Chapter 10: The Aftermath

I can't turn, and I have no idea why. I'm as weak and powerless as Juan said I was. Because of me, Colton will perish tonight, too. He'll feel this pain; he'll know I'm suffering, and as soon as my heart stops, his will, too. I failed to keep my mate safe by failing to save myself, and I don't deserve his love or his bond.

I'm sorry, my love. You were right. I'm no warrior.

I doubt he'll even hear me, as along with my ability to turn, my mind-link is silent and has been since I lost him upstairs. I close my eyes, trying hard to connect to him, to feel him inside my head one last time, but there is only deathly silence in the recesses of my brain as fingers encircle my throat, and I wait for the inevitable squeeze to end it all.

My blurry vision focuses in front of me, straining across the lawn in a last-ditch attempt to see the world I'm leaving behind. As he begins to choke the air out of my body—slowly, enjoying the power, savoring it, smug about my lack of fight because I have nothing left—I realize how truly sick he is.

My eyes settle on the chaos laid before me, and my heart implodes with what I see; the devastation is too much for me to really compute. Tears roll down my face as sadness numbs out everything else. A quiet peace fills my senses as shock and reality hit, shielding me from the horror of what I'm witnessing.

There are bodies everywhere. The unwanteds, the guardians, side by side, with no care as to whether one was important or not. There's blood, debris, and the lifeless souls of my reject pack, strewn wherever the eye strays. Headless, maimed. Some torn to pieces, some just bleeding out from wounds across their throats and already dead. Dark fluid taints it all; blood in the shadows stains everything as far as I can see. Chaos is everywhere. It's a massacre we never saw coming, and they hit the weakest in our kingdom, the ones who had no defenses. Most of us were just children or teenagers, and we never stood a chance.

This is it for us. My story is finally over.

I close my eyes and accept fate, choking slowly, no longer panic-stricken but accepting, as blood sours my sense of taste. I gag and fumble at the grass beneath my palms, hot and sticky with my own life essence. I am struggling to breathe, my heart giving in, unable to fight while my body is broken and shattered. I am paused and waiting for the final snap to end this agony and suffering.

The sudden wrenching of the hands around my neck makes me spasm in response, so in tune with the final blow, but instead of a release from this plane to the next, I'm set free. I'm dropped hastily so my face collides with the damp, stinking grass, and the taste of my own blood is rammed backward as I inhale it forcefully. My throat is released, and the flash of air that whooshes by me turns my gaze to follow impulsively, weakly tracking the path of whatever just flew by me.

A black flash of snarling fur, a huge beast in utter rage, takes down the form of the man that held me captive, and I can tell it's Colton as his scent follows on the wind. That instant inner completion only his presence can bring me returns, and a tiny ounce of my heart is restored. I slump my head down on my cheek to watch him, as I can't do much else.

Colton scurries over to me and hauls me into his arms without hesitation, the relief evident on his face as he yanks me close to his chest. He wraps me up, smoothing his hands over my naked body to check for any sign of unhealed marks. There are none. Wolf healing is incomparable and almost always fully effective. There are only a few things in this world that wolves can't heal from, and none are present tonight. He tugs my face to his throat and hugs me with less panic in his touch, exhaling heavily as he allows himself a moment of relief that warms me to my core and brings me some calm.

“The pack has them in retreat. I need to get you to safety and follow them. There are survivors, and we have to stop them before we lose them.” He nuzzles his face against my hair before shifting me, making it clear we can't stay here. He helps me up, pulling me to my feet, and leads me bodily—keeping me close—to one of the abandoned trucks that are scattered on every street surrounding the school. I recognize them as belonging to the Santo family. They must have flooded in from every part of the mountain at a moment's notice.

"How did you know to come?” I ask weakly as he slides me into the nearest vehicle, pulling a blanket from the rear and draping it over my naked body as I begin to shiver insanely. I may be healed, but my body and mind are going into shock from all that has just taken place, and I suddenly feel as though I'm in some sort of a dream. I am fully aware that him taking control is a necessity, as I don't have the presence of mind to do anything for myself.

