novelraw Chapter 299: _ The Rage of a Mate
Chapter 299: _ The Rage of a Mate
Chapter 299
~Heidi’s Point Of View~
The cool night air of the balcony should have been a sanctuary, but between the scent of expensive hotel jasmine and the simmering heat of the man standing beside her, Heidi feels like she’s breathing steam.
Darien is sulking—there is no other word for it. He leans against the railing, the moonlight catching the hard, jagged lines of his jaw and the proprietary glow in his eyes. He’s been brooding for twenty minutes and it was a heavy pressure that Heidi knows all too well.
"I can’t keep doing this, Heidi. Watching you walk into a room with Morgan. Knowing Grayson has his hands on you when I’m not there. It’s not just the ’Alpha’ in me. It’s... it’s a sickness. I want to lock the doors and keep the world out. I want you to be mine, not ours." Darien growls.
Heidi sighs, stepping closer until her chest brushes his leather jacket. She reaches up, her fingers tracing the tense line of his throat. "We talked about this, Darien. The bond doesn’t give us a choice, and honestly? Neither do I. I love the chaos of you three, even when you’re being a possessive prick. We can do this. We’ve survived the Council, we’ve survived the hunters—we can survive a little jealousy."
She’s about to lean in, to kiss the scowl off his face, when the world stops.
It isn’t a sound. It isn’t a thought. It’s a physical rupture.
It feels like a hot iron poker has been driven through the center of her heart and twisted until the edges of her vision turn white. Her breath hitches, then dies in her throat. A high thin whistle of agony escapes her that makes Darien’s eyes go wide.
"Heidi? What is it? What’s wrong?"
Heidi can’t answer. Inside her, the wolf isn’t just howling; she is wailing.
It’s a sound of catastrophic loss, a jagged, burning grief that incinerates her composure. The mate-bond, that golden thread connecting her to the Bellamy brothers, has just been snapped at the end where Grayson used to be. The snap is so violent it feels like her own heart has been torn in half.
"IT’S GRAYSON, HEIDI. SOMETHING’S WRONG!" Her wolf wails.
"Something is wrong," Heidi gasps, clutching her chest, her nails digging into her skin through her shirt. "Grayson... Darien, something is horribly wrong!"
The pain is a wildfire, spreading from her chest to her limbs. Her wolf is restless, pacing the confines of her mind with a frantic, violent energy that Heidi can no longer contain. She doesn’t wait for Darien to reply. She doesn’t wait for an explanation as she turns and bolts.
She hits the hotel corridor at a dead run, her bare feet slapping against the plush carpet. She ignores the confused shouts of the guests, the blur of the lobby, the startled gasp of the concierge.
The moment her feet hit the pavement outside, she doesn’t even bother looking for a dark alley. She loses it. The shift that follows is explosive as the crack of bone and tearing fabric fills the night.
But this isn’t the silver wolf the pack knows. Driven by a primal, ancient fury and the desperate need for protection, her form swells. Her shoulders broaden, her muzzle elongates into a terrifying, heavy-set mask of war, and her fur bristles into a thick, silver-white mane.
She has shifted into a dominant Alpha-male form, a manifestation of the dual-wolf power she usually keeps under lock and key.
She doesn’t care about restraint anymore. Right now, she is a ghost of vengeance, a shimmering mountain of muscle charging through the city streets toward the scent of ash and iron.
...
The clearing had been a nightmare of black lightning and shredded meat, but Heidi had seen nothing but the boy in the center.
She remembers licking his cheek, her tongue rough and warm, waiting for that cheeky, arrogant grin to reappear. She had whined nudging his limp hand with her nose.
Wake up, you idiot. Wake up and tell me it’s a joke.
But Grayson stayed silent. Morgan had been there, sobbing and telling tales of rogues and betrayal, but Heidi hadn’t truly heard him. Her grief was louder than his wails.
She had simply leaned down, her massive jaws opening with a tenderness that defied her size, and hoisted Grayson’s body onto her back.
Now, she is sprinting.
The forest is a blur of dark green and grey. The weight of Grayson on her back is the only thing keeping her grounded. Every time his arm flops against her side, a fresh wave of rage washes over her, fueling her muscles.
Her paws hit the earth with the force of falling hammers, shattering frozen branches and kicking up clods of dirt.
Faster, she tells herself. Take him home. Take him back and make his murders pay.
By the time the border of the Duskwind pack territory looms, Heidi is no longer a sentient woman. She is a vessel for a wolf that wants to tear the sky down.
"Halt!"
Two border guards, massive wolves in their own right, step into the path. In the Duskwind pack, running through the border in a shifted state without authorization is an act of war.
"Identify yourself, stranger! Drop the cargo and—"
Heidi doesn’t halt. She doesn’t even slow down.
She lets out a roar. It’s not a howl, but a deep, chest-rattling roar that sends a flock of crows screaming into the night. She hits the first guard like a freight train.
She doesn’t drop Grayson; she compensates for his weight with a terrifying, low-center-of-gravity lunge. Her shoulder slams into the guard’s chest.
The second guard lunges for her throat, but Heidi spins, her powerful hind legs kicking out and catching him in the jaw. He flips backward, his body crashing into a cedar tree with a sickening thud.
She doesn’t kill them only because she doesn’t have the time—but they aren’t getting back up. They lie in the dirt, whining and broken, as the Alpha wolf charges past them, her fur now stained with the blood of her own pack mates.
She doesn’t care. Nothing matters but the Estate.