Ayda

When I leaped off the overhang, I aimed for the wolf that was right in front of the boy. I landed on him, hearing the satisfying snap of his spine as the wolf howled in pain. The other four wolves immediately turned on me.

I quicky pushed myself off the wolf and back so I was between the pup and the other wolves. They are warriors and while I may not be an Alpha wolf, I was a Luna for several years and I trained with our pack warriors.

I realize as they leap at me, that these are my previous pack members. I know these wolves. They won’t recognize me because I smell like a rogue to them, but I recognize them. I have no idea why they are attacking this pup, but I refuse to allow them to hurt or kill him.

It works in my favor that I know their fighting techniques. I may be out of practice, but I still remember my training and when one wolf leaps, I duck, turning my head away from him to counter the attack that I know will come from the other side.

It does, just as I expect and Asena snaps her jaws on the wolf’s mouth, snapping his bottom jaw as she quickly thrashes her head back and forth. I release the wolf in front of me as I feel teeth sink into my flank, yanking and ripping me to the side.

I grit my teeth as Asena rips her leg out of the wolf’s mouth, leaving a chunk of flesh behind. Another wolf, thinking he has an opening, goes for her throat. Instead, she rolls slashing her claws up under the wolf before quickly regaining her feet. The movement moved us away from the boy, but as long as the others stay focused on us, that’s okay. If I can get them far enough away from him, maybe he can run. I’m not even sure what he’s doing out here all alone. He’s too young to be on his own.

The wolf who first leaped at Asena, leaps again, and this time, two of the other wolves attack at the same time. This is new and I’m not sure if they’ve learned new skills or if they’ve modified their attack because I countered it the first time.

The wolf who leaps, gets a hold of the fur and skin on the back of Asena’s neck, holding on as he lands and just as she did, he shakes his head furiously, tearing the skin. Another wolf leaps at her, his jaws snapping on her front leg. I hear the snap of her leg and hear her howl of pain in the air and in my mind just as the pain hits me.

The wolf with her leg in his mouth gets thrown to the side as the wolf holding her neck continues to thrash us back and forth. Asena, taking quick advantage of the opportunity, sinks her teeth into the wolf’s neck, his blood filling our mouth before she is yanked off of him. One down.

Another wolf leaps at her throat, but she rips her neck out of the wolf’s mouth, dropping to the ground, letting the leaping wolf smash into the wolf that was holding her neck.

The wolf with the broken jaw attempts to pin Asena to the ground but instead, she swipes her back claws down the underside of his body, his insides spilling out on the ground. Two down.

The wolf with the broken back is still alive, but paralyzed and unable to shift. He’ll die one way or the other. Three down. We turn, focusing on the two who are left.

Asena is badly injured, one leg broken and she’s bleeding from the wound on her flank and the terrible tearing on the back of her neck. She stands her ground, holding the injured leg off the ground. She’s hurting but the adrenaline flowing through our body is keeping her on her feet.

The two wolves spread out, planning to attack us on two sides. Both of her injuries are on her left side, so she hops, trying to keep her strong side facing the wolves, but eventually, she has no choice but to leave her weak side open to one of the wolves and that’s when they attack again.

The one wolf dives for her front leg, probably planning to rip it off. She leaps up, but not before the other wolf, the one who had her by the neck, grabs her right back leg and begins yanking on her leg at a bad angle.

I hear the pop a moment before Asena howls in pain. Her back leg now dislocated and unable to be used. She turns, snapping at the face of the wolf, but he lets go and backs away.

We feel the air shift as the other wolf leaps at us from behind, but she turns her head quickly, snapping her jaws and just missing his throat as she grabs hold of the side of the wolf’s neck. We’ve both just come crashing down to the ground when the boy screams.

“LOOK OUT!”

We release the wolf and turn, barely getting our paws up to push the other wolf off of us, but the pressure on the broken leg and the dislocated leg causes Asena to howl out in pain again.

She rolls on her side, scrambling to get back up onto her feet. The adrenaline isn’t enough to keep the pain from radiating through our body. Our body is aching and every time she tries to stand, pain shoots from one part of her body or another.

‘Come on, Asena. You can do it. We’re all that pup has standing between him and certain death.’

