Chapter 140
Elara's POV
The man kept moving closer to our hiding spot, his nostrils flaring with each breath. I could see his eyes scanning the bushes, searching for the source of that unfamiliar scent he'd caught.
My hand tightened on the knife handle. We had maybe three seconds before he pinpointed our exact location.
I caught Cole's eye and gave the smallest nod. His muscles tensed in response. We both knew what came next.
One.
Two.
Three.
I exploded from the bushes.
The nearest man barely had time to register my presence before my blade slashed across his gun hand. The weapon clattered to the ground as he screamed, clutching his wrist.
Cole burst out simultaneously from the opposite side, his claws tearing into another man's thigh. Blood sprayed across the forest floor.
"Ambush!" the leader roared. "Defensive formation!"
The remaining three shifted into half-wolf form in seconds. Bones cracked and reformed. Muscles bulged. Their eyes took on that feral gleam I knew too well.
Damn it.
I ducked under a clawed swipe from a gray-furred wolf-man, feeling the air whoosh past my ear. Too close. My knife found the gap in his defense and I drove it into his shoulder, but he barely flinched. The half-transformed had way more pain tolerance than humans.
Another one lunged at me from the side. I rolled away, but not fast enough. Claws raked across my ribs. The tactical vest tore like paper. Hot pain bloomed across my skin as blood seeped through my shirt.
I bit back a curse and kept moving.
Cole was holding off two of them on his own, his wolf form a blur of black fur and snapping jaws. But even he was struggling. These weren't random rogues. They were trained fighters.
The gray wolf circled me, grinning. "Is that all you've got? You came here to die?"
I didn't waste breath on a response. Just kept my knife up and my feet moving.
"I'm guessing you're looking for that woman we've been hunting," the leader called out. He was fighting Cole but still had enough attention to spare for psychological warfare. Smart bastard.
My jaw clenched. Don't react. Don't give him anything.
"Bad timing on your part—"
He paused deliberately, watching me.
I couldn't help it. "What did you do to her?"
The words escaped before I could stop them.
His grin widened. "Got you."
The gray wolf attacked in that split second of distraction. I barely managed to block his charge, his weight slamming me backward into a tree trunk. Air rushed from my lungs.
"That stupid bitch jumped off the north cliff less than an hour ago!" the leader laughed. "We've been sweeping the area downstream looking for her body, but the current's too strong. She's either dead in the water or bleeding out in some hole!"
"Yeah!" one of the others fighting Cole added. "Chose to jump rather than face us. We're expanding the search grid now—gonna find her corpse before nightfall!"
Dead?
Lynette was dead?
No. No, that couldn't be right. She was the strongest Alpha I'd ever known. She couldn't just—
My vision blurred red.
Something inside me snapped.
I felt it rising from somewhere deep in my chest. A fury so intense it burned through every rational thought. This body, this borrowed form, it had been holding something back. Something that had been sleeping.
Not anymore.
Heat exploded through my veins. My skin felt too tight. The world sharpened into crystal clarity. Every sound, every scent, every tiny movement.
"Elara?!" Cole's voice, shocked.
The gray wolf's eyes widened as he stared at me. "What the—"
I moved.
My foot connected with his stomach before he could react. The impact drove the air from his lungs. He staggered backward, crashed into a tree, and slumped to the ground gasping.
The knife in my hand became an extension of my will. I saw the opening in the next wolf's defense before he even knew it existed. My blade flashed twice, angled perfectly to sever his hamstrings. He collapsed with a howl.
The leader tried to blindside me. I sidestepped and caught his wrist mid-lunge, redirecting his momentum. My knife drove deep into his thigh as I used his own weight to slam him face-first into the ground.
Cole's opponent suddenly found himself free as Cole finished him with a vicious bite to the neck.
The remaining wolves stared at their fallen comrades. At me.
I didn't give them time to process.
My blade found the first one's lung. Punctured clean through the ribs. He gurgled and fell.
The second tried to run. I was faster. The knife went through the back of his knee, then his kidney, then his throat. Precise. Efficient. Final.
The gray wolf struggled to his feet, ribs clearly broken from my kick. I walked toward him slowly.
"Wait—" he gasped.
I stabbed him through the heart.
Three minutes. That's all it took.
Four bodies lay in spreading pools of blood. Only the leader remained, human-formed now, his right leg useless from where I'd impaled it earlier.
My eyes caught on one of the dead men's backpacks. A piece of bloodstained plaid fabric hung from the strap—the same pattern as the scrap in my pocket.
So it was them. The ones who'd been hunting her.
I turned back to the leader.
"Please," the leader whimpered. "Don't kill me."
I pressed my boot down on his wounded shoulder. He screamed.
"She really jumped?" My voice came out cold. Flat.
"Yes! Yes!" He was crying now, all that earlier bravado gone. "She had at least three gunshot wounds, knife wound to the abdomen. We chased her since she broke out of the mine. When we cornered her at the cliff, she chose to jump rather than let us take her."
My chest tightened. "You saw her fall?"
"The water was too violent to search. We waited twenty minutes but saw no body surface." He grimaced in pain. "Captain said she was dead for sure and ordered us to return to camp. We were heading back when you—"
"Where's the cliff?"
"North! Follow the river valley north about five kilometers. But she's dead, I'm telling you. No one survives that fall with those injuries—"
"Unless she made it to the deep pool," I said coldly.
He hesitated, then nodded weakly. "If she was lucky... maybe. The waterfall feeds into a deep pool downstream. But the current—"
I was already moving.
"Elara, wait!" Cole called after me.
I didn't stop. "Question him. Get every detail. I'm going ahead."
"It's too dangerous alone. There might be more of them—"
"If she's alive, every second counts." I looked back at him. "Follow when you're done."
I didn't wait for his agreement.
My knife ended his misery. And then, I ran.
The forest blurred past me as I pushed my body to its limits. This new strength, whatever had awakened in me, it let me move faster than I'd ever managed in this form.
The signs of battle grew more frequent as I went north. Claw marks gouged deep into tree trunks. Blood splattered across rocks and leaves. Broken branches and torn earth.
She'd fought every step of the way.
The blood trail grew thicker. Fresher. She'd been losing too much blood, moving too slowly at the end.
My throat burned but I kept running.
The sound of rushing water reached me first. Then I broke through the tree line and saw it.
The cliff.
I skidded to a stop at the edge, my heart hammering.
The drop was at least fifty meters straight down to a churning river below. White water crashed over rocks before feeding into a deep, dark pool.
The cliff edge was a massacre scene. Blood everywhere. Claw marks carved into the stone. Chunks of rock torn away from desperate grabs.
A piece of plaid fabric, soaked dark red, clung to a jagged outcropping.
The same pattern as the scraps we'd been following.
She'd been here. She'd stood right here, wounded and cornered and—
And jumped.
I stared down at the violent water below. From this height, hitting the surface would be like hitting concrete. Even for an Alpha. Even for Lynette.
With multiple gunshot wounds and a stab wound?
My hands clenched into fists.
I couldn't just stand here. I had to know. Had to see for myself.
I started scanning the cliff face for a way down.
"You're insane if you think I'm letting you jump," Cole's voice came from behind me.
I glanced back. He was breathing hard from his run, blood still on his claws.
"I'm not jumping. I'm climbing down."
"That water's moving too fast. Even if she survived the fall—"
"I have to know." I met his eyes. "I have to find her. You can wait up here if you want."