Only Yours, Alpha

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

AURORABlood sprayed everywhere, drenching the forest floor and creating puddles of bodily fluids across the entrance of the underworld. Some hounds were stronger and physically bigger than the others, towering over them and powerfully striking us back. While others were weaker and fought slowly, like the rogues had the other day.

Almost as if they had come down here during the War of the Lycans.

Maybe they were rogues from Earth.

One hound sprinted at me with his b****y canines bared and dripping with thick saliva. He lunged at my stomach to rip it to shreds, but I quickly flipped him over onto his back and sank my claws into his throat, ripping it out easily.

With my paws coated in blood, I turned and tore another hound off a man that I didn’t recognize from another pack. He cried out in pain and clutched his stomach, blood gushing out of his injury.

When I went to drop to my knees to heal him, one hound knocked me on my a*s from the side, and another ripped the poor boy’s head right off his body. I screamed in terror, the sound echoing through the forest. I had never seen a hound so strong.

Ares roared in response, sprinting over to me and taking the hound on, one-on-one. Similar in height and strength and muscle, they faced off head-to-head, tearing and ripping into each other’s flesh so quickly that I could barely see straight.

My stomach tightened at the thought of this hound tearing my mate’s head right off, and when they suddenly slowed down, Ares caught him in the throat and ripped his canine tooth across it horizontally.

The hound fell to the ground, twitching and shivering, foaming at the mouth and pissing himself. I stared at Ares with fear in my eyes and pain in my stomach. God, we hadn’t even been down here for a few moments, and these hounds were stronger than expected.

Could we really do this?

Could we really survive?

When the hound finally stilled, the other weaker hounds stopped fighting too. It was as if that one had controlled them. And now, they all seemed to turn to me and the wolf who had knocked me back.

He was now lying on his back in front of me with blood pouring from a stomach wound.

Had I done that?

Though the hounds didn’t shift, their wolfish whispers drifted through the air like a symphony. “Dawn is here. Dawn is back. Dawn will save us.” They stared at me and then at the wolf under me, suddenly rushing through the woods and away from us.

“Dawn!” the wolf under me called to the others who were racing away, his voice fading. “Tell Mars that Dawn is here.”

My heart pounded, and I grasped the hound’s snout, gently stroking his matted fur, desperate for answers about Mars’s whereabouts. We had been without him for far too long, and he knew where he was.

“Tell me where Mars is, please,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes.

The wolf parted his mouth and stared up at me, speaking words that were far too low and quiet and hoarse to understand. The light faded from his eyes quickly, his piercing golden eyes glazing over.

“Please,” I cried frantically. “Please, tell me.”

I pleaded. I begged. I needed answers.

But the more the wolf tried to talk, the quicker the life faded from his body. I stared at him, shaking my head and letting the tears stream down my cheeks. I didn’t just feel bad for not finding Mars through him, but seeing a wolf that I used to live with dying in my arms…

The sight did something terrible to me. Absolutely terrible.

“Does anyone have any equipment to save him?” I asked, frantically glancing around at the others behind me.

Half of these people didn’t even want to be here, hadn’t thought that they were traveling to the underworld today, thanks to Medusa. Of course, they probably didn’t have anything.

“Please,” I said, holding the wolf in my arms. “Anything.”

“He’s a hound,” someone said from behind me.

“He’s a rogue,” I said through clenched teeth.

When nobody emerged from the crowd, I cursed to myself and closed my eyes, trying desperately to summon the power I had inside me. Last time I’d tried while thinking about it, I couldn’t heal Charolette. This time, I freaking hoped that I could do something.

We needed him alive.

I rested my hands on his wound and blew out a deep breath, focusing on his wounds closing and healing, imagining giving this rogue life once more. He deserved to leave this underworld for good one day and get back to his pack.

“It’s working,” a wolf said in the group. “Keep going.”

Soon, the other wolves whispered around us, urging me to continue to heal him. A young woman that I hadn’t met before emerged through the crowd, tearing off a piece of her shirt, large enough to wrap around the wolf’s wound to hold it closed.

“Here, Alpha Aurora,” she said to me, her cheeks a rosy red and her brown eyes wide. “We don’t want you using all your power within the first few hours here. Use this to hold his wound closed. I have some herbs to stop the pain when he awakens.”

Glancing up at her, I thanked the young woman—vowing to remember that I needed to ask her name once this was all over—and grabbed the cloth from her, wrapping it around the rogue’s stomach to hold the remainder of his wound closed, hoping that it would stave off infection.

A couple moments passed, and I could feel his slight pulse. He blinked his eyes open a few times to stare up at me. When he opened his mouth again, he said, “Mars is at the ga—”

Before he could finish, a half-woman, half-bird creature with large brown wings and a beautiful face swooped down from the high trees. She pushed me out of the way and snatched the rogue wolf in her talons, lifting him off the ground and flying into the air.

“Hey!” I shouted, standing. “Where are you taking him?!”

She looked back at me with piercing red eyes, her wings still flapping in the air and taking her farther and farther from the pack. I was sure that I had never once seen this woman in this lifetime, nor my other lifetime either.

But she stared back at me as if she knew all my secrets.

“I’m taking him back,” she said and then disappeared into the fog. “He’s mine.”