Black spots burst like fireworks behind my eyes. My legs kicked, scrabbling for leverage. The world narrowed to the pulse in my ears and the pipe in my hand.
With every ounce of strength I had left, I swung.
The pipe connected with a sickeningcrack, the sound sharp and final. His body jerked once, then slumped over me, dead weight pinning me to the ground. I heaved him off, my chest heaving, air sawing painfully in and out as I staggered upright.
No time to breathe.
Another alpha lunged, his face a mask of fury. Jaw clenched so tight the muscles jumped beneath his skin, nostrils flared like a charging bull. His eyes burned, not with heat but with cold, merciless wrath, fixed on me like I was prey already bleeding out. A snarl peeled back his lips, exposing teeth as he surged forward.
Before I could raise the pipe, his fist slammed into my ribs.
Pain detonated inside me, white-hot and blinding. I folded inward with a strangled gasp, the world tilting sideways. My knees buckled, but despite that, I didn’t let go. The pipe stayed locked in my grasp like it was part of me now. Like it was the only thing tethering me to this world.
The alpha’s grip crushed down on my arm, his nails digging through torn skin, dragging me back into the nightmare. I thrashed, but his snarl drowned everything, until another sound sliced through the chaos like a blade.
A growl.
Low. Vicious. Familiar.
It rolled over the roar of the attackers. It was a sound that didn’t belong to a monster, but to something far more dangerous.
My heart seized.
Above us, where the moonlight barely reached, a figure appeared at the top of the embankment. Blake. My Blake.
He had come. He had found me.
Relief crashed through me with staggering intensity, so acute it bordered on painful. A broken sound that was half sob, half laugh burst from my raw throat as I stared up at him, hardly daring to believe my own eyes. But it was him. My Alpha. My savior.
His shoulders were hunched, every line of his body taut with violence. Darkness clung to him like armor, but his eyes, those furious, gleaming eyes, cut through the dark and found mine. For a heartbeat, the world fell away. No attackers. No blood. Just a searing pull between us.
Rage twisted across his face, raw and unfiltered. His upper lip curled back in a silent snarl, exposing teeth clenched so tight his jaw ticked. Nostrils flared, chest heaving, and then I felt it, like a pulse in my spine, the bond flaring to life. His fury was mine. His hunger to destroy every hand that had touched me became the beat in my chest.
The alpha holding me faltered.
Because Blake wasn’t coming to fight.
He was coming tokill.
The alpha’s hand on me trembled. Just for a second, but it was enough.
Blake moved.
"Mine," he snarled, the single word a declaration of war. A promise of retribution.
Not a charge. Not a shout. Just sudden, merciless velocity as he tore down the slope like a force of nature. Gravel and dirtsprayed under his boots. His eyes never left mine, even as two snarling alphas lunged to intercept him.
Big mistake.
Blake met them mid-stride with a brutal, bone-snapping collision. The crack of impact echoed louder than his screams. He didn’t slow. He didn’t stop. His fist drove into the alpha’s throat with precision and fury, collapsing the bastard with a wet gurgle.
Another one lunged from the side. Blake caught him midair.
His roar split the night as he slammed the alpha into the concrete so hard the ground shuddered. There was nothing clean about it. This wasn’t strategic it was slaughter. Blake moved like a storm made flesh, his hands became soaked in blood within seconds, his face twisted into something almost unrecognizable, feral, enraged, protective.
Through it all, Blake remained a force of nature. He absorbed blows that would have felled a lesser man. Blood speckled his face, his knuckles, but he never slowed. Never faltered. He put himself between me and danger again and again, his big body shielding me, his unleashed savagery keeping the worst of the violence at bay.
In a brief lull, he shrugged off his coat and flung it toward me without ever taking his eyes off our attackers. "Hide!" he commanded, his voice raw and gravelly with exertion and emotion. "Stay back!"