aircannonsinc Don't-3
Don't-3
I pull myself to my knees and then gasp, painful inhalation, and grunt as I’m winded by a backward kick to the head that sends me reeling as a wolf jumping over knocks me for six and fastens onto Carmen with a ferocious bite. We didn’t see them coming.
She howls out in rage and pain, and claws at it latched onto her back, trying to dislodge it as I muster enough energy to help. I throw the last ball of pure energy I can pull together, and it sends it cascading off into a groaning heap mere feet away. It’s long enough for Carmen to get the better of it, and she hauls it across the leaf-strewn basin and throws it hard and furiously out of our hideaway.
We have to move. Now!
She catches my arm in her mouth, that commanding snidey tone on show again, and tugs me as hard as she can to get me going. I know she wants to put distance between Colton and me, and I don’t blame her for choosing me over the plan.
It’s only then when I have to fight gravity and the momentum of moving that I’m doing so much worse than I thought. My vision is all over the place, and I’m struggling to walk straight, my head spinning. I stumble and fall onto all fours after only a few steps forward, making an exasperated noise, unable to hide how much I’m suffering. I throw up a mouthful of blood and spit in disgust, retching on more. Carmen hesitates, looks out into the chaos, and struggles to decide what to do.
I’ll find Sierra, stay. Look, behind you, in the log. Get in and lay down. Hide. I’ll be fast, please…I beg of you…stay concealed.
This time I don’t argue. I know this is bad, and I’m losing the use of my limbs and even the sensation of my fingers and toes. I hear a soft, high-pitched tone rattling inside my brain, and the bleeding hasn’t eased up. My head’s aching, my sight’s completely out of whack, and I know something is really wrong with my mind. My wolf is writhing and whining to let her come out to help me, and I have to grip on with every ounce of willpower to stop the self-preservation kicking in to make me turn. It’s a battle in itself, draining me as fast as this new injury is doing.
Despite the sun rising high enough to warm my bones, a coldness seeps through me as I struggle to take control, and I barely manage to crawl into the fallen log Carmen guides me to. I feel like a coward having to hide, but I have no choice. The witch was right, and like this, I’m weak, no match for a wolf, especially not Colton.
I either have to accept fate and lose the lives within to save my pack, live on to keep fighting for them, or succumb to the fact that I can’t do this, and I need to retreat and hide to save my children. My pack or my babies…. that’s what this comes down to, and I can’t choose to let go of my own blood.
My heart breaks open, and the internal wracking guilt gnaws at my sanity. I’m instantly so consumed with sudden grief that when I slump into my hiding place, I fail to check around me before seeing Carmen shoot off in pursuit of my healing mother-in-law. My entire focus is on the damp earth under my flat palms as I lay on my front and shallowly breathe through the mist of my broken eyesight.
The log is ripped from around me, so sudden, in the blink of an eye, that I can’t react. I grip the fallen debris below my fingers in haste to cling on as I’m trundled out like a floppy rag onto the ground into a messy heap and discarded. The huge black silhouette of my worst nightmare, and best dream, towers over me, and he snarls in the satisfaction that he has found his prey once more.
I lift my frail hand to muster what power I have left, and it dies on me completely, ebbing away like a flickering flame caught in an airless room.
I’m seeing two of him, my head aching, my throat dry, and my limbs no longer functioning. Heaped in an awkward position on uneven ground because I’m so exhausted that I can’t move myself. My gift, even as a wolf, has given up on me, the will to turn is all that claws inside, and I need to choose how this goes.
Save myself…. Kill them.
Let him take me, we die anyway, yet the pack may survive.
Could I live on with the knowledge I took my babies' lives? Could I look him in the eye and watch him destroy himself with the guilt that he did this when the spell finally breaks?
No. I can’t. I’d rather die than live with his pain, mine, and their loss.
Colton lifts me by the throat, choking me with his pulsating strength, even without gripping hard. Pulling my lifeless body to him like I’m a mere scrap of rubbish. My eyes mist over as emotions consume me, and I stare helplessly into the dead and empty eyes of the man I love more than anything in the world. It’s his body, his wolf, but he’s not in there anymore, and nothing I do will change it. Physically he’s hurting me as he presses just a little, but emotionally he’s destroying the last ounces of my soul, and I begin to sob like a broken child. Pain coursing through every nerve ending.
I know this is it…. My life, or theirs, and how this is looking, they will die anyway if I don’t turn because Colton isn’t about to stop. My wolf can’t defeat him, either. I must face the reality of this.
I weakly grab at his wrists, hating his familiar warmth, the feel of his fur, and the expanse of muscle beneath. Aching and yearning for him while being petrified of who he is in front of me. It’s like he senses I have nothing left to fight with, and that snarl turns to a toothy smug growl, showing his satisfaction that I’m not fighting him anymore. He takes pleasure from seeing my tears mingled with my blood, spreading across my mouth and chin, and the pitiful sodden expression of lost hope.
“Colton, please…. It’s me… Lorey…. Your mate. Don’t.” I know begging is futile, but my body is too weak to try. My heart refuses to give up on him, and as he starts to choke the life out of me a little more, he holds me up to admire what he’s about to kill. My voice is all I have left, even while the claws constrict around my neck, closing my airways and disabling my breathing ability. I grasp at his fingers with both hands to try and hold him back and gasp when he tightens with a flex to show how easy this will be.
