Her Savior Alpha
Chapter 48

Reily

Every time I moved the heat seared through my body reminding me of Vera. The bitch had damn near sliced me to smithereens. I had to have part of my intestines sewed back together because she’d cut through one of them and I was throwing up for days on end. I didn’t tell the others, but I feared for my life. I saw my whole world black out when the Lycan was on top of me. The sheer weight on my chest was unbearable. At the time I attempted to shake out of her grasp, but the hold I was caged in wouldn’t allow it. Forever burned into my memory was the image of a large white beast with its paws on my chest, frightenedly majestic and equally deadly with its teeth dripping with saliva. The curl of snout snarling ready to devour anything in its wake.

I shook off the memory as a rip roaring pain crossed over my ribs. “Fuck!” My face was a mess too. Scars lined my cheeks. Two large deep angry scratches where Vera caught me. In the heat of the moment I thought I missed the swipe, but she caught me and blood had gushed out onto the forest floor. The claws of her wolf were unmistakably sharp like razor blades. Touching the side of my cheek a sad feeling moved through me in waves. Vera had broken me like I’d broken her.

I raised my arm briefly not wanting to lift it too far otherwise a stench would come out of it. I hadn’t showered in days and Gina had the nerve to say something to me. Didn’t she know I’d nearly lost my life? What was a little funky armpit to her? She’d shoved me over when she came to stay the last time.

“Ewww, your pits smell Reily, you need to wash them. That’s so gross.”

“I was almost pronounced dead and you want to talk about my armpits?”

“Yes, I want to talk about your armpits. They are totally gross.”

I felt Gina didn’t love me anymore. She didn’t understand. Her wounds weren’t as bad as mine, she’d been sliced a few times, but the brunt of the punishment had been reserved for me.

Zion, Mathew, Kory and Darren had all recovered and were walking around freely while I limped everywhere. I wished it was them and not me. Now I knew why Vera recovered so quickly from her wounds, why all the scarring she had from years of countless beatings had all but disappeared.

Time to get up and at least shower. That was the least I could do. I shook my wavy dirty blonde hair as dandruff flakes flew to the ground. Shit. I had to shampoo my hair too. Normally Gina would be by my side to help me. It was our thing in the shower. I would wash her hair and she would wash mine and normally we would make love after that. I let the pleasurable memory go as I shuffled like an old grandpa wolf to the shower turning on the water. I had a large bandage over the majority of my torso. It had been secured so as not to get wet in the shower. I touched my side as I let the water wash away some of the grit and grime from the last few days. The healer was due to change it later today so I at least didn’t want to funk the nurse out once I arrived to the mess hall.

Where had Vera gone to was anybody’s guess. I’d laid awake deciding she would be eaten alive by Dane. Never in my life did I think she would have the cunning to run. To make it beyond the gates she should have left long ago. For so long she frustrated me because she sat there and took the beatings. She didn’t even try to do anything about them, she just allowed me to keep punching and kicking her ass on a weekly basis. Handling the grief from losing my parents wasn’t something I dealt with well. I wiped the smeared mirror to look back at myself. What I saw was a shell of myself. Vera had done a good job of knocking a few teeth around and I wanted to kill her for it. One of them had already turned an ugly shade of grey which meant the tooth itself was dead. Now I would have to see the dentist and have them pull it out. That’s the last thing I wanted to do.

I got myself to the kitchen and made myself a shake. Barely. I found myself about to call out to Gina, “Gi- two fucks. This is bullshit.” With great difficulty I managed to pour myself a smoothie. Mine tasted nothing like the one Gina made. It was gluggly and full fruit pulp. I screwed up my nose, but at least I didn’t smell so terrible now. Making my way to the barracks proved to be difficult, but I wanted to man up and recover quickly. The faster I got back on the battlefield to search for Vera the better.

