Alpha Damon (Sienna) novel Chapter 284

Delilah:

The mist was alive. It’s rolled around me like a snake would swirl around its victim.

It moved like breath, like whispers clawing at the edges of my mind. But I didn’t let it in. I couldn’t. It’s called I heard it, though I did not dare speak. I did not dare tell anyone that I heard it speaking to me. They were now going to believe me. They might even believe that our siding against them.

Not when my claws were stained, not when wolves screamed around me, not when the ground reeked of blood and fear. Not when I knew that they needed someone to hold them down, to remind them to stand strong. And though Damon was doing his best, I knew that he couldn’t do it alone.

I stood in the front line, not because someone asked me to, because I chose this. Because I wanted to stand in the front line. This was my war, too. My body ached, my shoulder throbbed from a blow I barely dodged, but I wasn’t stopping. Not until we ended her. Not until they were all gone.

I was not going to stop until this war ended. Whether I was alive or dead, it did not matter. As long as this war ended the way that we wanted, with the results that we needed, I was in.

Another rogue lunged at me. It felt like a shadow. It was no longer in control of its actions. It was just a body, a soulless one. Most of them were like this, crystallized void of any life she had taken at all, and I knew that she did not regret it. I pained me that I had to kill them, but sometimes I had no other options.

I spun low, my claws slicing across its ribs. It snarled, snapped, lunged again. I gritted my teeth and threw my full weight into it, driving it down. My knee cracked against its chest as I finished the job.

A scream rose behind me.

I turned. One of ours, a young warrior barely of age, was frozen, panic rooting him in place. Mist slithered toward him like fingers reaching for a throat. It was starting to eat out him alive. And I knew that if I did not intervene, if I did not snap him out of it, he would just end up going like the others. He would lose himself like them.

“Move!” I barked, diving in front of him. The mist recoiled as I slashed, as if I’d burned it. My body shielded his. I stood over him, panting, daring it to try again. “You cannot allow yourself to give in to this move. Fight like you mean it. Fight because you need to fight. If you do not, you are going to end up dying. And you don’t want her to take control of your actions, of your soul.”

The boy looked at me, his eyes wide and surprised as he was afraid. I shook my head as I put my hands on his shoulders, shaking him despite the pain that I was in.

“Go, I need you to run.” I snapped, shoving him toward the others. He ran.

I was alone for only a second. Though that second did not last for long.

Then the mist rushed at me, too fast, too thick. My body braced for it. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t…

“Delilah!”

Ethan’s voice. Then his body.

He tackled me to the ground just as a shadow beast burst from the fog behind me. His blade sank into its neck. The creature shrieked, gurgled, collapsed beside us. He slumped beside it, bleeding harder now.

My hands found his arms. “You idiot, you could have gotten yourself killed!”

“And if I left you, you would have ended up being dead like the others. You were embracing it, and that’s wrong for you to do so.” He gave me a crooked smile. “But now we’re even.”

I looked him in the eye for a moment too long, my eyes softening when they met his honest ones. For a moment, I forgot the anger, I forgot the pain, and I forgot the rage that I felt. But I also saw the weakness in his eyes, a weakness that he was refusing to show.

“You’re not fine.” I touched his side, warm, wet. “You’re bleeding too much. If this proceeds, you’re going to end up losing yourself, Ethan.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not the point…”

He grabbed my wrist, firm but not rough. “We’re not done. Not yet. We have a war to stand against, and we’re not going to stop until the end of it. I gave my alpha word and I think that you know that very well. This is our world and I’m not going to give it up for them. Not with wounds, not because I’m hurt. Even if I’m dying, I’m willing to fight.”

Cold.

Tatiana.

Ethan looked at me. “What the hell was that? What the fuck is going on…?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My mouth went dry.

“Delilah,” the mist cooed again, thicker now, winding around me in slow spirals. “Come home. The two of us need to talk. I think that we need to talk.”

I stepped back, instinct screaming.

Ethan grabbed me. “No. Don’t listen to it. Don’t…”

But I wasn’t the one moving.

The mist was pulling.

Tatiana was calling.

And I was the daughter she refused to let go.