There’s nothing behind those eyes, no life, no acknowledgment of who I am, and I pull everything in me to try and deflect one last time. Only managing a slight push of air at his face barely moves him. He seems amused by it, my feeble attempts, and drops me in a heap on the ground as though mocking me by delaying the urge to end me. My body falls, bashing rocks and sticks scattered across the ground as I slump into uselessness submission. I’ve never been so ashamed of myself.
I killed a bear on my own, for gods’ sakes…. It’s not a hard choice. Turn and live, turn and fight him. Turn and live with knowing I ended the life of our children before they even had a chance to exist. I just need to let go of them, save my people, be brave, be a Luna, and maybe one day, we can try again. Once he comes back to me…once…… once……
“I can’t do it!” I cry out in anguish. Loud and hoarse as it burns my throat and my soul screams in pain. Sobbing his way with a broken expression, focused on his empty eyes, even though he has no idea what I’m talking about. I wail in broken despair, pushing myself down to facepalm the earth, burying my face in the rotting leaves of the dirty musky soil. I know he’s standing over me, toying with his little mouse, and enjoying the slow build to kill me, but it feels like I’m already dead inside.
I can’t save myself and end them, even if he kills us all. My wolf isn’t even trying to protect me anymore because she knows that saving me will kill me in other ways. I’ll never recover mentally or emotionally if I choose to put my life over theirs. I’m their mother. I can’t be the one to decide to discard them. They’re innocent, and they never asked me to be created. They’re the product of our love, our bond, and our time together, and I won’t ever be able to look him in the face again if I lose them to save him. I love them both already, as much as I love him. Maybe more.
His hot breath and panting raspy heat hit me right by my ear as he bends low and growls into the left side of my head. My body goosebumps as a cold wave turns my skin to ice. I freeze, hold my breath, and tremble at his sudden proximity, still affected by him but with growing fear. There’s a moment of stillness, a slight silent pause, where I wonder if maybe he doubts the instinct to deliver the final blow and stupidly thinks he won’t do it for a moment. Maybe there’s an ounce of him still inside his body fighting to save me. I grasp the tiny inkling of hope that our love is stronger than a spell.
I’m wrong
Colton thrusts a clawed clenched grab into my right shoulder with a fierce impale, tossing me aside, and sends me, splaying back ten feet with the impact. I fly through the air, everything slowing down into surreal disbelief and any chance of finding my strength evades me. He sends my lifeless body into the trees without a way to shield myself, so I’m hammered by the impact, with a crunch and cracking. My ribs shatter in the process, piercing soft flesh and pulsing vitality behind my armor. I can’t even cry out. Such is the massive blow to my body, the scourge of immense hurt, which stuns me into numb, uselessness.
The collision into hardwood has completely knocked the wind out of me. My body plate is dented and warped as I slide down from mid-way up the trunk and crumple into a broken mess at the base of a shady oak tree that broke my flight. Crunching my splintered body into unbearable pain. To lay in a mangled heap
Unable to do anything except whine under my breath, I claw weakly at the dirt around me, trying like crazy to inflate my lungs even an inch. My shoulder’s wet from a severe set of puncture wounds extending up onto the side of my neck, and I know it’s probably my jugular making the flow so intense. The throbbing comes from there, in time to my low and weak heartbeat, pulsing out my blood with every thud.
I drag and claw at the dirt to crawl, but I’m dying, and it’s useless. I’m bleeding fast and hard and have another two claw marks across my arm where he must have cut me with his throwing blow. I raise my head with all I have left and catch sight of him walking toward me, slowly, predator-like, while my blood drips from his paw and claws like a red beacon that signals his betrayal.
As he gets within a foot of me, my eyes fall level with the huge, clawed feet coming to my face. I don’t know why, but he chooses this moment to turn semi-human and the sudden sight of that tanned skin on normal feet, and strong legs standing so close, gives me the energy to take one last look at him. A slight hope that Leyanne has won, and maybe he’s turning because my mate has returned to me.
My eyes rise to his, and I almost cry out loud once more when I still see only the deadly black obsidian of his pupils in a human face that’s sneering my way in total disdain. However, his teeth and claws are still out and waiting.
It seems he’s chosen to toy with me until the end and kill me in his weaker form. To show how pitiful I am. He doesn’t need to be a wolf to do this. I’m not resisting. There’s no glory if he’s four times the size of me.
“Colton, please… don’t,” I beg breathlessly, forcing the words out and crying silently as the inevitable becomes clear and a memory hits me full force in the face.
Colton’s dream… was a vision! It was this moment. He saw my death – our death because I wouldn’t turn. And now I know why.
He knew it, felt it, and his dreams warned him of all that was coming. If only we took heed and never ventured into the forest again.
My hand slides to my abdomen, almost like a final decision that their life means more than mine, despite knowing they will die too…. I just can’t be the one to end theirs. Colton would never forgive himself, and neither would I. It would be our undoing.
He walks forward, slowly, with no care in the world, taking his time, and I screw my eyes shut and start to whimper under my breath as I accept fate. My body is broken, and my blood is seeping out at a rate that I know I don’t have much time left.
“I’m sorry.”
I failed them all.
My pack, Sierra, Meadow…My children……
My mate.
“I’m so sorry.”