Chapter 95

Justin POV

My warriors wiped out the rest of Fiery Cross in no time. The Luna died quickly, not as she had deserved, but I couldn’t ask them to torture her like she tortured my mate for her entire life.

I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to be so vengeful. I just did.

My warriors outnumbered the entire pack left under my mate’s father’s rule and now he lays in the living room, his breath stilling as he bleeds out from a gash along his entire chest and sides. He wasn’t going to heal from that wound—that’s for sure.

I took out a small vial of wolfsbane from my pocket. I hadn’t even needed to shift to help in the fight. It was over before it even began.

I tipped the bottle sideways, watching the thick, syrupy liquid dare to drip out of the vial and onto his chest.

“You’re too late,” he spat, speaking through his gritted, blood-stained teeth. “She’s already dead.”

I looked to the Fae, shaking his head as he frantically looked for my mate around the house. “She can’t be. It was only a few days ago. She is still terribly hurt, but he wouldn’t kill her so fast. He wanted her to suffer.”

“She did suffer,” her father growled. “She suffered all the way up to her pathetic, worthless death.”

I tipped the bottle upside-down, watching the wolfsbane eat away at him like acid. He didn’t scream or squirm—he accepted death pretty easily.

With that out of the way, I followed Russo toward the basement. I knew Helen’s living conditions were pretty baren, given the first time I walked into this house to show them I was her new mate.

I never pictured things being this terrible.

She laid on the floor in the middle of the basement, bloody and bruised—unrecognizable.

I looked to Russo in hopeful concern. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe, well—I didn’t know what to think. Everything when hazy when I saw Randy.

He was pinned to the chest of a warrior, the only scum left from Fiery Cross and he held a long, sharp blade to my Beta’s throat. I jumped down the rest of the steps, Russo rushing to Helen’s unconscious side, while I eyed the warrior who was far braver than he should be right now.

My warriors stayed upstairs at my will, holding my hand up for them to stop. I’d need this wolf to think he would get out of here alive, even if everyone knew he wouldn’t.

“She’s breathing,” Russo mumbled, brushing back Helen’s matted, bloody hair. “Moon goddess, thank you. She’s breathing.”

“Thank you?” the warrior spit, laughing as the blade came closer to Randy’s neck. “Why would you be thankful? She’s on our side after all. She tried to kill the Last Lycan. She would have been successful too, but like everything else in her life, she fucked it up.”

I snarled away his words. No matter my anger towards my mate, I wouldn’t let him disparage her name. She betrayed me. Only I have the right to hate her for that.

“You should set down the knife, warrior. You need to learn when you’re outnumbered.”

“You leave the pack grounds, I’ll let your Beta go,” he replied. “That’s the deal.”

Russo mumbled under his breath, reaching under my mate’s naked, wounded body. “She’s not looking well, Justin. She needs help, now. She needs a healer.”

“She stays,” the warrior purred. “She is mine now. You leave her here and I release the Beta unharmed. Otherwise, everyone dies.”

I rolled my eyes at his pathetic threat. “I’ve killed the entire pack—including the Alpha and Luna. You think I’m scared of you, wolf? I’m taking my mate home. You will die here tonight.”

He flinched with the blade, and at the first sign of blood against Randy’s throat, I charged forward. I pounced and my Lycan’s claws came out. Randy ducked in time to miss getting slashed with my nails.

The warrior fell to the floor in a bloody, wounded mess.

Randy held his neck but gave me a nod. The cut wasn’t deep enough to kill him.

The only issue now was if Helen’s wounds were deep enough to kill her.

My Beta and the Fae both knelt to her aid. She didn’t even look like herself. Her curls were tangled and black with old blood. She smelled of the warrior who laid dead now and of her father, the tools littered around the basement stained with her blood.

I nudged a whip with my boot, and a stick laying nearby, dripping with her fresh crimson.

“She was tortured,” Randy growled, ripping off Russo’s jacket and laying it over my mates naked body.

It didn’t matter that she was naked, either. The blood and the bruises made it hard to identify anything worth attraction left on her surface. She was still my mate, though. My Lycan yearned to have her back in our arms.

I turned my back to her all the same, fighting the urge to pity her.

Russo snarled at my movement. “She is your mate, Lycan! Help her.”

I bowed my head in defeat. To heal her, I’d have to make love to her.

I don’t have any love inside of me for this backstabbing mate. Not anymore.

“I can’t,” I said simply. “We will take her to True Mates and have Gwen look at her. If she makes it, that’s fine.”

“And if she dies?” Randy snapped. “What then?”

I shrugged. “Then the Last Lycan will forever stay, the Last Lycan.”

“Do you hear yourself? How dare you do this to her after everything you’ve been through with her!” Randy was up now, shoving me forward but still, I couldn’t look at my mate on the ground. Randy’s eyes brimmed with hatred and heat. “She is your soul, Justin! She has changed you for the better, don’t you see that?!”

“I see a mate who once cared for me, but who let my father’s whims get ahead of our needs at mates,” I said back. “I told you we would come after her, and that I’d bring her home. But she stays in my jail until I get an answer worthy of believing and until then, if she dies, then it’s just what happens.”

Randy let his head fall. Russo picked up my shivering mate.

The Fae stepped forward, as if to hand her to me, but I paused. She whimpered and curled into the Fae, weeping and bleeding and dying.

Dying very fast.

“Hold her,” Russo purred. “She did everything she could do to protect you, and that meant staying here to keep it a secret that you were alive when I left her behind. No matter her betrayal, she didn’t want you to get hurt anymore.”

“She hurt me more than anything I’ve ever felt before,” I breathed. “She stood there with my father and stabbed me in the spine. She tried to kill me, Fae. You and my Beta both can have a soft spot for her, but I refuse to let this continue on.”

Randy barked in response, “She is your mate! Not a prisoner.”

Looking at her trembling, I felt rather unbiased to her like I thought I would. I loved her, that was still prevalent, but as far as trusting her, the answer was clear.

“She is my prisoner. Anyone who disagrees can leave my pack.”