My head whipped around to see my men clustered around a fallen Aidan, the strangled sounds drawing my attention.
Pathetic. You’ll never make the killing stroke. You’ve not the strength, that monstrous voice snarled inside my head.
“Flick!”
There was something to this decision. I could feel that, even in this instinct ruled brain, one misstep could send us crashing through the ice to drown. But which? This beast was a creature of malice, pure and simple. He knew me, Rick, Kade, and was prepared to do whatever he could to make us suffer. He was a threat, and threats were to be put down.
But my mate… That was no natural sound. He was… My mind refused to make the words, which decided my next action. I came loping back to them, saw that Sen and Peter were in human form, Noah still a wolf.
“We gotta get him to doc, now!” Sen said as Peter cradled Aidan to his chest. And my love, he fought for every breath. I could hear it through the bloody mess of his body. There were holes where there shouldn’t be, blood dripping from him, and an awful whistle of his lungs. “Let’s go!”
We went as fast as we could, but jostling Aidan seemed to only make things worse. I shifted when we got into the car, pulling a blanket over me, but Noah stayed in wolf form, sitting up in the front as Peter and I held Aidan still. His hazel eyes, wide and staring, were the only indicator we had of what he was going through. He couldn’t cry out, groan, or even breathe, only stare, tears trickling out the sides.
“Hang on, mate,” Peter said, taking his hand, my own tears coming thick and fast. “You have to hang on. We’ll be there soon. They’ll make it better, I promise.”
“What the hell happened?” Ophelia asked as we ferried Aidan into the doc’s surgery.
“None of that now,” Hobbes said, bending over my love, scanning him with an expert eye. “Bloody hell. Get the midwives in here. I need anyone with healing experience in here, right now.”
She moved frantically around the room, pulling out equipment and supplies with wild abandon, but I saw the shake in her hands when she pulled on gloves with a cool kind of detachment. I reached across, slapped a hand on her arm, and stopped her from moving, then said, “Take a breath, then proceed.”
She nodded, then moved. My gaze shifted to the proceedings, where she took the wreckage of my mate’s body and tried to put it back together, but all I could see was her tensed shoulders, her teeth digging into her lips, her little sobs of breath.
None of which I could make.
My mind couldn’t, wouldn’t accept what was going on.
Not Aidan, not my mate. I couldn’t be one of those people who have their loved ones torn away from them so soon after finding them. That wasn’t his blood, it wasn’t him fighting to keep breathing. I was wrapped up tight in acres of grey woolly nothingness, putting a million miles between me and them. I was watching this happen on TV, the life of a character I wasn’t really engaging with, who was suffering some awful fate, but I just wanted to get back to flicking through social media, the director having failed to move me.
Then the swinging doors burst open, and the many older women I’d seen at the alpha residence entered the room in a long stream.
“Finally!” Hobbes snapped. “Scrub up and get some gloves on. I need…”
Her voice trailed away as she heard the hum, the sound of each and every woman’s throat filling the room. It got louder and louder, especially when they joined hands, forming an inviolable circle around the operating table.
“Join us, Flick,” Ophelia ordered, taking a spot in the ring nearest the door, a white faced and pregnant Jules at her side, moving to become one with the circle.
“What the hell?”
My head whipped around to see the doctor pulling away from my love, her hands in the air, as if to protect herself. From what, it became immediately apparent. Light poured from Aidan’s body, slowing the drips of blood seeping from him first, his skin growing brighter and brighter.
“You must join us, Flick. You are Aidan’s mate, his anchor in this world,” Ophelia insisted.
“Flick, please,” Peter pleaded, his hands soaked in blood.
The weight of their expectations felt crushing, threatening to hammer me into the ground. What did they expect of me? I could do nothing, was nothing.
“Don’t do this right now, Flick.” Sen’s voice was a whip crack across my already raw flesh. “Don’t get caught up in the bullshit in your head. Just take the women’s hands.”
I stepped back automatically, until I felt hands part to accept me, then each grabbed mine and the world fell away.
It was beautiful here, the blood and pain replaced by golden clouds and radiant light.
“Direct us, Jules.”
My eyes flicked around me at the sound of Ophelia’s voice, and as if summoned by it, they all appeared. Well, they did and more besides. I saw Jules and Ophelia talking animatedly, trying to work something out, it increasingly drowned out by the humming. It rose and rose until it was a physical presence in my ears, pushing against my eardrums, forcing everything out as rings upon rings of women filled the cloud landscape.
And then she came, a massive white wolf, padding forward, her head down and her green eyes burning into mine. She stepped over each ring, so tall she blotted out the light source here and replaced it with her radiance, then came to a stop in the centre of the circle and sat down.