Fated: The Alpha's Unwanted Luna-Chapter 16: The unbelievable_Part 2

The Gammas came around her and roughly yanked her from the ground. The movement sent sharp, blinding pain shooting through every part of her body, and she groaned before she could stop herself.

"Oh, she’s still alive." The Gamma hoisted her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing, adjusting his grip carelessly. "And here I thought she was dead. I wonder how one could survive with a body this thin."

The one following him through the back door laughed as though he had said the funniest thing in the world.

"She’s stubborn," the second one said. "Never seen a wolfless this hard-headed and refusing to die. I stomped on her ribs when I was beating her earlier, felt them crack, and she didn’t even cry out."

"How about we torture her more and see just how much she can survive?" The one carrying her adjusted her roughly on his shoulder, his elbow digging straight into her broken ribs. Viola bit back the cry that clawed up her throat. "I’m curious to know how much she’d take before she stops breathing."

"I have a better idea, Harry." A pause. A low, ugly laugh. "She might be skinny and meatless, but she still has a hole between her legs. How about we take turns and see just how much of that she can take? If beating didn’t kill her, I bet that would."

"I like that."

He threw her onto the ground without warning.

The impact drove every remaining breath from her lungs. Pain detonated through her entire body, and she lay there for a moment, completely unable to move, the world spinning behind her barely functioning eye.

She blinked. Tried to see. One eye was solid white. The other gave her shapes and shadows and the wavering orange glow of the torch they carried, and through it she made out the dark mass of trees rising up around them, the dried leaves and broken twigs pressing into the skin of her back and palms.

The forest. They had brought her into the forest.

"There’s nothing left of the clothes anyway. Strip her. Tie her hands to that tree and open her legs, we only need her hole." The leader’s voice was casual. Bored, almost.

No.

Viola turned onto her stomach and began to crawl.

She didn’t have a plan. She didn’t have strength. She had nothing but the instinct that screamed at her to move, and so she moved, dragging herself forward with her elbows, her broken ribs grinding with every inch.

Rough hands grabbed her ankles and dragged her back.

"No—" The word tore out of her raw throat, barely a sound, more breath than voice.

She fisted her hands into the dirt and flung it blindly upward behind her.

"Fuck, my eyes!" One of them released her ankle instantly, staggering back with a curse.

She crawled again. Faster this time, her fingers clawing into the earth. She had barely made it two feet before a hand seized her by the hair and wrenched her back so hard her neck muscles cracked. The strike that followed snapped her head to the side and split her lip further.

"You bitch. She’s a feisty one." His voice was thick with something that made her stomach turn. "I’m going to enjoy this."

She was hit again. This time she barely registered the blow, her body had been in so much pain for so long that it had begun to simply absorb it, filing each new impact somewhere far away from her conscious mind.

She felt her torn shirt being ripped from her body. She tried to fight it. Her hands moved, her fingers grabbed and scratched, but her resistance was feeble and they both knew it.

’You can’t die like this, Viola.’

The voice came from somewhere deep inside her, not her wolf, she had no wolf, but something older than that. Something that had kept her alive through the orphanage, through the Lindens, through Evan.

’This isn’t where you end. Not like this. Not without dignity. You haven’t made it up to Ivy. You haven’t found your wolf. You haven’t made any of them pay. You haven’t proven to a single one of them that you never needed their love in the first place.’

’Fight. At least fight to the end.’

She stopped struggling. Not in defeat, in calculation.

She had trained with Gammas before. She had spent years watching them, studying them, even when they hadn’t known she was paying attention. She knew their formations. She knew their habits. And she knew exactly where they kept their weapons on their bodies.

They hauled her upright to drag her toward the tree. They weren’t gripping her with full force, they didn’t think she had anything left. That was their mistake. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Viola twisted her arm sharply. One hand came free.

Before the Gamma could react, she reached across his body and pulled the dagger from his side holster, the one they always carried, always wolfsbane-coated, and in one single motion, she drove it into his chest.

She pulled it free. Turned toward the second one.

He dodged, releasing her completely, and she dropped.

Her legs gave out entirely beneath her and she hit the ground hard, but she kept the dagger. She clutched it with both hands and held it in front of her as the second Gamma stared down at her, first in disbelief, then in fury.

"You want to play it the hard way." His voice had gone low and cold. "You’re just a damn weakling. I’ll enjoy chewing you alive."

He began to shift.

She felt it before she saw it, the pressure rolling off him, the violent energy that preceded the breaking and realignment of bones. The air around him seemed to compress. She heard the sickening crack and pop of his skeleton reshaping itself, watched his silhouette expand and distort in the torchlight.

Ten seconds. A full shift took ten seconds.

