Catch Me, Alpha

CHAPTER 1 ARES“We’re all going to die here,” Aurora whispered, peering down into the hole we had dug inside her brother’s cave. It dropped off into a deeper epicenter cavern with monstrously jagged rocks hanging from the ceiling, torches perched on the walls every few meters, and twenty pathways diverging from the center. With canary-yellow foam seeping from their mouths, hounds patrolled around an array of at least a hundred dead wolf carcasses and bones directly underneath us. Laid out in rows of ten by thirteen, each fallen wolf had a white orb floating above his or her head. “We should go,” I said to Aurora, grabbing her hand. “Now.” Something about this wasn’t sitting right with me. Aurora hesitated and glanced down into the hole, digging her claws into the dirt. Strands of dirty-brown hair fell into her face, hindering my view of it. The thick stench of blood drifted through the air, making Ruffles scurry away in disgust. Refusing to stay here much longer, I yanked on Aurora’s arm. But she didn’t move. “Mom,” she whispered, voice on the verge of cracking. Among the fallen wolves underground, Aurora’s mother—the woman I’d torn to pieces and the woman Aurora had buried mere days ago—laid in the center with her throat ripped out, her eyes glazed over, and her skin a discolored gray. “Calm down,” I whispered into her ear. I placed a hand over her trembling lips to muffle her cries, yet Aurora started heaving uncontrollably. “They’re going to hear you.” “What … are they … doing to her?” she asked me, her tears catching on my index finger. I swallowed hard and watched the white orbs pulse above each wolf’s chest. If I had known what they were doing down here, I wouldn’t have come, because this looked like some dark magic s**t that I wanted no part in. The asshole who had killed my mother walked into the cavern with dragon tattoos etched into the side of his head, fresh scars covering his body, and dead eyes that had seemed to come alive when he saw Aurora the other day. He must’ve relished in the thought of being able to take another close family member away from me. Walking down each row of wolves, he whispered something to them. Even with my amplified wolf hearing, I couldn’t understand what he had said because it sounded like a dead, ancient language but not quite Latin. Instead, the words came almost divine. Almost. After he strolled back and forth down all the rows, he stood in front of the fallen, lifted his hands to the ceiling, and waited. The white orbs sank into the bodies of the dead wolves and disappeared inside of them. Toward the right, one dead man’s toes twitched. And then, suddenly, at least half of the wolves started moving. Aurora tensed beside me and grasped my hand. The wolves stood to their full height, their fatal wounds still carved out of their bodies. Some wolves were mere bones held together by the thinnest shred of tendons and ligaments. Yet … these weren’t normal wolves anymore. A murky haze lay in their eyes, the same kind that all hounds had. I stared at them in complete shock, my heart pounding inside my chest. How has he … “More,” Mom’s r****t shouted. “Make me more!” “Aurora,” I said through the mind link, pulling her closer. “We have to go now. We can’t stay.” Hounds, rogues, demons, or whatever abominations they were, there were too many of them for us to stand around here, just waiting to be caught. We couldn’t f*****g defeat them all by ourselves. We needed backup—warriors, packs, a damn army—to defeat the undead hounds. The group of basically soulless hounds marched through the cavern and disappeared down one of the desolate pathways. While most of the wolves had come back to life, some didn’t. Scattered around the cave, bones lay in piles with the white orbs pulsing above them still. Mom’s r****t walked to one, absorbed the orb through his fingertips, and brushed his callous fingers against the decaying and dry bone. And that was when I smelled it. Mom. I didn’t have to see her to know that those were her bones lying in that cave or that he had removed her skeleton from her grave or that the hound who had destroyed her was trying to bring her back to life. A growl ripped its way from my throat at the mere scent. The hound lifted his nose, stared right up at me through the small hole in the ceiling, and roared back in return. If he wanted to disturb Mom’s peace as she ran with the wolves in the clouds with the Moon Goddess, then he’d have to fight me for it. Aurora grabbed my hand, yanked me toward the exit of the cave, and sprinted toward home. “We’re