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Still, Kyle insisted that I not be left alone since the last time Azazel was on my territory without permission, he took advantage of my solidarity, taking over my mind and body for several months.
“What are you going on about?” I responded.
“Well, thank you for asking,” Kyle started. “Becoming a hybrid comes with a lot of benefits—bigger, faster, stronger. An all-together better warrior. And that’s all great.”
He let his gaze slide to me. “What they don’t tell you about becoming a hybrid is that you have to fucking smell it every time your alpha is thinking about mating with his luna.”
I grinned. His comments about my potent sex pheromones didn’t bother me nearly as much as they did before I had finally taken my sweet little mate.
My temper was much more manageable now. My wolf was at ease for the first time since I had become old enough to find my mate because Belle was mine in every way, shape, and form.
I had everything I had ever wanted.
But my need for her was still at an all-time high. Mating with her had only made me more insatiable.
I wanted to fuck her blind. Nonstop. Forever. To watch her face scrunch up adorably with constant orgasms. To pleasure her until she was just as addicted to me as I was to her.
I seriously doubted that need would ever go away. Kyle would soon realize that and learn to ignore it.
At least he was the only one with senses strong enough to sense it every time I was thinking about sex with my irresistible mate.
My pheromones weren’t nearly as strong as they were before, so no one besides him would be able to sense them. It was only Kyle’s burden to bear, and I was fine with that.
“Breathe through your mouth,” was the only solution I provided for him.
Kyle groaned. “I thought it would get better after the two of you finally did the hanky panky.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Guess—”
He didn’t get to finish that sentence because, at that very moment, a blinding light took over the space around us, and an invisible source slammed into my body.
It lifted me off my feet and threw me to the ground at the base of a tree. The wind was knocked out of me, and I grunted from the impact, coughing several times.
What the flying fuck was that?
I rolled to my side as I tried to get my breathing under control and groaned at the intense pain in my shoulder. And then I realized what had happened.
The invisible force field protecting Zaweth was back up. I could see the dome-like enclosure just barely visible and glistening above me.
“How the fuck…,” I murmured.
I sat up and searched for Kyle, my heart nearly stopping when I found him.
No, no, no…
I was up and sprinting over to him in less than a second and fell down to my knees next to him.
Kyle was lying on his back on the ground, unmoving, showing no signs of breathing, unseeing eyes looking up at the sky without emotion.
A deep wound, thin as if it were made by the cut of a knife, started at the top of his head and ran down the entire right side of his body, all the way to his feet in one long, gory line.
It cut through his right eye and ran down his cheek, the side of his throat, chest, stomach, and leg.
Blood pooled from him and formed a puddle around us, completely soaking my jeans and filling the air with the scent of iron and death. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie.
The force field had cut right through him. His right foot was nearly in two pieces, sliced right down the middle, severed up to his ankle where the wound morphed into a grisly flesh wound.
I had no doubt that if I were to roll him onto his stomach, the gruesome, cable-like wound would be running up his backside as well.
It created a perfect line that circled the length of him in the way that the force field appeared around him, starting at his feet and then moving upward.
“No. No. No! ” I shouted. I grabbed his shoulder, shaking him, trying to get him to move. “Kyle!” He didn’t even twitch.
I could barely bring myself to breathe. Panic speared the walls of my throat, clogging my windpipe.
If this was what the force field had done to Kyle when it was restored…then what had it done to the hundreds of pack members stationed along the border?
They were all within the area where the force field would have materialized.
“A pity,” a familiar voice said behind me. “Your beta was an irritating nuisance, but it was never my intention to kill him.”
I stood and snapped around to face the owner of the voice.
It was no surprise that Azazel Mortar stood before me, dressed casually in black slacks and a matching black button-up shirt.
His cocky grin showed off his pointed fangs, and his vivid red eyes seemed to glow ominously in the dark.
“Casualties of war, I suppose,” Azazel continued, his menacing grin expanding over the pale skin of his face. He spoke cheerfully as if he were engaging in good-natured conversation with an old friend.
All-consuming fury raced through me, taking over my every thought, my eyesight going red with crazed and fervid rage.
Azazel Mortar had just successfully killed my beta along with an unknowable number of my pack members. He had taken control of my body for months and tortured my mate.
He had made us all live in fear of him and his next move, wondering every day if it would be the one in which he would achieve his goal and finally take the throne.
But not anymore. Tonight, he would pay for his sins. Tonight, Azazel Mortar was a dead man.
