The Rejected Alpha

Chapter 110

A voice entered my head. It wasn't the voice I'd been longing to hear, but a wonderful voice nonetheless.

A voice that had come with hope.

Sorayah's frantic voice entered my head through a mind link and I didn't even have time to wonder how she was doing that.

Alpha! You need to do something! I don't know how much longer we can keep this up. We are already growing weary.

Sorayah! I'm trying! I'm really trying to stand back up, but I can't. I need more time.

I was lying down, almost helpless and I hated it.

This isn't what I planned, this isn't how things were supposed to go down.

No one else was supposed to get hurt.

As I looked out at the rest of the pack, I could feel each and everyone's pain register independently in my core. I felt my pain, I felt the collective pain and all the individual aches. They were in pain, suffering under the mind cleansing brain melt, courtesy of Sorayah.

They were all here, suffering, for me.

At what point will all this end?
At what point really does this become a lost cause?

Right then I had a harder time fighting the voices in my head than actually trying to heal myself, get back up on my feet and fight the voices outside.

I don't know how much time we can give you, and from the looks of it, the witches seem to have recovered. They're chanting now.

And right on cue I started hearing them. Their eerie mutterings had started again. Vaguely sounding like distant rumbling of a swarm of bees. Not fully coherent but the vibrations making your ear tingle and not in a good way.
But I couldn't really focus on that right now. I had to get up and end this.

We have to get up!

I'm trying!

Waiting for my body to finish healing was taking far too long.
Time that we didn't have much of was just being wasted.
We need to shift, I'll heal faster in wolf form.

Do you really think we can shift right now?

I didn't know if I had enough energy to complete a shift but I had to try.

Willing a shift at this moment knocked the air out of me resulting in a fit of coughs that took out even more energy from me. My body wasn't physically able to handle both things at the same time, a healing and a transformation, the result; a very painful surge of rhythmic pulsations in my body, like it was protesting.
And trying to punish me.
Succeeding at punishing me.

But I didn't care, the pain would be temporary. I needed to think of something else. One way or another, I needed to shift.

I need to try again.

Out of periphery I saw Sorayah drop her arms and stop her own chanting.
My eyes automatically fell shut. I had no energy left to keep my head up or watch anything. I could feel myself lose the battle and I hated it.

I'm supposed to be this big huge scary mythical creature, powerful enough to attack armies, and now look at me, look at us, just lying and writhing in the dirt, not being able to move a muscle.

Not being able to do anything. Not being able to save them, save myself, save him.

I only wanted to see Damon but he wasn't even moving. He stopped moving what felt like eons ago. I knew what was happening but I didn't want to accept it or even think about it. It seemed like I was losing the fight on the outside, but I was losing my internal battle as well.