I feel my wolf pull on her inner reserves. I know she’s strong, I also know that my wolf will kill herself to try and save me or those she cares about. This time, though, if she goes, I’m going with her.

The two wolves get to their feet, recognizing that they’ve won. I’m a dead woman, but I can still try to take down at least one more of them. Then there’s only one for the boy to fight and that gives him a chance.

I need to take out the stronger one, the one I’ve barely touched in this fight. The other one is injured and will give the pup a chance to live, or wait for his parents to return. The other one, I’m pretty sure it’s Masuzyo’s Beta, Marcel, is barely scratched. He’s the one that had me by the back of my neck. He’s also probably the one who ripped the chunk out of my flank. He needs to die.

‘Focus on him, Asena. We take him down before we go down.’

‘Okay, Ayda,’ she says, and I feel her resolve blending with mine. We know we will die, but we have to do what we can to save this pup. We couldn’t save our own, but we can save this one.

The moment they leap, we do too, aiming for Marcel. I hear a yelp, but I can’t lose focus. I have to bring this Beta down. His teeth sink into our shoulder, and the two of us hit the ground, rolling end over end. When we stop, Asena is on top, and she snaps her teeth into the side of the wolf’s neck. She yanks as hard as she can, ripping flesh away from bone. Marcel howls in pain, releasing her shoulder and she quickly spits out the flesh as her pushes off of him. She scrambles to her feet as he does the same and I can see that our landing has injured him, he’s favoring his back leg. Good.

We both snarl at each other and I vaguely realize that the other wolf is gone. I hope he didn’t go after the pup. I can’t look though, I need to focus on Marcel.

I trained with him many times when I was his Luna, in both wolf and human form. He’s formidable, but he’s very predictable if you know his moves. Since he’s injured, Asena and I guess at his next move. He’s going to fake a leap and then come in low, trying to get to our throat.

The moment he looks like he’s about to leap, she does instead. As predicted, he drops low, intending to go for Asena’s throat. Instead, Asena lands on top of him, her teeth snapping into his neck and crushing his spine. He yelps before she thrashes her head back and forth, making sure the spinal column is severed completely before releasing him.

She turns, stumbling away from him, looking around to check on the boy. He steps out of the thicket, watching us closely. He has blood on his hands and arms and I look to see the other wolf lying dead on the ground, a sharp rock imbedded in his throat.

Asena drops to the ground, pulling the shift that has me screaming in pain. The boy rushes over to me, pulling me into his lap.

“Hang on, my father’s coming. Just hang on,” he says.

“You should run,” I tell him, as I feel his tears dripping onto my face. “Run, little Alpha. Get away from here,” I tell him, realizing now that he’s close to me that he’s an Alpha pup. No wonder they were after him.

He shakes his head. “No, I won’t leave you. You saved me. I won’t leave you.”

I want to tell him to go, to hurry before more wolves come, but I’ve lost too much blood. We did what we set out to do.

‘We saved him, Asena.’

‘Yes. It’s a good way to die,’ she says, as the world goes black around me.

Dimitri

When I arrived, I shifted quickly. There’s a wolf whimpering nearby, but he goes quiet as we approach. I point to one of my warriors to finish him off, seeing the blood, guts, and dead bodies littering the area in front of the thicket where my son was hiding. I can smell that these are Masuzyo's men. They found Cathal while I was fighting Masuzyo.

I slowly step forward, seeing my son holding the body of a woman in his arms. He’s sobbing over her, rocking her in his arms as if she’s his dead mother. I’ve never seen my son like this before and the image is like a punch to the gut.

Almost as startling as that, is the scent that is coming from this woman, lemongrass and lilies. She smells earthy and floral. I haven’t smelled a scent this intoxicating since…

I shake my head. This woman looks like she’s on her deathbed, if she’s not already dead.

“Cathal, what happened,” I say, dropping beside him and wrapping an arm around him protectively as I check the woman for a pulse. She’s alive, but barely. Her scent has Zev thrashing around in my head, making it hard for me to think.

“She saved me, dad. She fell out of the sky as if dropped by the Moon Goddess herself. She fought them all. They had surrounded me, and she fought them off. I killed that one,” he says, pointing to a man with a rock lodged in his throat. “But they were going to kill her. I couldn’t let them kill her, dad.”

