VIVIANNA
“Absolutely not going to fucking happen, Viv,” Tristan snarled. “It is my job to keep you safe and that means not letting you walk right into a fight you can’t win.”
“How do you know I can’t win it? While I was back at that facility, they let something slip.
There’s a reason that Vadik can’t be around me—our powers aren’t compatible.
He takes magic from others, while I give it, draining people like him to share with those who are without.
As much as he wants me, I am a danger to him, and he hates it. ”
“That still doesn’t mean you can walk right up to him—that’s what he wants. It’s a trap, can’t you see that?”
I nuzzled into the side of his neck trying to sooth him, but he was having none of it, as he let out a warning growl. “Do you trust me?”
“In this, no, you have too much riding on this to look at it objectively.”
“Like you don’t? Your need to protect your mate is what is driving your choice to keep me away. I know I promised not to use myself as bait, but this isn’t that. I have all of you here with me.”
“Then we wait for the others to come back,” Tristan stated. “Stop whatever you are doing right now, mate brothers, and get here as fast as you can. Viv has lost her goddamn mind.”
“We’re on our way. Stop her by any means necessary,” Tav answered.
Now it was my turn to snarl at Tav, hearing what he said to the others and their response. “Rik, Darius, and Bentley should be in the warehouse already. If we go in, the others can catch up. Pulling them out of the building is more dangerous than us going in.”
“This is not up for discussion, Viv.”
Letting out a frustrated bark, I took off for the warehouse front door.
If they wanted to keep me on the sidelines, then they were going to have to tie me up, otherwise, I was seeing this through.
Skidding to a stop on the gravel in front of the door, I shifted back just as Tristan plowed into me, knocking me away as the door opened and two werewolves bolted out to assist in the fight.
“Shift back—now.” Tristan snarled as he stood over my naked body, facing off with the two newcomers to the fight.
Knowing my mate could easily handle this fight, I crawled away as he met his attackers head-on, pushing them away from me. Scrambling up, I got to the door and threw myself inside before I could second-guess my choice.
“Viv. What the fuck?” Rik demanded as his large brown-gray wolf snarled at me. Seems he was the reason the other two bolted out of the building. “Shift back right now, we’re leaving. The others got the girls and are headed back to the cars already.”
“You expect me to leave when he’s here?” I argued, refusing to shift back.
“We aren’t ready to deal with this, The reason we came is because of Kate and Neveah,” he reminded me.
My wolf and I both recoiled at his words. “Not ready yet?” I said aloud. “You might not be ready but I sure as hell am. I’ve been waiting for this day for almost a year. How can you not understand that?”
“If you’re so ready to fight me, then here I am, little wolf.” Vadik’s deep voice resounded through the empty warehouse.
Rik stepped in front of me, blocking me from taking Vadik up on his offer. “Viv, sweetheart, don’t do this. The others aren’t here yet to back us up and Bentley went back with the women—Neveah was beaten pretty badly… and Diane didn’t make it. She’s dead.”
This news only caused my fury to rise and make me even more determined to have Vadik face his crimes at my hands. “Show yourself, you prick. I’m not the one hiding in the shadows. One might think you’re afraid I might actually beat you,” I taunted.
The hulking muscled-out Russian man, who thought of himself as a god, stepped out of the shadows to meet me. Every time he showed up in my life, either I was taken, or something was taken from me, and I was over it.
Vadik threw back his head, laughing. “This is the Dama I have been waiting to see. Jason keeps telling me to stay away from you, that you’ll one day destroy me, but I only see how you and I will do great things together. After we remove these unworthy males from your side, that is.”
“Don’t you fucking speak about them like that, you bastard. My mates are more worthy than you could ever be, lurking behind the scenes, leaving others to do your dirty work,” I taunted, knowing I was playing a dangerous game.
Vadik let out a roar as he shifted into his half form, clothes bursting off him as he grew to twice his size.
“You will not speak to me in such a manner by the time I’m done with you, bitch.
” Ready to make good on his threat, Vadik charged right at me, but Rik was still holding his ground in front of me.
Oh, I don’t think so. Game on, asshole. Let’s do this.
Wrapping my power around myself, I too shifted into my half form.
Flexing my hands, letting my claws clatter together in warning, I dove over Rik who was blocking Vadik’s attack.
Channeling all of the pain and anger I suffered at Vadik’s hands, I thrust it out at him, but he blocked it with his own.
Both of us were so strong, you could see a faint rippling in the air where our powers collided, pushing us both back a little with the force.
“You will have to do better than that, little wolf,” Vadik sneered, his words garbled by the odd shape of his mouth. “You lack training to handle this much power, but it won’t matter once I have you under my control. I’ll just take it from you.”
I didn’t bother giving him an answer, knowing he was just trying to use my emotions to cause me to misstep.
Too much was riding on this fight for me to be tripped up like that.
The one and only time he did face me in a fight was before I’d been turned into a werewolf, but this time, we were on equal footing, untrained or not.
Yanking back my alpha power as I sidestepped out of the way of his attack, it gave me just enough of an in to charge forward.
Pulling on all the skills I learned from kick boxing and training, I swept out my leg, knocking him to the ground.
This was how I was going to win, not acting how he expected me to and by coming at him unafraid.
Vadik wasn’t down long, using his reflexes to pop back up to his feet, slashing out at me with his talons.
Dipping under his attack, I got another hit in, going right for his ribs with a one-two hit in the same spot, grinning as he grunted in pain.
My joy was wiped away all too soon, as he too planned to follow through with his attack as claws dug into my shoulder, raking down my arm as I pulled back.
