Chapter 9 Nine
Theron's POV
I ran out of the mansion into pandemonium.
Fires licked up on the east wall where my sentries were supposed to be. I smelled the acrid scent of burning wood in my nostrils and something else. Blood. Fear. And close beneath, the very smell of rogues.
I was in the midst of a fight with my own men. At a guess, there are at least two dozen rogues out there, maybe more in the dark. Far, far more than the lone stragglers that kept testing our borders.
This was coordinated. Planned.
My Lycan manifested as I scrolled. Bones shifted, muscles expanded. My eyesight came in crystal clear and bright as though it were daylight. I never draw any blood.”Power surged through my old, dead veins.
I struck the first rogue hard enough to break his back. He went down without a sound.
The ones behind them looked at me, their eyes alight with the desire for blood. But I glimpsed through that at something else. Training. Discipline. They weren’t random rogues conducting suicidal attacks and driven mad by isolation.
Someone had sent them.
I plowed through them mercilessly. Claws ripped flesh. Teeth found throats. In the moonlight, black was splashed on the ground by blood.
My soldiers stood in ranks with me, graceful and deadly. But the rogues just came and came, wave after wave.
After a moment’s quiet, I smelt something that froze my blood. Something recognizably themselves, below the smoke and the blood. Something I hadn’t smelled in 40 years.
I looked around the mess to find the origin. But there were too many bodies, too much activity.
“Retire to the second line,” I roared to my men. “We had to come back together, try to get a defensive set.”
The rogues appeared to smell blood:anesha wags the fish back, One of these two moves mean that pretty much yourselection you are as good animals is going to eat junk left. They bore harder down, and their ordering grew careless.
That was their mistake.
I let my full power loose. The temperature dropped. Shadows clustered about me as if they were alive. This was the power that had given me my reputation, why packs wouldn’t dare challenge me.
The rogues surrounding me halted, the wolf part of their brain shrieking to flee. I exploited their faltering and slashed through them.
And finally, blessedly, they started to recede. They melted into the forest, leaving their dead behind.
I changed back into my human body, panting. I was covered in blood, very little of it my own. My men did likewise around me, tending to injuries and taking a count of the fallen.
Marcus was at my side, his shoulder sliced open. "Three injured. One dead."
No sooner had she uttered the final words than I felt as though physically struck. Then I walked along my men till: I found him. Young Thomas, barely twenty. He’d worked for us less than a year.
I knelt by his body, my anger and guilt battling each other. He'd died protecting my territory. To safeguard my mate, whom he’d never even met.
"My lord," Marcus said quietly. “The rogues were inquiring after somebody. About the Alpha's mate. They had to know where she was.”
Of course they did. Someone knew Rhea was here. Someone wanted her so badly they’d ordered professional rogues into my turf.
“Let’s double the patrols,” I ordered, getting up. "Reinforce the walls. I need scouts on the trail of those rogues. Discover where do they come from and weho sent them.”
My men broke ranks to carry his instructions. I was with Thomas’s body until his family came to take him. It was the least I could do.
When I staggered back to the manor it was dawn. I made a beeline for my war room, Marcus and a few members of the council in tow.
“This wasn’t by chance,” I said, spreading maps out on the table. "Those rogues were trained. Organized. Someone sent them over specifically to check our defenses and Rhea?"
"Alaric?" Elder Thomas suggested.
I shook my head. "Alaric would be in my face. This is more subtle." I indicated the marks I had seen on some of the roque's dead. Symbols burned into their flesh. "These marks. I haven’t seen them in years.”
Sarah leaned in, her face serious. "Old war symbols. "The wars between Lycans and shifters."
My blood ran cold. If shifters were part of this, it was bigger than I'd realized.
We planned until the early hours of the morning. I commanded patrols doubled, orders sent to fortify the borders, a network of scouts established to shadow the rogues. My men were uneasy. Such attacks had been rare in the recent past
.