Gina crossed my path in the mess hall. Her wary eyes flashed me the warmest smile I’d seen from her in a couple of days. “How’s my babe?” She leaned forward as she normally did rubbing her hand on my chest. Annoyed that she left me to fend for myself when I literally fought Vera off to be with her, I pushed her hand away.

“Get off me Gina. I had to make my own smoothie, tasted shit too,” I spat out.

Gina chortled at my surliness and kissed me softly on the cheek and nipped at the side of my ear.

“Is my little wolf mad? Come on, I will go home with you tonight, don’t worry about it. You smell damn good today, better than you smelling like horse manure like you did yesterday. Might need a scratch and sniff test tomorrow,” she giggled, but kept teasing my lips with her butterfly kisses that I had a soft spot for. I couldn’t help but crack a smile. Gina never smelt bad. She smelled like strawberries and cream, I never knew all the potions and creams women put on, but I liked them all.

“Alright. Stop it. Where’s the crew?”

Gina had a hard time looking me in the eye so I lifted her chin with my fingers. “They’re in the mess hall and they’re talking. I think there’s something up... I don’t know what though, don’t quot me.”

“Don’t quote me? I’m going in there.” I pushed past her as I stormed into the mess hall where all the crew who’d been near mauled to death were sitting and whispering along with each other.

“Don’t we all look like a bunch of fucking misfits. Look at us. Beaten by a woman wolf.”

All of them looked back at me sheepishly and stopped talking. “Not just any wolf a Lycan dude, come on give us a break. Look at you. You’re still alive, you oughta be happy.” Mathew rolled his eyes and all my bottled up anger spilled over.

“The fuck I am! You stupid idiot! You were supposed to block her from getting to me. You failed the assignment.” I blew his mousy brown hair back with the statement as he just sat there idly as silence ensued. A slow smirk started to rise on Mathew’s face and I saw nothing funny, nothing funny at all.

“You could use a breath mint dude. Your have dragon’s breath, it’s a thousand dicks in your mouth or something.” The whole table broke out in laughter as I cupped my hand and breathed into it. Fuck. My breath did smell bad. Shit. Now I’d become the laughing stock of my crew and I had to restore order. I had no time to reply as the chuckly ceased as Dane walked in and the room stopped.

Dane called me over with one finger as he beckoned for me to join him. “Reily. Come. I have an important task for you to carry out.” I looked around me to see if he might be talking to any other wolves, but nope his cold, lifeless and at this point severely deranged eyes were looking back at me. He grabbed me by the rest as I lunged forward, I felt my stitches ripping apart as I called out.

“Gahh! Dane, take it easy.” Hushed whispers sounded out around the room as he forced me into the seat. I thought I stunk, but Dane was on a whole other level. He smelled like dead fish and festy balls. Gina should have given him the award in the bad smell department. I tried to look at him, but not look at him. His hair was straggly and his forehead was perspiring with buckets of sweat. He had big sweat patches under his arms and he was normally polished as a man, but his shirt was hanging out of his pants and the buttons were lopsided with his shirt open in the middle revealing his stomach. No overhang there, Dane kept in shape which is why he was able to bring newer wolves to their knees during fights. I stared up at him as he pulled something out of his pocket.

The crowd of around ten wolves that were in the lunchroom must have seen the item before me because they gasped loudly. “Dane! No, what are you doing?” I squealed.

Dane had control over my hand on the oak table, he had it pinned in position as a droplet of sweat fell onto it. “We need Vera back,” he said with a hoarse, rasp as he dropped the meat cleaver on my hand swinging high like an axe chopping wood. No time to move. No time for any reaction other than a blackout. Dane slammed the cleaver down on my hand severing it in one blow as a pain to end all others shot through my arm and raced like a straight shot to my feet. Immediately I started to sweat as blood spilled into the crevices of the oak and I heard Gina scream.

“You- you, you chopped off my hand. Dane...” The room was blurring and I was fading in and out of consciousness. I grabbed my hand as I looked at the straggled cut hand tendons dangling.

