112 Chapter 112
112 Chapter 112
Damien’s POV 1
The soldiers lifted the unconscious woman from the ground, her limp body hanging between them like a broken doll. Her matted hair fell forward,pletely obscuring her face, creating a curtain of filth and
tangles that made it impossible to make out her features. But something about her size, her frame-
The way her head tilted at that angle. The curve of her shoulder, even beneath the torn and bloodied fabric.
I mmed my eyes shut for a moment, forcing myself to breathe. I was seeing Sera everywhere now. In every shadow, every stranger, every fucking female form that crossed my path. My desperate mind ying tricks
on me, torturing me with false hope when I needed to stay focused. When I needed to find my mate, not chase ghosts.
This was just another rogue. Another piece of garbage that might have information about Sera’s whereabouts.
Nothing more.
“Move her to the jeep,” I ordered, my voice hoarse from three days of shouting orders and calling Sera’s name into empty forests. “Carefully. I don’t want her dying before we can question her.”
My throat felt raw, stripped bare from the constant ache of loss. Every word scraped against my vocal cords like broken ss.
Lucas nodded, signaling to the soldiers with sharp, efficient gestures. They started toward the vehicles, supporting the woman’s dead weight between them, her bare feet dragging through the dirt and fallen leaves.
I watched them move, my silver-blue eyes tracking every step. The woman’s head lolled back, exposing the pale column of her throat. Even from this distance, I could see the dark bruises there. Someone had tried to strangle her. Recently,
My wolf Alex stirred uneasily in my chest, but I pushed him down. I couldn’t afford to lose control. Not now.
Not when-
That’s when it happened.
A sound so soft I almost missed it. A whisper barely audible above the wind in the trees, carried on a breath
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that seemed toe from the very depths of her soul.
“Adrian…”
My entire world stopped.
The blood in my veins turned to ice water, then immediately to moltenva. My heart mmed against my
ribs so hard I thought it might burst. Every muscle in my body went rigid, locked in ce by a shock so
The most precious thing in my world, spoken with such aching longing that it made my chest feel like it was
being crushed in a vise.
No one should know that name. No one outside our pack, our family, our inner circle. Adrian was protected,
hidden, kept safe from the kind of monsters that might use a child as leverage against an alpha.
Ice flooded my veins, followed immediately by fire. Pure, incandescent rage that started in my gut and spread
outward like poison.
This bitch knew my son’s name.
“Stop,” I snarled, my alpha power exploding outward so forcefully that the very air seemed to vibrate with
menace. The trees around us swayed as if hit by an invisible wave. Every soldier within fifty feet dropped to
one knee in submission, their heads bowed, their wolves cowering before the fury of their alpha.
“Put her down. NOW.”
My voice carried such rawmand that even Lucas flinched. The soldiers holding the woman released her immediately, confused and terrified by my sudden transformation from controlled leader to barely contained
beast. The woman crumpled to the ground like a discarded toy, her body hitting the earth with a sickening
thud that should have made me feel guilty.
Instead, it just fed my rage.
This rogue bitch knew my son’s name. She’d been sent here. Sent to hurt my family. To finish what her pack
had started when they took Sera from me,
How long had they been watching us? How long had they been nning this? First they steal my mate, probably torture her, maybe kill her. And now they send this broken shell of a woman to our borders,
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speaking Adrian’s name like some kind of sick psychological warfare.
Fury unlike anything I’d ever experienced consumed mepletely. My vision went red around the edges, a crimson haze that made everything look like it was soaked in blood. My hands shook with the need for
violence. My teeth ached as they tried to shift into fangs.
Alex roared inside my mind, a sound of such primal rage that it made my skull feel like it might split apart. He
wanted blood.
*Kill her, he snarled in my mind. *RIP HER APART. SHE THREATENS OUR YOUNG.*
I crossed the distance in two massive strides, my body moving with the fluid violence of a predator closing in
on prey. My hands reached for her throat before I even fully realized I was moving.
My fingers closed around her neck, feeling the fragile bones beneath my palms. So delicate. So breakable.
Like snapping a twig.
“You fucking piece of garbage,” I growled, my voice dropping to a register so low it barely sounded human. I
lifted her partially off the ground with one hand, her feet dangling in the air, her head lolling back at an
unnatural angle.
“What did you do to my mate? Where is she? WHAT DID YOU DO TO SERA?”
My grip tightened involuntarily, my fingers finding the perfect pressure points that would cut off her air
supply. She was so small, so pathetically weak. I could snap her neck with a twitch of my wrist.
Part of me-arge part-wanted to do exactly that. Wanted to feel her windpipe copse under my hands.
Wanted to watch the life drain from her eyes as payment for whatever they’d done to Sera.
I used my free hand to brush the tangled hair away from her face, wanting to see the features of the enemy
who dared to threaten my family. The matted strands were thick with dirt and blood and things I didn’t want
to identify. They stuck to my fingers like spider webs, clinging and disgusting.
But I kept brushing them away, revealing inch by inch the face that had been hidden beneath.
The hair fell away from her forehead first. Pale skin, marked with bruises and scratches. A scar on her left
temple that looked familiar but couldn’t be-
More hair moved aside. The curve of her cheek, hollow with starvation but still recognizable. Still impossible.
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My hands trembled as I swept away thest of the tangled mess, revealing the face that had haunted my dreams for three endless days and nights.
And my heart stopped.