Even though I knew it was magic and not real—the nearest thing to a figment of my imagination—it still calmed me to see the outside. I didn’t have to think about the fact that I was underground, without a single way to escape.
That in itself, was terrifying.
I lay my head on the fluffy pillow and sighed. “So, how fucked are we exactly?”
“Grrrrr...” was all I got back from the man who wanted to be the Alpha of our pack.
Xander was packing up and down, growling and snarling.
“If you wanna shift, do it now,” I told him, feeling more defeated than angry. “Because later, he’s gonna want our blood in shifter form.”
Xander nodded, smartly stripped his clothes off, and shifted into his massive wolf.
The atmosphere in the room immediately changed, calming down a lot as Xander got to enjoy the serenity of his wolf’s mind. Everything was so much simpler when we were in our shifter mode.
But all of a sudden, a flash lit up the room and the high warlock was there. Xander was pinned to the ground by a bunch of vines that had shot up through the floor and wrapped around him.
“What the fuck...” I jumped off my bed, but the warlock threw magic at me and I fell back onto the mattress, unable to move at all.
He didn’t say anything as he injected Xander with a large syringe and forcibly removed his blood.
“No!” I screamed, my anger boiling up. In my frozen state, there was nowhere for it to release, except out through my voice. “You don’t need to do that! He would have given it to you. Bastard. Fuckingbastard!”
Xander’s wolf was fighting, howling and struggling, but he couldn’t escape the vines. I couldn’t bear to watch, and yet I couldn’t turn my head away.
Hot angry tears filled my eyes as I fought the magic that held me down.
“Let. Me. Up!” I screamed and suddenly I was able to move. I tore through the binding, bouncing to my feet with my hands clenched and my body coiled tight as a spring. Ready to jump the high warlock and fight him.
But he was gone. So were the vines. And yet Xander still lay on the ground in wolf form, not making a sound.
I didn’t know what to do. Talk to him? Shift as well?
In the end I let my wolf shifter choose, and I shrunk down into my wolf body and crept over to my best friend. I pressed myself against his side and breathed in time with him. My heart was breaking, and I didn’t have a shred of hope left for us.
So, I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep beside Xander, because what else was there to do but wait here to be bled dry, and die?