“Your link was broken, and I couldn't reach you. I knew something was wrong. I could feel your confusion, and then your fear. Your pain almost ended me, and I didn't think I would get here in time... They did something to the house. As soon as I got near it, my wolf form struggled to stay. There's some sort of noise or frequency around it. It stops us. I could feel it in the garden, but I couldn't hear it.” He closes my door, jumping into the front of the truck and scrambling around for keys, finding them still in the ignition, thankfully. He wastes no time in putting it in gear, reversing at a screeching speed as though we're in pursuit of something, and hauls us toward the south road out of this part of the mountain valley, getting me away from here even if the threat is being chased off in the other direction.

"Where are we going? Why aren't you saving anyone else? There are more of us; it's not only me in that home! You can't leave them behind!” I sit up, panic-stricken. Sudden concern for the others left behind hits me in the chest like a freight train as my tears return with a passion, and I half-sob, half-choke the words out. My reject pack is back there; they're the only family I know, whether I liked them or not, and there are so many innocents among them.

Colton catches my eyes in the rear-view mirror and looks away quickly. A sadness hits me right in the heart as his emotion silences me with a swift shunt to my stomach. I immediately know the pain and sorrow in what he doesn’t say. He avoids my eye as I stare at the back of his head, feeling him, reading him as he overcomes my own senses, tasting his hesitation and sorrow.

“There is no one else, is there?” I state blankly, numb shock weaving through me and hitting me with the gravity of this situation. The weight of reality settles on my shoulders to drag me back down to a numb calm. He's in constant link with his pack; they would know about survivors, and I'm guessing the fact they're chasing down the vampires who ran—and no one but Colton is shepherding one of us away—means they already checked.

He shakes his head, unable to look at me, and I catch his furrowed brow and the gleam of moisture glazing his eyes in the mirror over his head. He shifts up a gear, pushing the truck to dangerous speeds as we head out of the valley and up onto the main road that takes us around the perimeter and out to the south.

"We weren't fast enough... I almost didn’t get to you in time. We just weren't ready for something like this. I wasted time assembling the pack, when I knew you needed me.” He sounds almost ashamed, but without the pack, he wouldn't have been able to fight all of them himself and save me at all. They would have taken him down, too, as soon as he lost his wolf form in the gardens.

“All of them... the unwanteds... the guardians. They're all gone.” It's not really a question but more of a dazed reaction as my mind pushes me into shock at what's happened, verbalizing the truth. I slump down across the back seat as silent tears begin to fall down my face, diagonally across my cheek like sobering, cold smears, and soak the cold leather of the truck.

“I'm sorry, Lorey. I know they were all you had. We never knew this was coming.” Colton's voice is shaky and low. Shame and regret taint his normally sexy huskiness. We share the agony, but it doesn't lighten the load; my insides twist in cruel heartache as it sinks in fully.

In the blink of an eye...... they're all gone. Just like ten years ago.

The sad thing was, until this moment, I hadn't thought they were what I had at all. We were never a pack or a family in my mind before, but now, those others—they matter more than I ever gave them credit for. Even Vanka, my roommate of ten lonely years; I would give anything right now to have her get in this truck and blow smoke in my face.

My heart crashes inside my chest as the most painful, debilitating heaviness hits me hard, and I let out a mournful sob that turns to a howl as my body turns without my trying. I lie on the back seat, breaking inside all over again. My body is reverting to my wolf form in a bid to heal me from the agony my heart is in—a defense mechanism, because my instincts think I'm dying all over again. How ironic.

The most heart-wrenching howl I've ever heard leaves my own body, fills my ears, and echoes into the eeriest silence of the dark world around us.

First my blood family, then my pack, and now my unwanteds.

Is there nowhere to run where fate won't deliver me the worst kind of blow and take everyone from me?