An Alpha's Claim

Night

He didn't stay away from her for long.

J was hyper aware of his presence as she ran through the forest with her...with her pack.

Too much had happened too quickly, her mind was barely keeping up.

With every pounding step she took, the reverberations from the floor seemed to shake more memories lose. Her eyes didn't see the forest they ran through, instead they showed her clips of her past, each more brutal than the last. The good, the bad, the one's too painful to acknowledge...her regrets all laid out for her to see.

Her mate. Logan was her mate. How it was possible, she wasn't sure, but her wolf was adamant - and though she didn't want to admit it, it felt different to last time. Different to-to....him.

She could barely bring herself to think of it, couldn't form his name even in her mind, so afraid that if she did the guilt might drown her.

She'd once been blessed with a mate and in response her wolf had killed him. Now, when she was again blessed with the prospect of a mate, she was too broken to deserve him and he was too broken to want her.

Pain churned in her gut. Leaving was the right choice, but it didn't make it any easier, even if he had told her to go, forced her to leave him.

'Because he knows he's sick.' Her wolf supplied. Nausea swept through her.

That night they made camp in the depths of the forest. A smoky fire burned brightly, her new pack huddled around it. This was the longest she'd spent with them - the first time she'd truly looked at them.

They were weak, lacking food, maybe she'd been cruel not to accept them sooner. Maybe she'd been punishing them.

Most faces she remembered, back from the days of being hunted and attacked. Not many remained from Caine's original pack, but they'd still hunted the Rootbridge pack relentlessly.

They glared at her from the sides of their eyes, as unhappy about being her pack as she was about being their alpha. The newer wolves, the ones not wholly responsible for her nightmares, they were tense - not missing her simmering anger.

As, one by one, they began to settle down for sleep, J set off deeper into the forest. Though she may be their alpha, she didn't trust them not to slit her throat in her sleep.

Finding a small inlet about a mile from the others, J ducked under the cover of ivy tendrils and shucked her jacket off. It was slightly warmer in the little spot she'd found. A large rock buried in the ground, rose above her, a little shelter carved out by either time or weather.

Using her jacket as a pillow, J settled down into a restless sleep.

*

She woke on a scream.

Terror tearing through her being at the blood. It was everywhere, coating her arms and face. The air was sticky, heavy beneath the cloying stench of iron.

Her chest was tearing in two. He was dead, she'd killed him and now he lay beneath her - what was left anyway. His face, she hadn't harmed his face, not that she dared look. She knew his eyes would be wide, knew the glazed, hollow look that she would meet. She'd seen this scene before.

She screamed again as a flash of fur and claws dove for her, holding her down, suffocating her, killing her.

She fought against it, fought against the hands that bound. She screamed again and someone whispered words, words so far away she couldn't hear their meaning.

Her hands were once more covered in blood, the scene clearing to show her her own destruction. She risked a look, a glance.

His body lay in tatters, deep gouges and bites littering what was left of his torso. Her wolf had done her job, her wolf had taken her time. She should have known she couldn't trust the beast that lived beneath her skin, should have known that she was too much of a monster to deserve a happy ending.