Violet

He smelled the same.

He was here. He was real, and I did not understand why I was so happy to see him even though it made my grief worse.

"I’m here," he murmured against my hair. "I’m here. You’re safe."

His hand pressed against the back of my head, holding me against him, and I felt his chest heave with a breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside him for a very long time.

I felt everything through the bond. His relief, so overwhelming it was almost violent. His fury at what had been done to me, barely leashed and burning beneath the surface. His anguish at seeing me like this. And beneath it all, a desperate, aching tenderness that made my chest crack open.

He pulled back just enough to look at me again. His thumb brushed a tear from my cheek, smearing it through the dried blood on my skin.

Then his eyes dropped to Bei.

The shift in his expression was immediate. The tenderness didn’t disappear, but something heavier settled over it. He stared at Bei’s still face, at the wounds across her back, at the dark stain beneath her.

His jaw tightened.

He looked back at me, and I saw the question in his eyes. The guilt. Bei had been one of his wolves. She had been sent to protect me, and she had died doing it.

"I’m sorry," I whispered.

He shook his head once, his hand still cradling my face. "Don’t."

He didn’t say anything else. He just pulled me close again, one arm around my shoulders, the other hand resting gently on Bei’s hair. As if he could hold us both.

We stayed like that for a long moment.

Then I noticed more wolves approaching from the distance. A lot of them, and they were moving fast. But among them, threading through the edges of my returning awareness like a second heartbeat was Rowan.

I lifted my head from Kael’s chest.

Rowan’s wolf form burst over the nearest dune, followed by a small team of wolves flanking him. He was running at full speed, and even from this distance I could feel the panic radiating off him through our bond.

He saw the clearing, the bodies, and the blood.

He saw me in Kael’s arms.

He shifted from his wolf form mid-stride, stumbling briefly as his human legs caught him. He didn’t stop moving.

"Violet!" His voice was raw with terror. His eyes were wide, scanning me, the wounds, the blood. He was heading straight for us, his face twisted with a fear so naked it made my chest ache.

I opened my mouth to call back to him.

Kael moved first.

He released me so suddenly I nearly fell sideways. One moment he was holding me, the next he was on his feet and crossing the sand with a speed that made the air ripple.

His fist connected with Rowan’s jaw before I even understood what was happening.

The impact was brutal. Rowan’s head snapped to the side and he staggered, his feet skidding through the sand. For one stunned second, he just stood there, his hand rising to his face, shock written across his features.

Then his eyes hardened.

What was this?

What was happening?

Rowan’s fist slammed into Kael’s stomach with a force that doubled him over. Kael recovered instantly, driving his shoulder into Rowan’s chest, and they both crashed to the ground.

"What is wrong with you?!" I screamed.

They weren’t listening to me.

Kael’s wolf exploded from his skin, massive and dark, his jaws snapping at Rowan’s throat. Rowan shifted half a second later, his brown wolf slamming into Kael’s with a snarl that shook the air.

The wolves around them scattered. Rowan’s team and Kael’s companion stumbled back, their eyes wide, and their bodies pressed low in instinctive submission. None of them moved to interfere. No one even dared step between two Supreme Alphas.

And why were they fighting?!

They tore into each other.

Teeth flashed, their bodies collided and at some point, blood was already being drawn.

I stared, my mouth hanging open.

Bei was dead.

Bei was dead and cold in my lap, and I was covered in the blood of a monster I had torn apart with my bare hands, and these two absolute idiots were trying to kill each other.

All for what?!

And why had Kael lunged like that?!

Hot white rage burned through my chest. I laid Bei down gently and stood up.

My legs screamed in protest, and my ribs ground together with every breath as I forced my way to them. The wounds across my body slightly stung but I still lunged.

They were a blur of fur and teeth, rolling across the sand, each one trying to tear the other apart. Kael had Rowan pinned, his jaws inches from Rowan’s throat. Rowan twisted free and lunged, his teeth catching Kael’s shoulder.

I stepped between them.

"STOP!"

The scream ripped from my throat with everything I had left. My syzygy, weak and fractured as it was, surged outward in a ragged pulse that hit them both like a wall.

They froze.

I stood between them, shaking, bleeding, my chest heaving with ragged breaths.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

My voice broke on the last word, cracking into something between a scream and a sob. Tears were streaming down my face and I couldn’t see properly and I didn’t care.

"She’s dead!" I pointed blindly behind me, toward Bei’s body. "She’s DEAD! And you’re fighting?! Right now?! This is what you’re doing RIGHT NOW?!"

They had both shifted back to human form, staring at me with shame in their eyes as if they suddenly realised just where they was.

Blood ran from a slight wound on Kael’s shoulder and a bruise was darkening across Rowan’s jaw, his lip split and bleeding.

"I just—" I choked, my hands balling into fists at my sides. "What is the meaning of this?! This is stupid—the both of you—and Bei is—she’s—"

The words were coming out wrong. They were jumbled, incoherent, and tripping over each other as grief and fury and exhaustion tangled together until I couldn’t tell which was which.

"Both of you—I can’t—this isn’t—"

My vision tilted.

The ground rushed up to meet me.

The last thing I felt was arms catching me before the world went black.