Chapter 6: Rescue 

The voice rolled through the trees like thunder given shape.

"Release the girl. Now."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then one of the enforcers, the one gripping Roxie's arm hardest laughed, short and humorless, into the dark.

"We answer to Alpha King Magnus," he called out, voice steady despite the tremor Roxie could feel through his fingers. "Whoever you are, you don't outrank him. Back off."

No answer came. Just silence, thick and waiting.

The enforcer's grip tightened on Roxie's arm, dragging her a step forward. "We're not releasing anyone. Fall back into formation…"

The command died in his throat.

Something massive exploded out of the tree line.

Roxie couldn't see it, the blindfold still smothered her vision in black but she felt it. The ground shuddered under a weight too heavy to be human, branches snapping like matchsticks, and then the screaming started.

Not her screaming but the enforcers that held her captive.

The first enforcer went down before he could even shout a warning, a sickening crack of bone splitting the air as something threw him bodily into a tree trunk. Roxie stumbled free of the hand that had been holding her, dropping hard to her knees, bound wrists useless against the ground.

"Formation!" someone barked, voice cracking with panic. "Hold the line…"

They didn't hold anything.

Roxie heard it all unfold in pieces, blind and helpless on the forest floor, the whistle of a fist moving faster than sound should allow, the wet crunch of impact, a body hitting the ground and not getting back up. Another enforcer shouted a battle cry that dissolved into a scream halfway through, cut short by a sound like a branch snapping, except it wasn't a branch.

Whoever this was, he wasn't shifting. There was no howl, no telltale ripple of a wolf tearing free of human skin. This was worse, somehow raw, controlled violence, human hands and human fists dismantling armed men one after another with a precision that felt almost surgical.

"He's not human," someone gasped, stumbling backward close enough that Roxie could hear the terror flooding his voice. "Retreat….everyone retreat, now."

A fourth man went down with a howl of pain, something shattering, a wrist, an elbow, she couldn't tell followed immediately by the dull thud of a body collapsing.

"Fall back!" The order came frantic now, no trace of the earlier confidence left in it. "This isn't worth it….fall back!"

Boots scrambled against dirt and loose stone, retreating fast, crashing recklessly through the underbrush in their hurry to escape. Within seconds, the sounds of fighting dissolved into nothing but fading footsteps, swallowed by distance and darkness, until the forest fell silent except for Roxie's own ragged breathing.

She sat frozen on the cold ground, blind, bound, alone.

Alone with him.

Whatever had just happened, whoever had just torn through six armed, trained enforcers without so much as slowing down, he was still out there. Somewhere close. She could feel it, the air still charged and heavy in his presence, like standing too near a live wire.

Heavy footsteps approached.

Slow. Deliberate. Getting closer with every second, crunching over broken branches and disturbed earth, and Roxie's heart slammed against her ribs so hard it hurt. She pressed herself smaller against the ground, bound hands curling uselessly against her chest, every nerve screaming with a fear that had nothing left in reserve to fight with.

She'd survived betrayal tonight. She'd survived banishment. She'd survived being hunted through the dark by armed strangers.

She didn't know if she had anything left to survive whatever this was.

The footsteps stopped directly in front of her.

For a long, suspended moment, nothing happened. No hand grabbed her. No voice barked commands. Just silence, and the sound of someone crouching down slowly beside her, close enough that she could feel warmth radiating off him despite the cold night air.

"Hold still," the voice said. Low. Rough, like gravel dragged over stone, but careful in a way that didn't match the devastation he'd just left scattered through the trees. "I'm cutting you free."

She flinched at the first touch of something sharp against the rope binding her wrists, but he was gentle, impossibly gentle for hands that had just shattered bone after bone without hesitation. The rope fell away. Her arms dropped, numb and aching, and she immediately curled them against her chest, bracing.

"The blindfold now," he said. "Don't move."

His fingers were massive, calloused, but achingly careful, found the knot at the back of her head and worked it loose. The fabric slipped away.

Moonlight flooded back into her eyes, and Roxie blinked hard against the sudden brightness, her vision swimming as it adjusted.

Then she looked up, and the breath vanished completely from her lungs.

He was enormously towering over her in a way that should have terrified her, shoulders broad enough to block out half the moon behind him, muscle carved into every visible inch of him like something built rather than born. His dark hair was damp with sweat, a faint smear of someone else's blood along his jaw, and yet none of that was what stopped the air in her chest.

It was his face.

Sharp, striking, terrifyingly handsome in a way that felt almost unfair given what she'd just watched those same hands do to six trained fighters. Dark eyes settled on her, intense and unreadable, studying her with a focus that made her skin prickle even through her exhaustion.

She should have felt safe. He'd just saved her.

Instead, panic and awe crashed into her chest at the exact same moment, tangled together with the raw, ragged wreckage of everything that had happened tonight—the shattered mate bond, the slap still throbbing on her cheek, her father's cold dismissal, the terror of being hunted through the dark by armed strangers who wanted to abduct her for reasons she couldn't understand.

It was too much. All of it, all at once, crashing down on her at the worst possible moment, in front of the most overwhelming man she'd ever seen in her life.

The edges of her vision blurred, then darkened.

"Hey." His voice sharpened, alarmed, reaching for her as her body swayed forward. "Hey, stay with me."

Roxie didn't hear the rest.

Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed forward into the dirt at his feet, the world going completely, mercifully black.