going to die,” she said, running into the sudden fog. It had been sunny mere moments ago. “You said it yourself, Ares; there are too many of them to fight. Calm down.” Though I wanted to stay and kill that man, I hurried after Aurora. I needed to protect her, especially because she couldn’t protect herself. It would take her at least five minutes to shift if we had to fight, and there were hundreds of undead hounds down in that cave. I scooped up Ruffles in my arms. “Faster, Aurora.” Weaving in and out around trees, hopping over roots, ducking under branches, Aurora ran faster than I had ever seen her run as she easily retraced the steps back to her mother’s pack house, which was closer than ours. Birds flapped their wings, hurrying to get out of our way, and disappeared higher up into the trees. Paws hit the ground hard behind us, becoming louder by the second. We were screwed, f*****g screwed. “Aurora,” I said through the mind link, “can you shift?” I was itching to shift, seconds away from turning around and killing this hound once and for all. Thick, unruly rage pumped through my veins as the urge only intensified in me. “No, I can’t shift that quickly. They’d catch up to us.” Ruffles climbed up my chest and peered over my shoulder, hissing in my ear. I plucked her off of me and tossed her into Aurora’s arms. She clawed her way up Aurora’s chest, wrapped her arms around her shoulders, and bared her teeth at the woods behind us. “Then, you have to run,” I said. “No matter what you hear, don’t stop until you reach our pack. If I’m not back in ten minutes after you arrive, prepare our warriors for battle. We are not going to die this way.” Losing all control, I shifted into my monstrous brown wolf. After digging my heels into the dirt and sliding against sharp rocks and branches, I turned around to glare into the dense white fog that sat heavily in the forest, almost making it impossible to see. Defying everything I’d commanded her to do, Aurora grasped Ruffles and stopped beside me. I growled at her, warning her to leave. Instead of listening, she drew her silver dagger from her back pocket and crouched in a fighting stance, holding it in front of her. Ruffles jumped down between her legs, head low and a*s wiggling, as if she was getting ready to attack. “We do this together,” Aurora said. I growled again in both wicked rage and immense pride. Our mate was a warrior, our luna was a protector, and if we somehow survived today, our pack would be stronger than every other pack in Sanguine Wilds. Five hounds barreled through the forest with their paths headed straight for Aurora because she was the one with the stone in her back. They were attracted to that thing for some ungodly reason—a reason we needed to figure out as soon as f*****g possible. Taking the brunt of their attacks, I killed one hound at a time. They should’ve been weak and recovering from the hound attack last week, yet their strength today far exceeded their strength a few days ago. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was protecting my mate and Ruffles. With the dirt in my claws, I cut through each one and trusted that Aurora and Ruffles could kill off any ones that slipped past me. As I grabbed another one in my bloodied paw, I scanned the woods for others. There were at least a hundred hiding within the trees. Where were they now? Yet while I couldn’t hear anyone, I could feel the gaze of their leader on me. He watched me from somewhere deep in the woods, making my f*****g blood boil. The ache to s*******r him grew more intense with every moment that went by. I let out a low, threatening growl through the fog. “Keep one of them alive,” Aurora said, standing over two dead hounds. “We can use him.” I sank my teeth into the third hound’s arm, broke his bones, and ripped his limb right from his body. Howling in pain, the hound fell to the ground. After I was positive that nobody else was going to attack, I shifted into my human form and snatched him by the neck. Infused with whatever kind of dark magic this was, the hounds were becoming stronger and more violent. We needed to mobilize our pack and other packs quickly if we wanted to survive because it was clear that the hounds had already begun raising an army … An army of the dead. The eerie feeling of Mom’s r****t scrutinizing us disappeared. Aurora snatched Ruffles in her arms and patted down her puffed-up fur, whispering to her that we were safe for now. And while we might be, one thing was certain. I’d be back to s*******r that man even if it was with the last breath I took.