Page 143 of The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate
She is smiling.
I duck back behind the doorframe before her eyes can drift toward me. The woman on my back has gone very still, her breath held against my throat.
I cannot fight Lydia with this woman gripping my shoulders. And I cannot leave her in this corridor where one of Lydia’s soldiers could find her.
I take the corridor back the way I came in long, quiet strides, my heel coming down on the concrete first, the soft pad of my boot rolling silently for the rest of the step. The first two doors are locked when I try the handles, my hand twisting under the woman’s thigh to reach them.
The third one opens.
A storage room. Shelves along one wall, a steel cabinet along another, a pile of folded canvas that smells of bleach in a corner.No window. No second door. The darkness inside is the soft gray of a room nobody has been in for several hours.
I step inside and shut the door behind me with my foot.
“Here,” I whisper to the woman. “Just for a little while.”
I crouch and lower her—carefully, carefully—setting the broken legs on the canvas in a way that should not put much weight on them. She does not let go of me at first. I cover her hands with my own.
“That’s my mate in there,” I tell her. “Those are my friends. I have to help them. I can’t abandon them.”
Her grip tightens.
“I won’t abandon you, either. I promise. The moment they’re safe, I’m coming back through that door. You understand me? I’ll come back.”
One of her hands lifts and finds my jaw. Her thumb passes over my collarbone where the dark lines of the curse show.
I pull the rock out of my pocket and press it into her palm, folding her thin fingers over it. “Anyone who isn’t me comes through that door, you throw this at them. Hard as you can. Then, scream—if you are able. I’ll hear you.”
She looks down at the rock and nods. Her other hand releases me.
I pull a length of the canvas up over her head, hiding her body completely from anyone whose eyes pass quickly over the room. I reach underneath to touch her cheek with the backs of my fingers. As an afterthought, I take off Lucas’s mother’s pendant and place it in her free hand so I don’t break it when I shift. Then, I am out of the room, shutting the door behind me with a quiet click.
And I run.
The corridor flies past. My wolf is up at the front of my chest now, every part of her oriented, ears forward, the snarl alreadyin her throat. The doorway to the arena is six strides ahead. Five. Four.
I let her come out. The shift rolls through me in one hard wave on the threshold of the arena.
And the curse mark sears into me.
The pain is so bad, I cannot see. The curse along my collarbone, the curse that has been climbing ever since Lucas mated me, opens up under the change and pours down through my chest in a long, burning line that is not pain anymore but something sharper, something with a taste. Iron. Charcoal. The ash of something that has been left in a fire too long. My wolf screams inside me, but the shift does not stop. Her body lands on four paws under me, and the burn settles with a steady drag through every rib.
I am still moving. Lydia has not seen me.
She is still inside the entrance, arms crossed, watching the fight on the far side of the room. My paws hit the concrete, and the sound of them against the bare floor catches her ear at the last possible second. Her head starts to turn.
Too late.
I cover the last six feet at full speed.
The impact when I hit her is the best thing I have felt all day. The full weight of my furious wolf takes her off her feet, and we go down together in a tangle. Her shoulder catches the lip of the sunken floor, and we roll three yards across the concrete. My jaws are at her throat before we have stopped moving.
But her elbow drives up under my chin, and my teeth close on air. Her boot finds my ribs, and the kick lifts me off her, my paws scrabbling for purchase on the smooth floor. I land badly on my injured side. The curse mark blazes again, even hotter. For one second, my wolf body feels wrong, the curse corrupting as it runs through every vein.
Across the arena, Lucas roars, and I can feel him desperate to come to my side. However, he is surrounded. Lydia and I are alone in the center of the arena.
She is on her feet before I am, charging at me. There is blood on her shirt from where her shoulder hit the floor on the way down. Her hair has come loose and is hanging wildly, but she does not move to push it out of her face. Her eyes are fixed on me with an intensity that has nothing to do with fear.
I lunge to intercept her. A knife comes up, and the tip catches me along the muzzle, leaving a long, bright line of pain that opens from the corner of my mouth to the top of my eye. I twist my head, and my jaws close on her forearm. Her bone is harder than it should be under my teeth. She drives her free hand into my throat, the heel of it grinding into my windpipe, and the pressure forces me to let go.
