Chapter 26: Captured I

Adrian moved.

There was no warning roar, no dramatic declaration beyond the one he had already given. One moment he stood between Asher and the circling wolves; the next he was among them like a blade given flesh.

The first wolf died before it finished its lunge. Adrian’s hand punched through its chest with a wet, catastrophic sound, emerging from the other side wrapped around a still-beating heart. He crushed the organ and flung the body aside hard enough to take down two more. Black blood sprayed across the road in a wide arc.

The remaining wolves hesitated for less than a second. Then the pack closed in.

Adrian met them head-on.

He was faster than anything had a right to be. A clawed swipe aimed at his throat was caught mid-air; he twisted the limb until bone snapped and the wolf screamed. Another came from the side, Adrian ducked under the jaws, drove his fist up into the underside of its jaw, and kept pushing until vertebrae gave way with a sickening crunch. The body dropped twitching.

Asher stumbled backward until his shoulders hit the wrecked car, eyes wide. He had seen Marcel fight once, a little spar back at the vampire estate. It had been intense, but this was different. Adrian was not holding back. He was a Vampire Lord who had decided the creatures in front of him no longer deserved to exist, and the difference was written in the growing pile of broken bodies.

Blood, wolf and his own, streaked Adrian’s face and clothes. His red-and-black eyes burned in the darkness. Every movement was efficient, brutal, and terrifyingly precise. A wolf leapt for his back; he spun, caught it by the muzzle, and ripped the lower jaw clean off. Another tried to hamstring him; Adrian stomped down hard enough to shatter the leg, then finished it with a downward strike that caved in the skull.

For several long, savage minutes it looked as though he might actually kill them all.

Then the numbers began to tell.

There were more wolves than Asher had first counted — reinforcements pouring from the treeline in coordinated waves. Adrian was still lethal, still impossibly fast, but the constant pressure forced him to divide his attention. A deep gash opened across his shoulder. Another scored his thigh. He ignored both, tore the head from a wolf that got too close, and kept moving.

That was when Asher was taken.

Two wolves broke from the main fight while Adrian was engaged with three others. They hit Asher from the side with enough force to drive the air from his lungs. He tried to shout, tried to twist free, but a heavy paw slammed his head against the ground hard enough to make the world tilt. The last thing he saw before darkness rushed in was Adrian’s head snapping toward the sound of his name.

"Asher—!" ℯℯ𝘭.

Adrian abandoned the wolves in front of him and launched himself toward the ones dragging Asher’s limp form toward the trees. The sudden change in priority cost him.

Three sets of claws found his torso at once.

They punched deep, one beneath the ribs, two higher across the chest, and they tore outward in a spray of dark vampire blood. Adrian’s forward momentum carried him several more steps before the pain and the damage caught up. Blood erupted from his mouth in a wet cough. He ripped himself free of the claws with a snarl of pure fury, leaving strips of his own flesh behind, and staggered.

He should have healed faster. He should have been stronger. But he had been feeding only on animal blood for months, a deliberate choice to avoid the complications of human or vampire donors, and now the deficit was catching up to him now. His body struggled to close the wounds. The edges of his vision darkened, and his limbs felt heavier than they should have.

More wolves slammed into him before he could recover.

They took him down hard. Jaws locked around his arms and legs. Claws raked across his back and sides. Adrian killed two more even while pinned, twisting and biting with feral precision, but the weight of the pack was too much. A heavy blow to the back of his head made the world spin. Another impact drove him face-first into the blood-soaked road.

He tried to rise.

A final, crushing force across his spine forced him back down.

Through the haze of pain and blood loss, Adrian’s last clear thought was of the human they were already carrying into the trees. He snarled once more, low and furious, before a heavy strike to the temple finally dragged him under.

Asher never saw the end of the fight.

When the darkness took him, the last sensation was the rough grip of clawed hands and the distant, enraged sound of Adrian’s voice being silenced.

Some time later, minutes or hours, he could not tell, his awareness returned in fragments.

Cold air. The smell of pine and blood. The jostle of being carried. His wrists and ankles were bound tightly with something that bit into the skin. When he forced his eyes open, the world swayed above him in a blur of dark trees and moving shapes.

Adrian was somewhere nearby. Asher could hear the wet, labored sound of the Vampire Lord’s breathing and the occasional low snarl when the wolves handling him were less than gentle. Both of them were being transported deeper into the forest, away from the wrecked car and the road that led back to vampire territory.

He tried to speak, to demand answers, but a rough cloth had been forced between his teeth. The effort only made his head throb harder. One of the wolves carrying him glanced down with glowing eyes and growled a warning.

Asher let his head fall back and stared up at the canopy of branches sliding past, realizing that struggling wouldn’t help him. Why was this happening? Why on earth were werewolves after him now?