I might have the technique, but he too had been training, and in a much more brutal fashion.
He wasn’t afraid to take a hit if it gave him an opening to land one.
Absorbing this knowledge, I pulled my wolf forward until she and I were truly united as one, both of us filled with fury toward the man in front of us.
A howl sounded, echoed by six others, letting me know that my mates were all here, but I didn’t want their help. “Stay out of this. Vadik is mine and mine alone.”
I could feel through our bonds that they did not like or agree with that order and did not plan on listening to it.
Another burst of pain shot through my body as Vadik sliced my hip, the one that had just healed from the bullet wound from the night before.
I yelped, kicked out, and the claws on my foot carved into his stomach, causing him to jump back, giving me room to get out of reach as I centered myself.
Allowing my focus to wander had gotten me hurt and I didn’t plan on it happening again.
Shaking off the pain, I charged at Vadik, who planted himself, ready for my assault, but what he didn’t expect was for me to drop to the concrete floor and slide right between his legs, popping up behind him to jam my hands deep in his chest. With this move, I had him right where I wanted him, and he knew it.
This time, instead of his alpha energy coming at me, he used his magic, trying to latch onto me so he could drain my power to help him get out of this mess.
Problem was, I was a giver not a taker, so I funneled his magic from my body and gave it to my mates, sharing the love.
Vadik freaked out and started to thrash as he tried to get my claws out of him.
I just dug them in deeper, closing them, feeling the echo of his heart beat through his body, as blood pooled around us.
Even though I was draining Vadik and giving it to my mates, they all crumbled to the ground, unable to process the onslaught of power I was giving them. I didn’t care though.
This moment was everything I had waited for, feeling not only Vadik’s life drain from him, but everything he held dear.
With a bellow of rage, he threw himself forward, lashing out with his arms behind him.
As he did, he caught my face in the process.
In that moment, he got my left eye, making it nearly impossible to counter his attack and keep him from getting loose.
Both of us were now a bloody snarling mess, but as I tried to go after him again, he did the unthinkable—shifting into his wolf, he ran.
My mates tried to stop me, but I tossed them aside, blind with pain and wrath, seeing my prey run from me. It took Tav shifting into his half form, wrapping me in a bear hug, and bringing me to the ground before I stopped.
“Vivianna, enough.” Rik roared, standing in front of me. “He’s gone. A helicopter just took off with him. There is nothing more you can do right now.”
“You let him get away?” I demanded, my voice sounding strange, even to me, with how frantic it was. “I had him. He was losing.”
Rik kneeled and grabbed my wolfish face in his hands, forcing me to keep eye contact with him.
“Stop, Viv, please. You are hurt and bleeding everywhere. If you keep going, who knows if you’ll even survive this long enough to finish the fight if you found him.
Trust me, you got him good. He won’t be walking away from those wounds anytime soon. ”
Letting out a frustrated whine, I shifted back to my human body and felt Tav do the same. “Bentley, did you find a medkit? There has to be one here.”
“I’m starting to think I need to make a special one just to take on missions like this,” Bentley muttered as he rolled me over onto my back. “Goddamn it, he got her whole eye. I can’t fix this here, if I can at all.”
“Reach out to Christian and find out what hospital we can go to,” Darius snapped.
Can we heal an eyeball?
I really don’t know. We’ve never had to before. Although, something tells me that wounds inflicted by that form might not be as easy to bounce back from.
What do I do if I lose my eye?
We have four other senses that can compensate and seven mates to be there to look out for us.
I should have listened and let them help me fight him. This is my punishment for letting my emotions get the best of me.
Nope, no, no, no. We are not going down this deep dark tunnel again. I refuse to be the one in charge if you give up and go catatonic again. A wolf can only handle so much, you hear me? I’m not doing it.
“Viv, stay with us. Don’t close your eyes, alright? We need to get you out of here and to a hospital, but you have to stay awake,” Bentley ordered.
I couldn’t help but grin at him using his doctor voice on me, and how I found it sexy. “Whatever you say, Doctor, but I’ll warn you, I’m not a very good patient.”
“I don’t care what you are as long as you keep talking to me,” he shot back in a huff.
Tav wrapped me up in a blanket before I was lifted and carried outside. My body felt numb and oddly cold for how bright the sun was high in the sky. Rationally, I knew it was because of blood loss but my brain was slow to accept these things.
“Christian, let me go. I need to help her, please.” I heard Kate say from somewhere nearby. “Vadik and all his men are gone. It’s safe but if I don’t help her, we might lose her.”
There was a series of growls as I was placed on the ground and Kate’s face appeared over me. I had to shift my head to the left so I could see her whole face. My brain knew that meant something was extremely wrong but couldn’t quite process it.
“Viv, I’m going to try to help you, alright?” Kate said as she gently placed her hands on either side of my head. The torrent of pain, that I didn’t know I was in, lessened as the guys around me argued about something.
“Precious, I want to try something,” Bentley shared as he knelt next to me.
“I’ve never done this before… okay, I didn’t even know I could do this.
When you shoved all that magic into each of us in the bond, it unlocked something inside me that is telling me I can heal you.
I’m sorry if this hurts, but there aren’t many options that we can get to fast enough to help in time. ”
Moments later, the fire that he sent through my body made me scream as it blazed through my veins, knitting together everything that had been injured.
There were things being healed that I hadn’t even noticed had happened in my fight with Vadik.
When his magic finally reached my head, I blacked out, as the pain of rebuilding my eye was more than my body could handle.
So, I gave into the darkness, hoping after all this, I would be able to see again.