Hunted

Chapter 33

Chapter 33-Azul'a POV

Chaos erupted as soon as I fired that first shot. The sudden influx of shouting was enough to make my ears ring. My hands trembled slightly at the stench of death. I breathed in deeply through my mouth, trying to regain my focus.

                But that smell. It roused the beast inside me, taunting it with what it loved the most. It began roaring inside me, viciously attacking my conscious mind in an attempt to escape.

                My whole body trembled as I fought it back with everything I had. I couldn’t afford to do this now! Amias needed me. The pack needed me. And damn it that had begun to mean something to me!

                They weren’t the cold-hearted bastards I’d made them out to be. They’d just been following orders. Their intentions hadn’t been malicious; they were mere puppets. My mind flashed back to my conversation with Mahina. It seemed like moons ago now and I felt like I’d matured more in this past week or so than I ever could in ten summers.

 It was their Alpha. Their old Alpha, I mentally corrected.  He was the one at fault. He was the one with bad intentions. He was the one who should be punished. And punished he was. It wasn’t fair for anyone else to suffer for his crimes.

                A lightness settled over my shoulders then as I realised that I couldn’t blame Amias. For anything. It seemed foolish now to have even thought to place the guilt on his shoulders in the first place. After all, they’d taken my location straight from his head; Amias would never deliberately betray me like that. What made it worse was that he’d just sat back and taken all of my insults, my accusations. Scolding shame washed over me.

                I needed to make it up to him. I needed to tell him how sorry I was. And I was going to start by beating this fucking beast back into submission.

                It was a simple enough plan, but the beast had other ideas. Every metaphorical punch I dished out was returned twice as hard until I could barely stand. My head was spinning, my vision blurring, my ears ringing.

                My bow fell from my grasp, and it was only then that I realised that despite my inner turmoil, I had continued firing off shots. A cold sweat broke out across my body as I battled the beast with everything I had. Fear overwhelmed me. What if I wasn’t strong enough to defeat it without Amias?

                My gaze sought him out just in time to see a huge sandy brown wolf crash straight into him. My heart seemed to catch in my throat before kicking into overdrive as Amias flew through the air and collided with a tree. There was a sickening crack that had bile rising in my throat. When he groaned and sat up, relief rushed through me, so strong that it momentarily kept the beast at bay.

                But when Amias grabbed at his shoulder and snapped it back into place, a blistering rage tore through me. How dare they hurt my mate, I seethed.

                “Give me control and I’ll make them pay,” the beast whispered inside me. “They’ll never touch what’s ours again.”

                For one dark moment, I considered it. I knew what would happen if I let it take over: death. Pure and simple. And in that second, I craved the death of that sandy brown wolf more than I craved the air in my lungs.

                But then I shook my head. No, I couldn’t do this! If I let the beast take over, who knew if I’d be able to get control once again? It was a strong son of a bitch, I’d give it that.