Chapter 78 78
Damien POV
I was furious.
I can’t believe I let him die right in front of me and not even by my own hands. I got nothing from him. No names. No answers. No clue who the hell was behind any of this.
Lucas drove like a man possessed, the car swerving just as wildly as Aurélie’s had when she left Maurice’s pack earlier. I couldn’t blame him. I was barely holding my aura back, barely keeping my block in place. Through the pack link, he’d feel every spike of my pain.
The poison was spreading burning deeper, hotter. I could feel it crawling through me, claiming more ground by the second. That bullet had to come out. Now.
Maurice, however, was being absolutely fucking useless.
He lounged in the back seat, tossing out comments like this was all some kind of entertainment, each one winding me tighter.
“Like I said,” he drawls, “if you’re set on dying… I could always take Aurélie as my own.”
He smirks. I turn just enough to look at him, careful not to move too fast, hiding the pain behind my glare. Fuck he was pushing me deliberately. Did he want me to rip this bullet out and lodge it in his chest? Because that’s exactly where this was heading.
“She’s an Alpha in her own right,” I growl. “She wouldn’t join another pack.”
Lucas’s foot is pressed flat against the accelerator.
“I’m irresistible to a female in need,” Maurice says smugly.
“She won’t be in need,” I snap, coughing hard as the words tear out of me. “I’ll keep her from you.”
Both Lucas and Maurice stare at me, eyes wide.
“You’ll be dead,” Maurice says lightly. “Maybe I’ll be the new Alpha King”
“We’re here!” Lucas cuts him off, pure relief ringing through his voice as he barrels through the already-open gates. He must have mind-linked ahead.
Good. Aurélie and Dominique should’ve been back long enough to be seen to.
Lucas skids to a stop outside the medical centre. Either Aurélie raised the alarm, or the pack felt my injury through the link because doctors swarm the car instantly. My door is ripped open.
“Alpha!”
Hands haul me out, lower me onto a gurney. I snarl as I fall back against it, pain ripping through me as the poison fully claims my back.
“Damien?”
Geneviève’s voice reaches me as I’m forced upright so they can inspect the wound.
Her scream only makes everything worse.
Staff panic. Orders overlap. They shove me flat again and rush me inside.
Was it selfish to hope, even for a second, that Aurélie would be the one waiting for me? That she would be the voice cutting through the chaos, commanding the room?
I’d never admit it out loud, but my chest sinks when I hear Geneviève instead. Not her.
They wheel me into a room and all hell breaks loose. Doctors bark orders, nurses stumble under the weight of my aura, unable to focus as it thickens, presses, smothers.
The air darkens, clouded, oppressive. I can’t pull it back.
Some incompetent piece-of-shit doctor reaches for my wound.
I roar.
My wolf surges forward, violent and feral, knocking him aside. No one was touching me now.
“Damien, calm down!” Geneviève snaps, trying to command me.
I don’t hear her.
My attention snaps to the corridor beyond the door.
Aurélie.
Her hand rests against Fabrice’s cheek, her expression soft—soft—a small smile curving her lips.
Jealousy explodes in my gut, white-hot, savage. I can feel it collide with the wolfsbane, pushing back against the poison. The irony isn’t lost on me my anger at her touching another man is what’s keeping my body from collapsing.
At least Dominique looks well.
He’s in her arms, color back in his face, no longer pale or hollow. Even from here, I can see it.
I watch as she turns and leaves with him. Her gaze flicks toward me, and for one heartbeat, our eyes lock.
A storm churns in hers emotions buried deep as her green shifts, darkening to that familiar army shade. The look she gets when she’s ready to fight.
She reins her wolf in too tightly. Always too controlled. Too restrained.
And as she disappears down the corridor, I feel the loss of her more sharply than the bullet still burning in my back.