Free Web NovelChapter 82: Fear Of The Unknown
The tension in the clearing reached a boiling point. Zain stood in the center, a dark god weighing the lives of everyone present, his crimson eyes flicking between Rhys, Cian, and the two highest-ranking wolves of his pack. The bond between us was humming, a tense, vibrant wire waiting for me to make the final call.
"You are all insane," April whispered.
She looked between Jade, standing defiantly beside the wolves, and me, my hands still protectively covering my stomach. The realization that she was utterly outnumbered, outmatched, and stranded in a forest full of apex predators finally broke through her rigid Hawthorne pride.
But April wasn’t just a hunter; she was a tactician. She knew when a battle was lost.
Slowly, her hand drifted toward her vest. Zain’s crimson eyes tracked the movement, a low, demonic rattle building in his chest, but before he could leap, April didn’t pull a blade. She pulled a small, brass orb from her collar—a flash-powder grenade, loaded with crushed silver dust.
"You think you’ve won?" April cried, her voice rising to a frantic, venomous shriek as she slammed the orb into the stone beside her. "You’re dead! All of you! I am going to get Father, and we will burn this entire forest to ash! We will pull that abomination from your cold, dead body, Violet!"
CRACK.
A blinding, explosive burst of white light and searing silver smoke detonated in the center of the clearing.
The wolves roared in agony, the airborne silver instantly burning their sensitive eyes and nostrils. Cian and Rhys fell back, shielding their faces, while Jade cursed loudly, dropping to one knee to avoid the worst of the smoke.
Zain didn’t blink. He launched himself blindly through the white fog toward the sound of her voice, his black claws tearing through the air—but the stone wall where April had been backed up was empty. A faint rustle of branches echoed from the steep ridge above us. She had used the explosion to scale the rock face, running back toward the human border with the frantic speed of a woman fleeing for her life.
"Track her!" Rhys roared through the smoke, coughing violently as his eyes glowed a watery, painful gold. "Cian, don’t let her reach the perimeter!"
"No," I tried to yell, but my voice was cut off as the crimson aura suffocating the clearing suddenly vanished.
The heavy, static pressure in the air snapped. The blood-red fire in Zain’s eyes instantly went dark, the supernatural energy that had been keeping his body upright evaporating into nothing.
"Zain?" I gasped.
He didn’t answer. A choked, wet sound escaped his throat as his knees buckled. The concentrated eclipse-root, no longer held at bay by the primal fury of his demon lineage, finally reached his heart. The toxic black veins on his chest flared aggressively, pulsing a deep, sickly violet beneath his skin.
He collapsed forward like a dead leaf.
"ZAIN!"
I threw myself under him, the impact sending us both crashing into the dirt. He was entirely unresponsive, his massive frame dead weight against me. His skin was ice-cold now, the burning fever completely gone, replaced by a terrifying, hollow gray pallor. His chest wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
Through the wide-open mate bond, a sudden, agonizing silence fell. The roaring river of his magic, his protective warmth, his fierce possessiveness—it all flatlined into a cold, terrifying void.
"Rhys! Help me!" I screamed, my voice cracking into a sob as I clutched Zain’s face, my hands staining with the dark blood still leaking from his chest. "He’s not breathing! It reached his heart!"
The smoke was barely clearing when Rhys and Jade appeared at my side. Rhys dropped to his knees, his face instantly turning a horrified shade of white as he pressed his hand over Zain’s stilled heart.
"The poison paralyzed his core," Rhys hissed, his fingers digging into Zain’s torn shirt. "His wolf is unconscious. He can’t heal himself like this."
"Fix him!" I demanded, grabbing Rhys’s leather jacket, pulling him violently toward me. The hunter inside me was completely gone; I was just a terrified mate fighting for the father of my child. "You’re his third-in-command! Do something!" freēwēbnovel.com
"I can’t siphon this kind of poison out, Violet, it’s human alchemy!" Rhys shot back, his voice thick with rare panic as he looked at Jade. "Jade, what is the antidote? Your father wouldn’t engineer a weapon without a counter-agent!"
Jade knelt beside me, her eyes wide as she stared at the black lines wrapping around Zain’s throat. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she touched the edge of the wound.
"There isn’t an antidote you can carry in a flask," Jade whispered, her voice tight with dread. "Father keeps the neutralizing serum in his private vault at the compound. If April makes it back there..." She looked up, meeting my tear-filled gaze. "...she’ll tell him the Alpha is down. He’ll mobilize the entire army. They’ll be here by morning to slaughter the pack."
Cian emerged from the tree line, his expression grim. "The human is gone. She crossed the river boundary; my wolf couldn’t track her scent through the silver dust in time."
A painful, sharp throb radiated from my stomach, a subtle reminder of the life still fighting to survive inside me. I looked down at Zain’s face—the feared Demon Alpha, the monster of my childhood stories, who had just offered to drain his own veins dry to keep me safe.
I wiped a tear from my cheek, my jaw tightening as a cold, familiar resolve settled into my bones.
"We’re taking him back to the packhouse," I said, my voice steadying despite the terror clawing at my throat.
"Violet, he won’t survive the night without the serum," Rhys said grimly, already slipping his arms under Zain’s massive shoulders to lift him.
"I know," I replied, standing up and looking back in the direction April had fled. The forest was dark, but my path had never been clearer. "Which means I’m going back to my father’s house. And I’m going to take the antidote from his dead hands."
