Once Bitten (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #1)(87)

I whimpered softly to let her know I was alright, not wound up enough to attack. With a gentle hand against the side of my face, she turned my head away from my body so that I couldn’t see them picking the glass out of me.

A fresh commotion erupted inside. The unmistakable sound of bodies colliding carried through the broken door.

“I’m going to watch the light fade from your eyes as I drain every last drop from you, wolf.” Arys’s voice shook with a menace that I’d never heard from him before. “If Alexa’s hurt, consider yourself a walking dead man, Raoul.” Another series of smacks and bangs were followed by a grunt of pain.

Please God, I thought. Just let this end.

I yelped when Jez withdrew the largest shard from my side. Shaz came to hold my muzzle lightly in his hands. One finger stroked the side of my nose. When she pressed a piece of his torn shirt to my side, I whimpered and tried to pull away.

“It’s ok, Lex,” he whispered, but his voice betrayed the worry that he tried to hide. The stink of fear on him tantalized my senses as it chilled me to the core. “Just hang in there.”

The sound of more glass crunching reached me as Raoul stumbled through the hole where his patio door had been. His eyes went to Zoey, and he fell to his knees beside her, unaware of the glass digging into his legs.

With the faintest twitch of her tail, I knew Zoey wasn’t dead. I watched Raoul bend down to bury his face in her silky fur, and I held my breath in anticipation.

Arys appeared in the shattered doorway. His shoulders sagged when he saw me. “My beautiful wolf…”

He never moved closer. He merely stared at me with a sadness that looked so wrong in his blue eyes. With my face in Shaz’s hands, I could only look up at my dark vampire as the pain began to set in on a deeper level.

“I think that’s all of it,” Jez said, tossing a chunk of glass aside. “You have some nasty cuts, Lex. You need stitches.”

Hell no, I thought. I don’t do needles.

I took a tentative step, and the pain slashed through me. I think I had a broken rib or two. My leg was numb, and fatigue was setting in from the blood loss.

I sensed Zoey’s movement before she even twitched a muscle. I made as if to lunge, but I wasn’t close enough.

She opened her eyes and leaned into Raoul’s exposed throat with fangs bared. My eyes widened in horror and disbelief. Blood, warm and lupine spattered my face as I cleared most of the glass debris in a jump.

I stopped short of an attack when I saw clearly that all four of her fangs were buried to the gum, a gruesome, mortal wound. He’d bleed out in a matter of minutes at best.

Raoul stared at me as the blood gurgled in his windpipe. I recognized the challenge in those coal black eyes even as the light ebbed out of them. He was willing to fight me away from his daughter even as she killed him.

My heart constricted with emotion and blood loss. I took a respectful step back as guilt washed through me. I’d known she wasn’t dead.

‘No, my love,’ Arys’s honey sweet voice came from the shadows of my mind. ‘He chose this death. He doesn’t even struggle.’

Arys was right. Raoul clung to that stupid wolf as if he were a boy and his dog, stroking her black fur, so like his own.

I whimpered and growled, unable to watch this without being able to act. A key player in my life, no matter how positive or negative, was dying before my eyes. I couldn’t do this. Zoey had to die.

“Alexa, don’t.” Shaz’s command was softly spoken but a command nonetheless.

Shaz stood behind me as if he’d grab my tail to hold me back. I didn’t give that wolf enough credit for how well he knew me. “It’s not your fight anymore. It’s over now.”

How could it be over? The bitch was lying in a pool of blood and still wasn’t dead. In seconds, Raoul’s body went limp, his hands relaxed in Zoey’s fur.

My continuous growl became a snarl when she struggled to her feet, leaving Raoul face down in the broken glass. She stank of blood and death. My every instinct demanded that I finish her off.

“She’s not going to make it far,” Jez came to stand next to me, and I longed for my human voice. “Let her go.”

Were they all completely mad? This was insanity. I looked to Arys for support but he gave no indication as to what he thought was best.

‘I can’t let her walk off this property alive,’ I conveyed.

‘That’s your decision to make, but she’ll be dead before she reaches the edge of town.’

I couldn’t stop the snarling and snapping at the air. I was infused with this hate that filled me to capacity. My very nature demanded that I kill her after everything she’d done.

Zoey met my eyes with a look of clear understanding. She was running on borrowed time, and she knew it. Even if she survived the coming day, I would come for her.

Her muzzle was matted with Raoul’s blood. One leg dragged awkwardly behind her, and she was a mass of cuts. The few steps down to the grass below the deck proved to be an obstacle, and she stumbled a few times while looking back at us, expecting an attack.

The battle between wolf and human raged inside me as it had so many times before. I wrestled with conflicting urges and emotions. I hated myself when she disappeared from sight.

I padded up beside Raoul, and with my muzzle in his hair, I sniffed for any sign of life. Nothing. I felt physically ill. Something broke inside of me, deep down, in a place that I hadn’t acknowledged in so long.