls, showing me his mismatched sharp teeth with bright green venom dripping all over them.

He pounces on me, his mouth ready to bite into my neck again. But this time, I’m ready for it. Instead of dodging, I lower my head and crouch down, ramming into his stomach until I feel all his ribs cracking with the impact. I open my mouth and bite him, tearing into the flesh of his legs until he whimpers in pain.

But I don’t let it end there.

I drive him back, making the wall behind us bust and fall into pieces like a castle of cards as I tackle him to the ground. I claw at his body, tearing through the sinews and muscles. But instead of fighting back, Tristan just scrambles away from me, letting me tear through his muscles but escaping completely.

He looks back and sees me running after him. I’m getting close to him, so close that I can inhale his scent, but before I can pull level with him, he swerves back and shifts to his human form once again. This time, I can see him holding something. It’s the syringe.

And before I can move out of his way, he plunges it deep into my neck.

The pain that flows into my body is intense, almost blinding. My eyes roll into the back of my skull, my skin freezing and burning at the same time. My veins feel like they’re exploding, being pumped full of the concoction that he and Kiernan spent years to perfect.

His poison is too much to bear. I feel delirious. Hell, I don’t even feel like I’m in my body anymore. I don’t know if it’s just my mind trying to cope with the torture, but it seems like my consciousness has been pushed out of my body and now I’m just watching him stand over me as I thrash on the ground, not shrinking into my human form and stuck in my wolf as the potion tries to change me.

I try to talk to the Moon Goddess. I beg her for help. But it seems that she’s being eradicated by the pain too, and she’s weak to the point where she can no longer help me, even respond to me….

But just when I think it’s going to continue forever, a whole section of the cave smashes into the ground.

The fog of the rubble clears, and looming above it all is Achilles himself.

Standing behind him is Carlos… and to my surprise, Sahari too.

Tristan laughs at them. “Well, I didn’t know you’re going to bring a whole party here, Claudia. Perhaps they would be my audience as they watch you become my Queen.”

Achilles wastes no time in talking. He shifts into his wolf form and leaps towards Tristan, all teeth and nails, ready to kill as the poison slowly seeps through my bloodstream.

And before I can stop what’s going on, my body starts to change. I start to grow, and my fur turns from white to black. The pain in my eyes is telling me that they’re turning red.

I’m slowly turning into a Rogue.