Page 64 of Rejected Alpha Mate

She’s destroying herself.

I slam against the barrier again and again, my bones aching, my vision fracturing. Then, Tobias appears, eyes blue again, human again despite his wolf arm outstretched. A broken apology aimed at Donna before he grabs Morganna.

The golden blast surges, and finally, both Morganna and Tobias vanish into the golden light.

Donna collapses beside my body again, sobbing, trembling, fading.

“Donna!” I scream, slamming my head against the bars like a madman. “Don’t you dare close your eyes! Don’t you—”

My vision cracks, and light bursts through.

And I shoot upright with a strangled gasp…

… in my body once again.

My hand flies to my chest, where I remember the gaping hole, but there’s a heap of bandages covering me, wrapped around my chest and back. Frowning, I look down warily, fearing what I might see when I look there. But there’s not even a speck of blood or dark magic, as if it were all a dream.

“Donna…” I murmur, my voice hoarse against my dry throat and chapped lips.

“She’s fine,” a familiar voice responds to the first word I’ve spoken since waking up as if it were a question.

I look up to find Dominic in the corner, peeling himself off a sofa I recognize. That’s when I realize I’m in the Crescent Moon clinic, recovering in a private ward.

Dominic huffs as he approaches me, lips toying with an amused smirk. “Glad to see you finally awake, buddy.” He stops beside the bed, chuckling as he playfully slaps my shoulder.

“Grr…ow!” I protest, flinching and wincing and glaring at him with dramatic fury. “Watch it, Dom! I almost died!”

Dominic continues to chuckle as he slides a chair over, spinning it so the backrest is in front of him before he straddles the seat. He leans in, amusement slipping away, so his expression becomes hard.

“I think you deserved it,” he says as he watches me intently through narrowed eyes.

“I think you’ve lost your mind,” I chuckle dryly, attempting to sit up higher and test out my body to see if I’m capable of standing. “Where’s Donna?”

“She’s recovering in the room next door,” he informs me, and I let out a sigh of relief. “She took a knock after what she did, but she saved us all,” he declares proudly, then continues to explain what happened last night after I was hit with Morganna’s strike. He describes his sister’s majestic powers with pride, and I know exactly what he’s talking about, because I saw it in my dream.

“Whoa…that’s crazy,” I say when he’s done recounting the events of last night’s battle. “I had a dream about the whole thing.” I frown, confused by what I saw, what I felt in my dream. “Or, it could have been an out-of-body experience, but I saw the whole thing playing out the way you described it.”

“It does sound like an out-of-body experience, but it’s probably because of your link to Donna. You know…the fated mate bond,” he offers as an explanation, and I nod slowly.

“So, Tobias really sacrificed himself? Just like Barry did?”

“Yeah…” Dominic says with a hint of sadness in his tone. “He died a hero, and we’ll pay homage to him honorably.”

“How is Donna dealing with it?”

“Only as you can imagine. Tobias was her friend,” Dominic says, and I nod slowly again.

It’s only when I turn that I see him staring at me through narrowed eyes again.

“What?”

“You never told me when you discovered my sister was your true mate.”

“Yeah, it was after the wed—”

“Cut the bullshit, Nick. You’re my best friend.”

I sigh heavily, averting my eyes and leaning my head back to stare at the ceiling. “Yeah, you’re right. You’re my best friend, and you deserve the truth from me.” I take a deep breath before starting the story at the beginning—the moment I met Donna for the first time, when we dropped Dominic off in Nightmist.