Chapter 5

RAPHAEL

I turned to one of my men and asked if they had found out anything about what had gone down with her in that forest. He shook his head slowly. A long breath left me.

"Get out of my sight. And before you do, dig into everything there is to know about her. I want to know how she ended up in that forest and who gave the order to have her killed." I said sternl, without looking away from the woman lying broken and still on that hospital bed.

My mother had pushed me past my limit again that evening.

The same argument that never went anywhere. She wanted me to pick a chosen mate. She said the moon goddess had not given me one and the pack could not keep waiting.

I had sat through every word of it and walked out the moment she was done because there was nothing left for me to say that I had not already said a hundred times before.

The forest was where I always went when the walls started closing in. Shifting and hunting was the only thing that had ever been able to reach into the noise inside my head and pull it out by the root.

After that conversation with my mother I needed it more than I usually did. I shifted and I ran and I let the trees swallow everything up around me.

Her scent found me before I found her.

It stopped me where I stood.It was so deep and immediate that my whole body responded to it before my mind could even catch up with what was happening.

My mate. She was somewhere close. Much closer than I had expected. And beneath that scent was something else threading through it, her fear, it was alive and urgent and it was pressing into me through the bond that had not even fully formed yet.

I tore through the trees in the direction the scent was pulling me, feeling the bond tighten with every step, her breathing reaching me through it like I had always been meant to hear. It was ragged and desperate and coming apart at the edges.

What I saw when I broke through the trees made my blood go cold and then immediately hot.

A man had her. He was throwing her into a tree and she hit it and crumpled and he was already moving over her again even as she lay there barely able to lift her head.

His mouth was going and his hands were reaching and he had not even slowed down.

My wolf lunged inside me with so much force that I took everything I had to hold him back long enough to stay upright.

Nobody comes into my territory and touches what belongs to me. Not a stranger.

Definitely,not someone who woke up this morning thinking they could walk into my land and put their hands on my mate and walk back out again.

"How dare you come into my territory and lay your hands on what is mine." I let the horror words leave my mouth as I moved through every one of them like a current.

The man who had been standing over her went down to the floor in a second , both hands pressed together in front of him with my whole body trembling.

"We had no intention of crossing your border. It was not planned. Please forgive us." He could barely hold the words together. He was shaking so hard.

His people dropped behind him doing the same thing.

"Damn it." I growled low, my eyes moving to her on the ground, taking in the state of her, the fear still sitting on her face even now as she looked up at me.

I had thought about making it slow. The sight of her down there took that thought away from me.

"Give my regards to whoever is waiting for you when you get there. And when you come back in your next life keep your hands off women." I sent them down one after the other after my last word and I did not stop until every one of them was flat on the ground and the only sound left in that forest was her breathing.

I growled at what they had done. At the state they had reduced her to.

She was completely powerless on that ground, her body barely holding on, and then I watched her lips part and what came out of them reached into something inside me that I had not known was there.

"Mate." It was barely a whisper. I said it back at the same moment and she closed her eyes and everything in her went still.

The panic that hit me was immediate,it's causes shivers to run down my spine as I went down beside her and got her into my arms and I came out of that forest running like I had never run in my life.

I couldn't believe what was happening, I finally found my mate after a long time and she was in a critical condition.

I had spent so long waiting.

And now she was in my arms and she was leaving at the same time and the idea of losing her before I could even get to keep her was something I couldn't handle .

Definitely not when , my pack depends on this .

“Daniel" I called his name through the mindlink with everything I had.

"Alpha, something is wrong, your breathing is all over the place, what has happened?" He responded immediately, already catching the state I was in.

"Have the hospital ready before I get there. Emergency patient coming in right now. Every piece of equipment you have, get it out." I used my alpha tone and he cut the link and moved.

I ran until the hospital came into view and Daniel came rushing out through the doors and lifted her from my arms and had her on the bed before I had fully stopped moving.

The look on his face when he saw her was not one that settled anything in me. He worked fast, syringes going in, wounds being cleaned, moving through her injuries with a speed and focus that told me everything about how serious it was without him opening his mouth once.

I was in a state of confusion,when my eyes found the wound on her lower abdomen.

It was deep and it was still bleeding and my wolf made a sound inside me that I never want to hear again.

Daniel stepped back when he was done and she lay there against the bed with old tears dried on her face and fresh ones finding their way out from beneath her closed eyes even while she slept.

"My baby. Give me my pup. I gave birth to him." These words broke out of her in pieces, it came from somewhere so deep inside her that I couldn't help, but wonder what she must have gone through to be in this state and what happened to her.

"My alpha, whatever she has been through has left her subconscious in a state of deep pain and hurts. The fear and the pain she is carrying are going to stay with her for a long time." Daniel spoke, carefully and I felt my heart drop inside my chest when he said these words.

"Is she going to pull through this?"I asked , as I tried to surge in my anger while glaring sympathetically at her.

"She will be fine provided the environment around her does not pile onto what she is already dealing with." Daniel gave me one last look and walked out.

I stayed and watched her wrestle with whatever was happening inside her own head and I felt every second of it myself.

****

I could not stop moving.

I paced through my study room with the anger in me refusing to settle no matter how many times I walked the same stretch of floor.

The questions kept turning over.

Who were those people? How did they end up in my forest? What had already been done to her before she ever reached my border and who the fuck gave an order hurt her?

That wound on her abdomen did not come from running through trees. It was a raw wound, and it's from a deep cut .

"We still have nothing on her. Nothing on her pack either." Damon,my beta came through the door and paused, his voice caused me to pause on my thoughts.

"They put their hands on her. They were going to take her life. Who does something like that and thinks there will be no answer for it." I rounded on him and he let out a long breath.

"She will tell you everything herself once she opens her eyes. You need to stop letting this eat you alive. She is going to come through this." He moved closer and looked at me steadily in the way that had always had an effect on me even when I did not want it to.

"There is also another thing." He paused for a moment. "The council. They are pushing for an urgent meeting. The chosen mate situation again."

"I already found her." I cut across him before he could get any further and he gave a slow nod.

"Pass the word along. There will be no chosen mate. Their Luna is already inside this pack right now and she will be presented to them when she is back on her feet."I commanded, without a single trace of remorse.

"You need to rest. You look like you have been running since you carried her in and wearing a path on this floor is not going to bring her around any sooner." He stated,choosing his words carefully.

"My mate is not dying." I turned on him the instant that word came out.

"Nobody used that word. I said rest." He did not move back. "She wakes up, we sit with her, we get every answer we need. But tearing yourself apart before any of that happens is not doing her any good."He advised, his words somehow surges deep into me .

"If you had not put every one of those men in the ground we would have our answers already." Damon said,under his breath and sighed.

"They tortured her. They were going to violate her." I held his gaze. "They got exactly what they deserved and I would do it again."

Damon kept his mouth closed after that.

Then the door opened and Daniel was standing in it and the expression on his face was not the same one he had been wearing all evening.

"My alpha." He took a breath. "She is awake.”