Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Bella's POV 

I got myself running without much thought, worried not even about who was before me but their warnings to run.

I didn’t stop to wonder why I had been told to run, nor where it was I needed to run to. All that consumed my mind in that instant was just to run—to save myself, to save my head from whoever it was lurking behind those shadows.

Sumi’s screams pierced through my mind as I did.

They didn’t just echo in my ears; they burrowed into my skull, clawing at my sanity. I kept wondering how she had died and what her last thoughts had been as she screamed like that. For surely, such a scream meant she had been in unbearable pain. It was not the kind of scream one made out of fear alone—it was the kind ripped from a soul being torn apart.

And there had been far too many rogues around for her to have defeated them.

As I ran, my feet barely touching the forest ground, my chest burning, I kept wondering why she had come to save me. Why she had chosen to sacrifice herself instead of me.

I was the one who needed to.

After all, she had done far greater good to me than I could ever count, far more than I had ever done for her. I had been the one she protected. The one she comforted. The one she stood before when the pack whispered and the elders judged.

Had the gamma’s abuse of her gotten her so worked up that she decided to end things that way?

It was no news how the gamma always beat her up or degraded her before the pack because he considered her unfit to be his mate. Sumi had always endured it. Even news of his constant philandering, of the she-wolves he paraded around without shame, had not broken her.

It was pack rules that no one ever involved themselves with another’s mate, and I had kept to myself, though I always advised her to leave.

She never did.

She was scared of starting all over again. She knew the gamma would prevent her from finding her feet without him. He would ruin her name, turn the elders against her, strip her of whatever little dignity she had left. And she didn’t want to be away from her son—she knew the gamma would fight hard to keep custody of him. Even if she were to win, she didn’t want her son to grow up without a father, worse, without a strong one in a pack where strength was survival.

She hated the idea of becoming a single mother.

And although I had always tried to explain that she needed to become one if need be in order to save her life, she had always promised that she would prefer to die rather than go through the embarrassment of being one.

Had that been the reason she sneaked out of the pack to help me escape despite knowing the risks involved?

However I thought about it, I couldn’t shake off the thoughts. They chased me as fiercely as the eyes did, gnawing at my insides.

But then at the same time, Sumi loved her son, Adams, far too much to leave him and choose death that way. She just wouldn’t abandon him, not knowing that no other woman would be able to give him the kind of maternal love she had raised him with.

He was merely six.

Far too young to be left alone without a mother.

The image of his small hands clutching her dress, of his bright laughter filling the pack grounds, flashed before me. Would he be crying now? Would he be searching for her? Or worse… would the gamma already be twisting the story?

A loud hit at my back suddenly sent me sprawling to the floor.

The air was knocked out of my lungs as I crashed against a tree, my spine slamming into the rough bark. Pain exploded through me, sharp and blinding. I writhed on the forest ground, dirt and leaves sticking to my skin, my breath coming out in broken gasps.

It was then I recalled that I had been chased by two pairs of wolf eyes.

Eyes I had almost forgotten about as I was consumed with thoughts and fears of Sumi’s survival while I ran.

I wondered why the wolf hadn’t caught up with me since, as I had been in human form and running as slowly as ever, my breaths uneven and my legs threatening to give out beneath me.

Why had he not chased after me if that was what he truly wanted to do to me?

The forest had grown eerily silent, too silent, and that silence frightened me more than the sound of paws against earth. It was as though he had chosen not to rush me. As though he was waiting.

“Stay away!” I snapped when I finally saw him stepping out from between the trees.

I stared at the wolf coming closer, his growl deep and guttural, vibrating through the air so heavily I could feel it reverberating against my skin. 

There was a huge difference between the wolves owned by werewolves and those owned by lycans, and it was painfully obvious that he was a lycan. His eyes were larger, sharper, more intelligent. His movements were not rushed but calculated. The speed with which he had approached me earlier, his size, the sheer dominance that rolled off him—everything about him screamed power.

“Stay away from me! I did nothing to you,” I managed to mutter as I sank back onto the forest floor, my hands trembling against the damp soil.

“I asked you to run, Bella Popovski!” he snarled again, his voice no longer just a growl but words—clear, furious, commanding—as he kept approaching where I stood frozen.

The sound of my name from his lips made my heart slam violently against my ribs.

I picked up a stick from the ground as if that was going to be enough to send him away, as if a thin branch could stand against a creature like him. My hands shook so badly I could barely grip it.

He didn’t move an inch.

Instead, he extended one finger—just one—and snapped the stick in half effortlessly. The sound was soft, almost casual, but it shattered whatever little courage I had gathered.

I tried to move, to crawl back, to get up and run again, but my back was far too wounded to cooperate. Every attempt sent sharp pain shooting through my spine. My strength was fading as the effects of the herb Peony had used on me began to fully take hold. My limbs felt heavy. My vision blurred at the edges.

“Stay away,” I whispered once more when he almost closed the distance between us.

I grabbed sand, leaves, fallen pieces of tree branches—anything my trembling fingers could find—and threw them at him in desperation. It was pitiful. Pathetic. But it was all I had left.

Nothing was enough to keep him away.

Not that I was expecting it to work, but I had foolishly thought that since I was begging and clearly in distress, he would take a step backward and let me leave.

After all, I had done nothing wrong to him.

He suddenly raised his head as if in confusion, his red eyes narrowing, and before I could even process the shift in his expression, he lunged forward.

His fangs sank into my shoulder.

A scream tore from my throat. I thought he was going to kill me because of the intent I had seen in his wolf eyes earlier—bloody red and merciless. I braced myself for the tearing of flesh, for the final pain that would end everything.

But when I forced my eyes open through the haze of my spiraling consciousness, I realized something was wrong.

He wasn’t ripping me apart but was marking me.

“King Theoreon!” a voice shouted from the distance, breaking through the fog in my mind.

Through the haze of my thoughts, I felt him lift his head slightly at the sound, his grip loosening just enough for me to slump forward. Warm blood trickled down my neck, staining my clothes, mixing with dirt.

I collapsed fully to the ground, exhaustion swallowing me whole as I overheard multiple footsteps rushing toward where I lay.

My vision flickered in and out, darkness clawing at the corners. When my consciousness began slipping away completely and I forced myself to look up one last time, I was shocked at what I saw.

A whole lot of warriors had arrived at where he was standing.

They surrounded him.

And him—the wolf who had marked me—stood at their center like something far more than just a beast.

Like a king.