Page 170 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
“Not bad for a bitch,” he sent to me.
Hearing his voice in my brain, this close to me, made my skin crawl. “Don’t you fucking speak to me, traitor!”
We bit Evan on the shoulder and threw him into the cave wall. He yelped, but recovered quickly. He took hold of my back, throwing me into another spot of the cave wall. We shook our head and jumped at him again. Fur and blood flew in every direction. While my wolf fought, I tried to keep our mind off Night and the fact that he was bleeding out on the other side of the cave. I tried to force the fear of his death from my brain.
Despite how focused I tried to keep us through the fight, Evan got in a few lucky shots. He kicked us off him. As we hopped to our feet he slammed into us, and our right side hit a particularly jagged and craggy section of the cave wall. We crumbled to the floor, vision swimming. We tried to get up, but pain seared across our side, and we couldn’t keep our balance.
Evan gave a panting, barking laugh. He turned to Night, and we knew he was going in for the kill. We shook our head, hoping to regain some stability in our vision, and when we opened our eyes, we saw Evan towering over Night. His fangs were out, and a stream of saliva poured from the sharpest ones onto the floor.
The seconds slowed to a trickle. I summoned all the energy I had left to force myself to my feet, and then I started to move before Ifully realized what I was doing. Between one blink and the next, I found myself across the room, with Evan’s throat between my teeth. Before I could stop myself, my jaws closed, and I felt his neck snap from the force of my bite.
Evan’s body hit the floor, and I stared at it in horror. There was no mistaking that he was dead or that I had been the one to kill him. My mind raced, spiraling down and down again in a horrible loop of reliving that snapping moment. The sound of Night’s pained groan forced me out of it.
He had already passed out, and there was so. Much. Blood. More than I would have thought he’d be able to hold. I threw back my head and gave a couple more piercing howls for help. Then I scanned the cave for anything I could use to slow the bleeding. All I found were Evan’s clothes. I limped over to them, my entire body aching, and then limped back. Shifting to my human form, I fell to my hands and knees next to Night and shoved the cloth into the wound. Night didn’t stir.
“Night, come on.” I slapped his cheeks, but he said nothing. I pressed my ear to his chest and heard a heartbeat, but it was so faint, fluttering like the wings of a dying bird. I straightened, my body going cold.
“P-please, Night, don’t go. You can’t. We have so much that we have to do together. We have our lives to live. We…we…” Tears blurred my vision. “You said you’d always come back to me,” I cried. “So you better come back to me now. If you don’t…if-if you don’t, I’ll never forgive you!”
“Bryn? Night?”Dom’s voice sounded from the opposite entrance to the cave than the one we entered.
“Dominic! In here!” I called back. “Night’s hurt! He’s not responding!”
A group of Wargs sprinted inside. The moment Dom saw me, he shifted to his human form and jogged to my side. He helped me apply pressure to Night’s wound when he saw how badly I was shaking. With a quick glance around, he took in the bodies of the feral wolves, the gun, and the brassy-blond wolf lying dead near me.
“Bryn, what happened?”
“Evan betrayed us,” I said. “He tried to kill Night, so I k-ki—” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t give voice to the horrible thing I’d done to save my mate. “He’s dead now, but Samson and Harlon are gone. They went out the way you came in.”
Dom cursed under his breath. More wolves flooded into the cave and started to move Night out of there. They would want to get him to the infirmary as quickly as fucking possible. In the meantime, another wolf brought me a blanket to drape over my shoulders, and Dom helped me to my feet.
As soon as we reached the Alpha cabin, Dom and Vince laid Night across the bed and I made a beeline for the closet. I pulled on the thickest robe I could find and wrapped myself tightly in it. As I tied the sash closed, I turned to see how I could help. The clothes I’d used to staunch the blood were soaked through.
I threw open the dresser drawers until I found t-shirts. I grabbed them in handfuls and gave them to Dom. He looked thankful as I took them.
“Vince, get Doc,” he said.
“R-right. I’ll bring him right back.” Vince shifted back into his wolf form and dashed down the stairs.
“Dom,” I began, my voice hoarse, “how is he?”
“I can’t tell,” Dom said. He had switched out the bloody scraps of clothes for linens. “I’ve never seen an injury like this. And this blood, I don’t know why his wound isn’t closing.”
Fear was an ice pick stabbing repeatedly into my chest as I looked at Night. His breathing was shallow and raspy, his face waxy with perspiration. The sight of my strong, handsome mate so weak and in so much pain shook me more than the entire rest of the night had. A normal bullet shouldn’t have been able to do this to him. Had it hit something vital? Was it killing him?
For a second, my mind returned to that moment in the cave, when I had my jaws locked around Evan’s neck and the taste of blood in my mouth. I tried to shake myself out of it. I needed to be here for my mate.
Dr. Stan arrived seconds later. There were bags under his eyes, and he looked about as pale as the night’s patients, but he wasted no time getting to his Alpha. I stood at the foot of the bed and watched him crouch at Night’s side. He took a quick whiff of the wound, and his lips pulled away from his teeth.
“Get me a boning or paring knife,” he said to the room. “Now.”
He hadn’t specified who, but after the cooking I’d done in that huge kitchen, I was the one who would be the most efficient at grabbing it. I dashed down the stairs, slipping a little on unsteady legs as I made my way to the kitchen. When I returned, Night’s face was contorted with pain. His hands gripped the sheets of the bed, smearing them with blood.
“Please, Bryn,” Dr. Stan said, “the knife.” He held out his hand for it.
I snapped out of my shock. With a trembling hand, I gave him the knife. He pushed Night onto his side, exposing his back. With a deft move, the doctor shoved the knife into Night’s back. Night jerked, his eyes snapping open.
“Hold him!” Dr. Stan snapped.