Dane pointed to it as I writhed in pain rocking back and forth. He was looking back at me with a delirious grin. “Ha! Now she will come. Now. She will come back. She won’t leave her precious one Thelma. She will come. Thank you for your service Reily. I do believe you have redeemed yourself.” Dane slapped me on the back as I screamed in pain and the nurse came racing in. The pins and needles along with the shock of the unregisterable pain levels sent me into deep waves of shock as I started to shake uncontrollably. I had no control over my faculties, but in the fog of my deepest pain I could still hear my estranged mates voice via mindlink.

Are you okay Reily? Omg I can feel your pain. What have you done. What have you done.

I dug a little deeper and reached back to her as the nurses dragged me out of the chair and I flopped to the ground. Come back Vera. Come back... please.

I narrowly avoided falling flat on my face as I heard the booming voice of my brother.

“Dane, what have you done, you old dumb bastard!” The walls, they looked so pretty, I’d never noticed how pretty the walls were. Who painted them?

“Come on, we need to get him out of here.” The nurses were talking, I was sure they were speaking. Or maybe I dreamt the whole thing up, maybe my arm was rightfully attached to my arm. Surely it was. It couldn’t be that I’d lost a limb. Was that my blood smeared all over the ground?

Clive

I got wind of Dane’s crazed mistake from one of the new trainees Clara. She was a redhead, fast on her feet with some of the same attributes in terms of speed that reminded me of Vera. By the time she reached me on the training field with sharp breaths she had nothing left in her lungs.

“Come, come on. You have to- you have to come to the mess hall. Dane- your brother. Come, not much time.”

Perplexed by her jumbled message I followed her anyway running with her. I knew it was bad due to the pace she ran at. I jogged as we crossed the field and I ran into the mess hall and into a bloody circus. Blood was dripping all over the ground and Dane was standing in the corner laughing to myself. Nobody else was laughing with him. It was just him cackling soundly in his own world. My brother was being dragged forward by two nurses as the bright red arterial blood continued its trail through to the medic room.

The hall was now full of wolves as Dane climbed the oak bench table and stood on top of it shouting at the top of his lungs. “We are the Mount Hunter pack, and we will not be defeated. Each and every one of you will be requested to rise for battle. I will set the precedent, that I will not be defied! Vera Hunter is to be taken down. She will come now. She has connected via mindlink with Reily. She will come, as she values and pities her little friends.” I realized what was going on. Dane had cut off my brother’s hand in order to bring Vera to him. He was a sick son of a bitch, and I was at a crossroads between my dear friend Vera, my messed up brother and the pack itself. I had no choice, but pretend to fight. In the back of my mind I remembered what Vera’s parents did for me and how they selected me to stay alive. I would never forget it.

Vera

A searing shot of hot liquid made my arm numb. So numb and tight with thousands of pins and needles running through it that I had to stop in the middle of dinner. “What is this?” More of a rhetorical question as Archer wouldn’t have the answers for this one. Steel gray eyes of panic stared back at mine.

“Vera, what is it?” I howled in pain as the feeling got worse.

“Shit.” I feel forward to the floor. “It’s Reily, he’s in trouble. He’s in deep pain. Dane, it’s Dane, he’s a maniac. Cut off hand.” I felt a whoosh of energy shoot through my bloodstream and all of a sudden things began to float around the room. “They must have given him some medication. He’s floating now.” I opened my eyes wide. “Dane hurt him badly, there’s something wrong with that man. I’m going to go back. I can’t leave Thelma there with a crazed man. She won’t make it.”

Archer grabbed my hands. “Vera, don’t go back there, please, don’t go back. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Let Clive fix it. Let him deal with the situation.”

“No, no I can’t. I have to go back. I can’t leave her there. Dane will hurt her. Archer, please understand.”

“I don’t, but okay. See, training was a good idea. Don’t forget the skills we’ve worked on here.” Archer grazed my lips with his mouth as I prepared for the biggest fight of my life. I was about to walk into the wolf’s den, and it would be a miracle if I survived.