With a roar, I sprang forward, advancing in a flash.
I reached for him with extended claws, intent on ripping out his organs, his tongue, and his eyes. Never his jugular though. Or his heart. No, that would be too easy.
His death would not be quick or painless—it would be excruciating and gruesome.
I would make sure he felt it when I broke each one of his bones before tearing both his arms from his body at an agonizingly slow speed and then did the same with his legs.
I wanted him to know what it was like to have his blood run from his open wounds and pool around his body, knowing he was helpless to do anything to stop it, The same way I had felt when I watched Kyle’s blood pool around him mere moments ago.
But then, just as I was about to reach Azazel, my fingers barely brushing over the fabric of his shirt, he was gone, no longer in front of me. I whirled around with another livid roar.
His dark chuckle did little to inform of his location. It sounded like he was everywhere, coming from every direction.
“Did you really think I would make it that easy, Alpha Grayson?” Azazel said, his tone mocking as his voice boomed from all around me.
He was everywhere but nowhere. His physical form was nowhere to be found.
I bared my teeth. “Come out and face me, Azazel.”
Another chuckle. “Oh, I plan to.”
The sound of rustling could be heard behind me, and I immediately turned. Azazel was leaning against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest, that infuriating smile still tugging at his lips.
I lunged for him once again and was able to reach him this time.
I had no idea how he’d managed to evade my attack from before, but it didn’t matter because I was already plunging my claws into his stomach. His red eyes widened as I began to twist them into his flesh.
And then, just like that, he was gone again. My hand was still flexed, still covered in his blood, but there was no longer anyone in front of me. I looked around in confusion.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Azazel tutted. “And here I was, thinking we had a real connection.”
I realized with a start that he was beside me now, a few feet away, watching me gleefully. And, despite my just plunging my clawed hand into his gut, he seemed to be completely unharmed.
His clothes were just as orderly as they were before, and no blood stained the fabric of his shirt.
My molars ground together. “What game are you playing, Mortar?” I demanded.
I took a slow step toward him, determined to keep him in my line of vision this time, but was abruptly stopped by another voice— Azazel’s voice, but coming from the other side of me now.
“After all those months spent sharing the same body, nearly the same consciousness, I truly had started to feel like I knew you. I may have even started to respect you.”
While this new version of Azazel—the version of him who had just spoken—
stepped forward, the one I had just been looking at was still standing to my right, watching me.
My gaze snapped back and forth between both of them. There were two of him.
Two copies of the same man standing right in front of me.
“It hurts, really.” His voice suddenly came from behind me. I whirled around, only to find another Azazel approaching, making the new count three.
There were three Azazel Mortars surrounding me. “It hurts that you’re so set on killing me,” this third version continued with a sad shake of his head.
“Although, I suppose I intend to do the same,” the version to my left said.
“My brother did always call me a hypocrite,” the Azazel at my right said. “I gather he was right.”
My attention snapped between all of them, my neck straining to keep them all in my line of sight as I realized that any one of them could attack the moment my back was turned and I faced another.
This was nearly an impossible task—especially when I heard multiple pairs of footsteps rustling the forest floor, and countless Azazel Mortars stepped out of the shadows of the trees, surrounding me.
At least forty of him formed a large circle around me, all of them sporting the same outfit, the same psychotic smile, the same bright red eyes.
Magic. It was the only explanation. Azazel was using some sort of magic to make multiple copies of himself. But I already knew that none of the versions surrounding me were the real him.
And if my theory was correct, harming these duplicates would do nothing to the real him.
I could kill them, yes—just as I had just killed the second Azazel that had appeared in front of me—but a new clone would undoubtedly appear in its place, uninjured and grinning at me.
Deciding to put my theory to the test, I shot my hand out and, using pure force, sank it into the chest of the Azazel closest to me, not hesitating to wrap it around his heart.
It was extremely satisfying to watch fear take over his expression as he realized my intentions—to rip his heart straight from his chest.
But before I got the chance to bring his miserable life to an end, he vanished into thin air, gone just like that. My hand formed a fist around nothing, still covered in his blood.
“That wasn’t very nice,” a new version of Azazel said, appearing in front of me in the same spot where the old one had stood.
His plan was clear. He recognized that he would have never been able to kill me on his own. We both knew I was bigger, faster, and stronger.
He would stand no chance, especially with the army of werewolves and vampires that I had on my side.
But he had taken care of any help I would have been able to ask for by killing all of the warriors near me when he somehow managed to put the force field back up.