It didn’t take long for Rider to come into view. He was about a quarter of a mile ahead of her, in between some trees, just stepping out of a clearing.Of course, he would be hiding from the battle, Mercy thought.He stepped out into the field. The fog curled around him, just as it had in her dreams. He was in his human form, just as she was, and for once, Mercy wished she hadn’t forced herself to wake up before the dreams had ended.At least then maybe she’d have some idea what was about to happen.Rider wasn’t alone.It took Mercy a few seconds to realize that there was another person following him, but when her eyes locked on the blonde woman behind him, a rush of memories came back to her, and she suddenly realized she knew exactly who she was.She looked so much like Mercy, even from a distance, she could tell that they resembled one another. It was almost like she was looking in a mirror. Except she was shorter and a couple of years younger.She was wearing a flowing gown, the s
Mercy had a choice to make. She could either chase Rider down and destroy him, or she could stay there with her sister who had collapsed on the ground but could get up at any moment and begin to wreak havoc on the sleeping wolves that Mercy had immobilized earlier.She couldn’t leave the wolves unprotected, but she also couldn’t let Rider get away.With no other choice, Mercy hit her sister with a jarring bolt of energy, one that was sure to keep her from getting up for quite some time. She hated to hurt her own flesh and blood, especially since she was quite certain that her sister was misdirected in the decision she had made, but she had little choice because she couldn’t take the risk of Leeta getting up and hurting someone.Then, Mercy took off after Rider.She wasn’t going to catch him by running after him, though. He was a male, for one thing, so he was naturally faster than her. Also, he was an Alpha, so he was stronger, more muscular, bigger than she could ever hope to be. No,
“Put him down, Leeta,” Mercy demanded. “Unless you want your husband to explode all over the place. Put that wolf down.”“That wolf?” Leeta repeated. “Isn’t this your husband? The Alpha?”“No,” Mercy lied, hoping she’d buy it. “You’ve got the wrong one. That’s just an Omega.” August didn’t even look like a random Omega, but her sister wasn’t the brightest, perhaps she’d fall for it.“Don’t listen to her, honey,” Rider shouted. “That’s Alpha August.“Says the man who left you and ran away only a few minutes ago. I could’ve just killed him in the forest, but I didn’t,” Mercy reminded her sister.“Why didn’t you?” Leeta asked. “Why didn’t you just kill him while you could?”“Because they call me Mercy now,” she explained. “I want to live up to my new name. I wanted to give my husband the opportunity to spare yours.”Leeta pressed the knife so that a drop of blood appeared on August’s neck.“Don’t!” Mercy yelled. “If you kill him, you know I’ll kill Rider.”“Then let him go, and I’ll let
“Mercy, hurry up!” August shouted up the stairs. “We’re going to be late!”“We can’t be late,” Mercy shouted back to him. “They can’t start without us. You’re the Alpha.”“Well, we’re supposed to be there in fifteen minutes, and it’ll take at least ten to get to the chapel.”“I’m coming,” Mercy said, sliding an earring into her ear and looking at herself one more time in the mirror. What her husband failed to realize was that she not only had to get herself ready, she also had to get the baby ready, and that took some time.She looked good in a nice red dress and silver dangly earrings. She wore a pendant around her neck that had a picture of August in one half and her daughter in the other. Her hair was up in a clip, and her knee length red dress was tight at the top but flowy at the bottom. Her red heels were not so high that she couldn’t walk in them easily.She hurried down the stairs to see August standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding their daughter, Abigail, in his arms.
Pain. All she could feel was pain--immeasurable, all-consuming pain that radiated all through her body, from the tips of her fingers and toes to the top of her head. As much as she wanted to go on, to continue, there was nothing more she could do. Having already fallen to the ground, in utter exhaustion, she found her will was not enough to lift her agonizing body up off of the leaf covered forest floor. Her eyes wouldn’t even open, so how in the world could she possibly manage to get her disagreeable limbs to push up from her prone position and continue on her way. No, she wasn’t going anywhere.As she lay there, darkness overcoming her, the wind stirring what was left of her cropped, dark hair, the idea that she couldn’t quite recall what she was running from came to mind. All she could remember was that she was afraid, deathly afraid, and having seen an opportunity to run, she’d done exactly that. Now, having fallen more times than she could count, striking her head on a tree trunk
“Quickly, carry her in here!”August Reeves heard a commotion outside of his office as he sat behind his desk, looking over a treaty a neighboring pack had sent to him a few days ago. They wanted hunting rights on a hundred acres of his northern territory, in exchange for no longer disputing a border they’d been contentious about for centuries, something he was considering granting them, but when he heard the chaos going on outside of his office, he was lured outside, leaving the papers behind.A band of his Omegas were walking by, quickly, carrying what appeared to be the body of a small, unconscious woman with them. His mother, the pack healer and acting Luna, Isabella, was motioning for them to hurry and get the woman to the clinic. Though his pack, Rising Moon, held over six hundred members, August was almost positive he’d never seen this woman before, even though he couldn’t see her face from the angle she was being carried.He hurried along behind them, almost forgetting to clos
August stepped outside with his three Omegas and his Beta, Beaux, so that they could tell him more about what had happened. He did his best to listen, but his mind kept going back to the woman inside of the Health Center. She looked so frail, so weak. His mother was a talented healer, and if anyone could find a way to help the girl, it was Isabella, but she was so broken, as his mother had said, she just might neve wake up.“She was just lying there, you know?” Grant was saying. “So still. I thought she was dead.”“She wasn’t moving at all,” Sidney reiterated. “It was frightening.”“We had to shift to get her back here,” Ronnie continued. “We found some clothes in a narrowed out hollow tree and shifted so we could carry her back. If she’d been even a little bit conscious, we might’ve been able to get her on one of our backs, but we were afraid she’d fall off.”August nodded. All of that made sense. “Why don’t you guys show me where you found her?” he suggested.“Sure. We need to get b
August was torn. Part of him wanted to immediately run straight to Black Hole Pack’s Alpha and ask him what he knew about the woman, but he remembered what Sidney had said in the Healing Center and thought that probably wasn’t the best idea. The other part of him wanted to sprint back to the Healing Center and check on the woman. He had to make sure that she was still alive. Even though he’d just gotten a glimpse of her tiny frame, something about her was intriguing in a way he’d never experienced before. Seeing all that she’d been through, how far she’d run, how much blood she’d spilled, all to get away from something so awful she was willing to run into the unknown to flee it, had his heart pounding out of his chest as he made his way back to the village, wanting to see how she was doing.The other three wolves went on their way to finish their patrol, and August came back into town by himself, letting Beaux know he was back so that his Beta could go on about his business. Only stop