Page 61 of Rejected Alpha Mate

This can’t be happening.

I need him. I’ve never been able to admit it before, but I need Nicholas. He can’t leave me like this. He can’t—

“Nicholas! Nicholas, stay with me! Please!” I yelp, my hands trembling over the giant, gushing wound on his chest. His eyes are disoriented as they search my face, but then he lets out an unsteady, drawn-out breath before his eyes close.

“No!” I cry out, my chest physically aching as if I can sense the pain that just knocked him unconscious. Perhaps I can, through the mate bond, but what’s most startling is that I can’t sense him fully.

Even when my hand loosely touches an unharmed part of his chest, I can’t feel the magnetic pulse that usually attests to our mate bond.

“No….” This time, the word leaves my lips as a whisper, a hopeless cry for my mate, echoed from my inner wolf. When it’s not responded to, and her desperation is not reciprocated, that word becomes a scream, a vow of retribution.

“No!”

The ground quakes beneath my knees, shuddering as if in fear of the vengeance in my voice as I throw myself into concentration at his side. My hands hover over his chest, too terrified to touch him, too terrified not to. His skin is ice-cold already, slick with sweat, the wound at the center of his chest pulsing with thick shadows.

“Nicholas?” My voice breaks. “Nicholas…please…” I beg, but it’s more like I’m begging myself, willing myself to do something that could save him. My magic gathers in my palms as I carefully try to heal him, but the darkness in his chest continues to swirl, determined to fight my magic off.

I can’t even apply more force, afraid that I might make things worse, I might hurt him more, but I’m also afraid that I’m losing him.

He hasn’t answered. His eyes don’t open. My world is crumbling, spinning off-course, detonating.

Somewhere around me, wolves snarl and growl, claws slicing through the air. My friends shout, and magic ripples like heatwaves across the clearing. But all of it feels far away, the sounds almost muted, drowned out as if I’m underwater.

Everything collapses into a single point…

Nicholas isn’t moving, and something inside me snaps.

“Donna, wait! Don’t!” Delilah’s voice tries to reach me, probably sensing what I’m about to do, what is happening to me uncontrollably.

But I can’t hear her, too far gone in my grief to heed her plea to stop this. I can’t.

A roar builds inside my chest, made of agony and fury and something ancient, something deeper, something that feels like it isn’t entirely mine.

It’s like a dam wall breaks, and magic slams through my veins, spilling without control. My vision turns white at the edges, my heartbeat becoming a drum made of lightning.

I draw in a shaky breath, and that’s when the air around me ignites.

Golden light bursts from my palms, shooting outward in spirals. It scorches the earth in glowing circles, burning away the dark residue that clings to Nicholas’s skin.

“Donna, stop!” Arianna cries out from somewhere behind me, somewhere that feels too distant to pay heed to. “You’re drawing too much power! Your core can’t hold—”

The rest of what she says is cut off by the blaring sound of my magic roaring around me, and I don’t stop.

I can’t stop.

This magic isn’t listening to them anymore. It’s answering to me. Or maybe I’m finally answering it. I can’t tell where it ends or begins, or where I do. I just know that I’ve never felt as powerful as I do right now, invincible, even if this feeling is born from desperation and anguish.

The Loups de Lune wolves who’d been under a spell snap mid-attack, their bodies jolting as the golden shockwave from my palms collides with them. Their black, corrupted eyes spark, then clear, then blink in confusion as the darkness binding them evaporates like ash.

One by one, they collapse to the ground, whimpering, trembling, but no longer possessed.

Morganna screeches, stumbling backward, arms raised to shield herself from the brightness of the gold magic sweeping the clearing. The shadows around her shred away like burnt paper, and her crimson eyes widen with horror.

“You!” she shrieks, voice cracking. “You’re not supposed to exist yet! You’re not supposed to awaken! You can’t be—”

But her voice is lost as the light swells again, brighter, hotter, uncontrollable, and this time, I rise to my feet.

My hair whips around me in a golden cyclone, the wind howling and swooshing as the air flickers with embers of light that crackle like stars being born. The earth vibrates as if recognizing the power in me, and Delilah gasps somewhere behind me. Arianna whispers my name like a prayer.