Free Web NovelChapter 81: Surprise, Sister
The pressure in the clearing became instantly unbearable. It wasn’t just the weight of an Alpha’s aura anymore; it was something ancient, dark, and entirely catastrophic. The air grew thick, tasting of copper and ash, as the crimson fire in Zain’s eyes cast long, terrifying shadows across the forest floor. The black veins of the eclipse-root fluid were literally boiling beneath his skin, sizzling and evaporating into ribbons of dark smoke as his demonic bloodline forcibly burned the poison out of his system.
The hunter who had been standing over me froze, his heavy sword trembling in his grip. The sheer terror radiating from the man was palpable. He had been trained to hunt wolves, but he was currently looking at a god of slaughter.
With a sickening, supernatural snap, Zain surged to his feet. He didn’t shift into his wolf form; he didn’t need to. The human shell was terrifying enough when fueled by that unholy, blood-red light.
"Back! Get back!" April shrieked, her voice losing every ounce of its chilling composure. She was stumbling backward, wiping the blood from her broken nose with the back of her sleeve, her eyes wide with a frantic, primitive panic. "Fire at him! Use the reserves!"
The remaining two uninjured hunters lunged forward, their hands shaking as they tried to reload their sidearms, but Zain was already a blur.
He closed the distance in a fraction of a second. His hand shot out, his fingers wrapped in a wreath of dark, smoking energy as he caught the first hunter by the face. With a casual, horrifying flex of his arm, he slammed the man into the earth. The impact cratered the dirt, instantly silencing the hunter’s screams.
The second hunter managed to fire a silver-tipped pistol, but Zain didn’t even dodge. The bullet struck his thigh, but the wound healed almost instantly, spitting the silver slug back out onto the leaves. Zain backhanded the man with enough force to send him crashing through a thick oak tree, the trunk cracking under the force of the collision.
I watched from the ground, my hands still clutched tightly over my stomach. The blinding pain in my abdomen had dulled to a low, throbbing heat, as if the baby had felt its father’s awakening and was suddenly pacified, drinking in the massive waves of power rolling off him. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
"Violet..." April whispered.
I turned my head. My sister had dropped her crossbow. She was backed up against a rock wall, her chest heaving, her hands fumbling at her belt for a silver dagger. For the first time in my life, April looked small. She looked fragile.
Zain turned his burning, blood-red gaze onto her. The dark energy rolling off his shoulders stretched toward her like tendrils of smoke, hungry and impatient. He took a heavy, deliberate step forward, his boots crunching on the fallen leaves.
"Zain, no, she’s my sister," I choked out, pushing myself up to my knees. My voice was weak, but across the wide-open mate bond, it hit him like a physical barrier.
He paused, his jaw clenching so hard a low vibration rattled through the clearing. He didn’t look at me, his eyes still locked on April, but his shoulders were tense. "She tried to kill our child, Violet. She came to take my head. They will never stop."
"If you execute her like this, you prove my father right," I pleaded, forcing myself to stand, my legs swaying slightly. "Please. Just... stop."
Before Zain could speak, the dense brush at the northern edge of the clearing exploded outward.
A massive, jet-black wolf burst through the foliage, its jaws snapping shut just inches from April’s face, forcing her to dive sideways into the dirt. Close behind the wolf came Rhys and Cian, their eyes glowing a fierce, predatory gold, their weapons already drawn.
But it was the figure flanking Rhys that made my breath catch completely.
"Jade?" I gasped.
My younger sister stood at the edge of the clearing, her dark hair wild, holding a long, sleek silver dagger with a leather-wrapped hilt. Her eyes darted across the carnage—the crushed bodies of my father’s elite guards, the smoking, terrifying form of Zain, and finally, me, standing pale and bloodied in the center of it all.
"Violet!" Jade cried out, her protective instincts instantly overriding the sheer terror of the scene. She started to run toward me, but Rhys’s hand shot out, catching her by the waist and pulling her back against his chest.
"Stay back, Jade," Rhys warned, his voice low and dangerous as his golden eyes locked onto Zain’s crimson ones. "The Alpha is... he’s not entirely in control right now."
The black wolf shifted mid-stride, bones snapping fluidly until Cian stood there, his chest heaving, his gaze sweeping the area. "Alpha," Cian called out, dropping to one knee as a sign of absolute submission to the overwhelming pressure in the air. "The packhouse is secure. We traced the hunter scent. We are here to retrieve you and the Luna."
April, coughing up dirt from where she had dove to escape Cian’s wolf, looked up from the ground. Her eyes widened as she recognized Jade.
"Jade?" April rasped, her voice cracking with absolute disbelief and disgust. "You’re alive? You... you’re standing with them? With the monsters?"
Jade stiffened in Rhys’s grip, her knuckles turning white around the hilt of the silver dagger Rhys had given her. She looked at our eldest sister, the perfect daughter, now bloody and cornered in the dirt.
"I’m standing with Violet," Jade said, her voice shaking but carrying a hard, bitter edge. "And if you came here to kill her, April, then you’re my enemy too."
"She’s carrying a demon’s spurn!" April screamed, pointing a trembling finger at my stomach. "She betrayed the family! Father will flay you alive for this, Jade!"
"Let him try," Jade hissed, stepping forward, breaking free of Rhys’s grip this time. She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the wolves, her hunter blood refusing to let her cower. "I saw what Father did to us, April. I saw the cage he put Violet in. I’m not going back to that table."
