Page 31 of Rejected Alpha Mate

I rake both hands through my hair, the tension in my shoulders tightening like metal cables. “What’s going on?” I grit out, “Is your sister refusing to listen. She wants to play hero with powers she doesn’t even understand.”

“Maybe you should let her,” Dominic says carefully. “Delilah knows what she’s doing, and if it helps—”

“I’m not letting her near me with magic!” I snap before he can finish. My voice comes out sharper, darker than I intended, and Dominic takes a step back, his eyes narrowing.

“Nick,” he says softly, brows furrowed, “you’re shaking.”

I glance down at my hands and notice he’s right. My fingers are trembling, the veins beneath my skin pulsing dark, almost black. I curl my hands into fists to hide them, but the motion sends another wave of pain up my arm and into my skull.

“Shit,” I mutter, pressing the heel of my palm against my temple. “It’s just stress.”

Dominic doesn’t buy it. “Stress doesn’t make your eyes flicker like that.”

“What?”

“Your eyes, man,” he says, staring at me. “They just turned…black.”

Dominic’s observation hits me like a punch, causing me to take a step back and shake my head as the world starts to distort around me. The edges of the trees blur, the sunlight splintering like shards of glass. My breathing turns shallow. And then…

A flood of voices whispers in my head, and it’s not my inner wolf. These voices crawl into my skull like tendrils of smoke. Twisting, overlapping, until it’s impossible to distinguish from my own thoughts.

“You can’t fight it.”

“She’s defying you.”

“Take what’s yours.”

I grip my head, snarling under my breath, but the voices keep multiplying, clawing behind my eyes, urging me toward violence.

“Nick!” Dominic shouts, his tone alarmed now. “What’s happening?”

“Get back!” I growl, but the words come out guttural, inhuman. My wolf surges forward, desperate to protect, to destroy—everything at once. The bite on my shoulder burns, searing through my veins like fire.

Hunter bursts out of the house, eyes widening as he sees me. “Delilah said he’s reacting to the dark magic! We need to restrain him before—”

Before what?

I don’t hear the rest of what Hunter says.

Something snaps inside me, and the ground tilts, my vision blurs, and all I can see are threats everywhere, moving shapes I can’t recognize. My wolf lunges before I can stop it, only my claws distending, a feral growl ripping from my chest.

Dominic dodges my first swipe. Barely. Hunter grabs my arm from behind, but I twist free, slamming my elbow into his ribs with unnatural strength. The world narrows into sound and fury, heartbeats—especially my own—thrumming in my eardrums as I become rabid.

Somewhere in the chaos, I hear Delilah shouting a spell, but it only makes the voices louder.

Kill. Tear. Destroy.

The shadows pulse around me, forming shapes, Tobias’s face emerging in the mist, smirking, whispering into my ear.

“She’ll destroy you, Nicholas.”

“Shut up!” I roar, slamming my fists against my temples as my wolf bursts entirely through the seams. Pain explodes behind my eyes, and I stagger back, choking on a growl that’s more agony than rage.

And then, through the madness, I hear her voice.

“Nick….”

It cuts through everything. The noise, the pain, the fury.