“No, of course not. You did very well son. Are you injured?”

“No. I’m okay, because of her. She protected me dad. We have to save her,” he says, fear and worry coloring his tone.

“Hey, hey, breathe. We’re going to take care of her,” I say. I’m not sure I could leave her body even if she was dead. Zev would never allow it.

‘We have to get to Masuzyo, Zev.’

‘Take care of her first, Dimitri. Her and our pup, then we kill Masuzyo.’

I stand, seeing the dead body of Masuzyo’s Beta along with four other warriors. The one that my warrior killed finally shifting back to his human body now that he’s dead.

“You two, stay here and hide these bodies. I don’t want Masuzyo finding this place until we have a chance to go over it and find where this woman came from. Nico, I need you to carry Cathal back to the pack. I’ll get the woman,” I say to my Gamma before very carefully picking her up her broken body.

I can see Nico’s surprise that I’m choosing to carry a rogue woman rather than my own son, but I know my wolf and while I may not understand why this woman smells so good, I know that Zev will kill any man who touches her.

Nico shifts and I help Cathal get on his back before he takes off running. I have to stay on two legs, running with this woman in my arms which slows me significantly.

“Stay with me,” I murmur to her while I run. “You need to stay with me.”

I look over the gorgeous woman in my arms as I run. Even covered in blood and gore, she's beautiful to me. I notice that she’s much too light given her height. I can see her ribs and her hip bones jutting out from her body. Her hip has a huge gash in it and I can feel the blood dripping down my body where her hip is pressed against me. The other leg is dislocated, and her arm is severely broken. It looks like they tried to rip her arm off, and she’ll most likely have shoulder tears, if not a second dislocation. She has several other scratches and injuries that I notice aren’t healing.

Her long brown hair is matted with blood and the guts of the wolves she attacked while saving my son, but it looks like it would be silken when clean. She has high cheekbones and she’s young, several years younger than me and I’m twenty-seven.

“I’m going to take care of you, but you need to stay with me, you need to stay alive,” I say.

‘Zev, can you feel her wolf?’ I ask him.

‘She’s as weak as the woman is,’ he says, but I feel him trying to make a connection, to get the wolf to acknowledge his presence in some way.

‘Alpha, we need you!’ Sergei says in the mind link. He wouldn’t be calling me if he didn’t need me.

‘I’m almost to our pack lands. I need to take care of something, get Nico, and then I’ll be on my way. Where are you?’

“We’re outside Masuzyo’s pack. He’s got us blocked out. I’m pretty sure his Beta is still out here somewhere,’ he says.

‘His Beta’s dead. He attacked Cathal,’ I tell him.

‘Alpha, is he…’ his voice, full of fear.

‘No. Someone saved him, a rogue. But I need to make sure both of them are being looked after,’ I tell him.

‘We’ll be here, waiting for you.’

I pass the borders, mind linking the pack hospital that I have an emergency coming in fast.

‘Nico, how is Cathal?’ I ask as I run through the pack, glancing at my remaining warriors who are cleaning up the mess around the pack where our pack members or Masuzyo’s pack members are lying dead on the ground.

‘The doctor is looking him over now, but he says that he looks fine, other than some superficial scratches. I’m pretty sure they’re going to release him.’

‘Good, I’m almost there,’ I say.

When I rush through the hospital door, the team is waiting for me. I know they are busy with my pack members, but this woman needs help and she saved my son.

When I lay her down, the doctor comes rushing out, looking at her.

“This is a rogue,” he says to me, surprised.

“And you will treat her,” I order, holding Zev back as the doctor begins looking over her injuries.

“Her wolf is weak, we’ll need to take her into surgery, Alpha. It will be a couple of hours before I’ll know if she’ll survive.”

“Make sure she stays alive,” Zev growls at him. The doctor jumps but nods. I pull Zev back and turn, linking Nico to join me.

“I have to go. Masuzyo made it back to his pack. We may have more injured. Make sure you have enough staff here to assist throughout the night,” I tell him. I look at the woman once more before shifting and racing from the pack hospital.

Zev lifts his head to the sky, howling to Cathal that we'll return, howling to the pack that they are safe and howling for the woman who may or may not survive until morning.