But mixed in with the fretting, I detected something else. Doubt. They were wondering whether Rhea was worth all this hassle.
I couldn't blame them. I was questioning it myself.
After the council had finally broken up, I was left in the war room. The pain hit me immediately.
As the curse lit up my veins, I clutched onto the edge of the table. It was worse, more violent than ever. My vision blurred. For an instant, I had no idea where I was.
The witch's voice echoed in my head mockingly. “Only your bond-boned freedom can dissolve it.”
But Rhea was here. The bond was forming. Why wasn't it working?
I had to consciously breath through the pain, shove it down deep where no one could see. My men needed me strong. Rhea needed me strong.
Except time was running out.
And when the pain was finally gone, I looked at the maps in front of me. War was closing in from several fronts. Alaric and the twins on one side. Mysterious rogues from another. And maybe some shifters pulling strings in the wings.
It all revolved around one small woman with blue eyes and more pluck than anyone I’d ever known.
I thought about the moment before the attack. How close I’d come to kissing her. How much I'd wanted to.
For centuries, I'd been frozen. Alone, because of my curse and because of my past. I'd even managed to convince myself that I couldn't feel anything other than animal urge.
But seeing Rhea, working with her, talking to her over dinner, I’d felt something open up in me. Something dangerous and scary and achingly gorgeous.
Hope.
It was a blow with more force than any physical one. The curse was not my worst problem. It were easier to catch a vampire than it would be to keep me or my dick away from Rhea; worse, much worse, I cared about her, really cared, and that could break me even finer than a witch.
For if I allowed myself to love her, then something did happen and she lost her life as the collateral damage of whatever wars were building around us, I wasn’t quite sure how I could go on living.
Not again.
I was actually walking around the house, my body doing all of the work. I was on the right wing outside Rhea's door.
Filtering through the windows was the dawn light. I should let her sleep. After her first practice session, she needed a break.
But I needed to see her. Had to know she was safe.
I turned the knob as quietly as possible and let myself in.
Rhea lay curled up in the bed; her long brown hair was dishevelled through the pillow. Her face was serene in sleep, young and defenseless. Nothing like that formidable woman who’d insisted on boundaries and training.
Something in my heart constricted with pain.
For centuries, I'd been alone. I had grown used to being alone, to the empty chill of endless years. But staring at Rhea sleeping, I felt that absence acutely for the first time in decades.
I desired things I had long considered dead. Companionship. Connection. Someone to go through endless years with.
But wanting and having were two very different things.
The curse beat again, reminding me time was borrowed. I clutched onto the doorframe, gripping it to remain vertical.
If I needed to break a true love spell, I was screwed. Because I was afraid I didn’t know how to love. Knew I wasn’t sure I was still capable of.
I turned on my heel and walked out, to let her get some sleep.
"Did they come for me?"
I froze. Rhea's sleepy voice, but her eyes were open to watch me.
I considered lying. Thought of telling her that the rogues were only coincidental, that they had no connection to the fact she was staying with him. But I found I couldn't.
"Yes," I said simply.
She sat up, her face fallen. “One of your fellows has been killed through me.”
She caught herself coughing on the last word and guilt flitted across her face. The same guilt I’d then been wallowing in.
I walked over there in two long steps and said something that surprised us both. I perched on the corner of her bed and held her hand.
“He lost his life defending his territory,” I said firmly. "That's not on you."
Rhea's eyes searched my face. I wondered what she saw. The monster from the rumors? Or something else?
"Why?" she whispered. “So why did you actually come for me at that wedding?”
The silence filled the space between us with a question. I could tell her the curse. To how I required her to break it. That I was running out of time.
But staring into those deep blue eyes, I could not bear to lay that truth on her.
Before I could respond, pain shot through my entire body.
The curse was a blow, it felt like a blow this time, worse than ever. My entire body seized. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see.
I heard Rhea scream my name, felt her hands on me and then I was falling.
Then darkness swallowed everything.