Chapter 140
The outer twenty-foot door to the pack hall had been shattered.
The chief spellcaster darted out through the same secret passage he had used to enter the pack hall.
The noise drew closer.
Marian and the others, all in wolf form, pushed their way into the main section of the Bloodrayne hall. Here, the second door was smaller than the first and less sturdy.
Also, it wasn’t locked.
The pack hall, a wide space, like a football pitch, which had been bubbly just four days earlier at almost this exact same hour, was nearly empty.
Nearly.
Thirty Bloodrayne fighters, in human form, stood facing the intruders.
They were gathered at the innermost part of the hall, standing before the large, bare high table, watching as the intruders made their way in.
In front of the fighters was a group of at least forty shifters.
The numbers were made up of Bloodrayne omegas, Bloodrayne prisoners, and injured wolves dragged there from the intruders’ own numbers, all also in human form.
The Lightmoon fighters and their allies approached warily. Wolf limbs and muscles roiling. Blood in teeth, on bodies, on claws.
The Bloodrayne fighters would have been an impressive sight, but the implication of the weak and injured gathered in the hall dulled any awestruck sensations from those who beheld the group of tall, large, muscled, tattooed shifters.
“Cowards!” Brock yelled out once his group was within twenty feet of the living barricade.
“What? NOW you want to talk?” Alpha Tobias sneered.
“There are no words for you!” Another shifter on the Lightmoon side called out.
“I don’t have time for messengers. Where is your Alpha? Send him to me!” Tobias replied condescendingly.
“You dare make demands?” Brock snapped.
Two of the forty died.
Omegas.
Controlled by their Alpha.
Their hearts had simply stopped.
Two new ones were pulled from a hidden corner by one of the thirty fighters and thrown into the barricade, replacing the fallen wolves.
A wave of low growls spread among the allied wolves. The intruders shifted on their paws, wolf eyes narrowing.
“You kill your own people?” Brock called out incredulously.
“Don’t trouble yourself, messenger. Your people will follow soon. Send your Alpha!” Tobias replied nonchalantly.
Dinka had been pacing before the gathered shifter barrier, her gold gaze on Tobias’ steady blue one.
“He looks like Dax,” Dinka spat.
“Hmmm,” Marian agreed as her mind worked.
The Bloodrayne Alpha gave off serious Dax vibes. Cold, calculating, vicious. All traits Marian was very familiar with.
Even his eyes were almost the same blue as Dax’s.
Almost.
“Shall we show him who we are?” Dinka growled.
“Yes…I think we should. I’m tired of all this. I want to go home. I want to go home now!” Marian replied firmly.
“Dax is on his way,” Dinka replied.
“It will take him at least half an hour to get here. It took us too long to break through their murderous horde. Do you think these people will survive thirty minutes of taunts between this animal and Brock?” Marian stated evenly.
Once the Lightmoon allied force had entered Bloodrayne’s grounds, the very moment they had crossed the stone line, Marian had known something was wrong.
She had been watching Jackson, ‘seeing’ through his eyes, as she had run forward to carry out her duty.
She had just jumped over a twenty-foot wall when a silence fell on her connection with Jackson. Like it had been cut by a sharp knife.
Marian was not certain whether that had been because of the magics around Bloodrayne or something else.
But since then, she had been unable to link with anyone outside of a few feet.
The allied force had all discovered this during the first few minutes of their incursion.
Even their rune communicators were not working properly.
Marian knew where Dax would be by projecting his progress from the last time she had seen him through Jackson’s eyes.
Given Dax’s speed, what she remembered of it, the Lightmoon Alpha would need at least an hour to get to Bloodrayne from where Reyland and the others had been attacked.
Thirty minutes.
That’s the best-case scenario.
We just need to keep him here.
Marian mused.
“Agreed. Let’s show them,” Dinka growled, baring her teeth.
A deep growl started in Dinka’s chest.
The sound vibrated in every chest of every shifter in the room.
The omegas in the shield group started to scream. Grabbing their ears and rolling on the floor.
Tobias’ eyes shifted to them, and his jaw clenched.
His other warriors shifted on their feet. Feeling pain in their heads, but holding strong against it, all eyes on the large, pacing wolf.
Tobias’ eyes narrowed at the wailing mass, then his head snapped back to wolf with golden eyes. His teeth showing in a twisted smile.
“He just tried to kill more,” Dinka scoffed to Marian in their mind space.
“Ha!” Marian jeered, “Nothing psychic from him will get through!”
Marian linked with Brock.
“Kill him,” she said to him, her voice steady.
It was not a request, not a conversation.
It was an order.
Brock and the others moved as Dinka held her place, growling, blocking any and all of Tobias’ commands with her ongoing muted form of an Alpha Cry.
It was not that Marian had taken over as the leader of the raid; it was simply how wolves behaved.
The strongest, especially on the battlefield, always held sway over the others.
No wolf on the field was stronger than Dinka.
None were larger.
None were faster.
They had all seen her work.
Brock had not ‘obeyed’; he was too proud for that.
But he was a wolf, and a warrior.
He wanted the Bloodrayne Alpha dead, as much as any in their group.
The plan was to hold him off until Alphas of equal strength arrived.
However, with what Marian, what Dinka, had done so far, Brock was more than willing to make a move on the Bloodrayne Alpha himself.
And if the most powerful wolf in all of Lightmoon wanted the same thing, he would oblige.
After all, if she failed, that would still fall into his Alpha’s plan.
Such were Brock’s thoughts as he jumped over the living barricade.
Others around him either did the same or sprinted around the forty shifters.
Without a breath between them, all thirty Bloodrayne wolves, their Alpha included, shifted.
As each side lunged, the shifter barrier scattered.
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It was a free-for-all melee.
Only the Lightmoon team and their allies appeared to have a plan.
Dinka kept rumbling as the weak and injured ran out of the pack hall.