Viola used every single one of them. She forced herself upright, using the nearest tree trunk to push herself to her feet, her vision swimming and her ribs screaming. By the time he had fully shifted, large, dark-furred, snarling, she was standing.

He lunged.

She dropped low, ducking beneath him as he came down, and drove the dagger upward into his furred chest with everything she had left.

He let out a wounded, dog-like scream and his claws found the side of her stomach as he collapsed, tearing deep before she could pull away. She cried out, a raw, broken sound, and went down with him, shoved half beneath his shifting weight as he reverted to human form and went still.

Viola pushed. Shoved his body off her with trembling arms. Spat blood onto the dirt.

Then lay there.

The forest was quiet around her. The torch had fallen nearby, its beam cutting a harsh white line across the clearing, illuminating the two bodies, the blood, her own hands dark with it.

Her breathing had gone shallow. Uneven. Each inhale felt like swallowing glass.

She had done it. She had fought them and she had won and now she was going to die anyway, alone on the ground in a forest where no one would find her until the birds had already—

Another presence.

She felt it before she heard it. Something at the edge of the clearing. Someone still and watchful.

There had only been two Gammas. She had counted.

So who was this?

She turned her head toward the source. It cost her everything she had. Her neck muscles barely cooperated, her vision gave her almost nothing, but she turned, and then a scent reached her.

Familiar. She had only encountered it once, briefly, days ago, and yet her battered body recognized it immediately, and for one treacherous second it made her feel something that had no business existing inside her right now.

Safety.

Bitter resentment flooded through her in the next instant, drowning it completely.

’Of all the people. Of all the moments. You.’

Her lips moved. She could barely hear her own voice.

"I hate you," Viola whispered.

Then the darkness came for her, and this time she let it.

She welcomed it completely.

A final tear rolled down her cheek.

---

Sebastian stood completely still at the edge of the clearing.

He had run here expecting to find her being attacked, foolish enough to have wandered out without a wolf to protect her. He had not expected to arrive and find two dead Gammas on the ground. He had not expected to find her over them.

He had not expected any of this.

The large flashlight lay on its side nearby, its white beam spilling harshly across the clearing and washing over her broken form as she collapsed. Dust particles drifted slowly through the light. The scene before him was quiet now, and deeply wrong, she lay there like something discarded, naked, blood-soaked, bruises layered over older bruises across every inch of skin he could see.

She looked even worse than the last time he had seen her. She looked like something that should not still be breathing.

Mine.

They touched my mate.

His wolf surged against the inside of his chest, howling, clawing, demanding blood from people who were already dead.

’No one touches our fated mate. How could they dare?’

Sebastian felt rage rise hard and violent inside him, and then he forced it down. Caged it. She was not someone he had claimed. He had not chosen her. Whatever cruelty had found her was the consequence of existing as a wolfless in a world that had no place for the weak, and that was not his problem to carry.

He made himself believe that.

He was still making himself believe it when she turned her head toward him with eyes that were barely functioning anymore, blood pooled thick in the corners of them, her lips barely moving.

"I hate you."

Then she exhaled and stopped breathing.

Something in his chest tore open.

He didn’t move toward her. He stood there, jaw locked, and made himself breathe through the pain that detonated behind his ribs, the bond reacting, every instinct he possessed screaming at him to go to her.

He turned away instead.

’You fool.’ His wolf’s voice was cold with disgust. ’Where exactly do you think you’re going?’

"Away from her dead body," Sebastian said quietly.

’But she’s not dead. She’s unconscious and might truly die if you leave her. Are you ready to go through the pain you went through four years ago? I might not like her so much, but we can’t leave her there like that.’

"I haven’t marked her. The pain won’t last like four years ago," Sebastian gritted out as he began to walk away in long, angry strides.

’Duh. Might I remind you that you’re in someone else’s territory? The pain will hit you so hard you won’t be able to hide it from them, and once they know your weakness, they can use your next fated mate to get to you in the future. Be wise and go back to her.’

Sebastian’s footsteps stopped.

He stood there in the dark for a long moment, every muscle in his body rigid, the torchlight flickering at the edge of his vision, her scent wrapping around him in a way he could not shut out no matter how hard he tried.

He cursed, aimed at no one and everyone, and turned back.

He crossed the clearing in a few strides and dropped to his knees beside her. Up close she was worse. He could see every place they had hit her, every place the wolfsbane had eaten into her skin, the deep claw marks bleeding freely across her side, her ribs visibly misshapen beneath the surface.

He didn’t know where to put his hands. She looked so fragile that the wrong touch felt genuinely dangerous.

"I hate you too, idiot," he muttered under his breath.

He slid his arms beneath her as carefully as he could and gathered her against his chest, adjusting his hold until he was certain he wasn’t pressing against anything broken.

Then he stood, and carried her out of the forest.