8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Halley
"Let’s dance, ya oversized gorilla!" Blaze hollers.
He bursts into action, his combat knife glinting in his fist, leaping forward to protect me.
He moves faster than my eyes can follow, but it isn't fast enough.
Viper in Blood Lust is quicker.
One brutal sweep of his arm sends Blaze flying across the clearing. He hits a tree with a sickening crack, bark bursting around him as his body slams against the trunk and drops hard to the ground.
"Blaze!" I scream, but my raw throat mangles his name into a broken rasp.
Through the bond, pain flares hot and furious.
‘Fuck me, that hurt,’ Blaze groans.
I exhale in relief.
If he can swear, he’s all right.
Shade fires, aiming low.
The shots hit Viper’s feet and hamstrings, meant to slow him, not kill him. His body jerks with each impact, but the wounds start healing as fast as they appear.
Knox uses it as an opening.
He charges in with his combat knife drawn, moving with brutal precision as he cuts for tendons, joints, anything that might buy us a few more seconds. Shade keeps firing from the edge of the clearing, each bullet placed with terrifying care.
It should stop him.
Against any other Alpha, it would.
But Viper is not any other Alpha, and Blood Lust has turned his body into something faster, stronger, and almost impossible to keep down.
Knox lands a cut across Viper’s thigh. Another across his ribs. Viper barely reacts, and he keeps pushing forward, his black eyes fixed past them on me.
He’s running on base instincts now.
Alpha sees Omega. Alpha kills the rival Alphas. Alpha claims. Omega submits.
It doesn't help that Knox keeps glancing over his shoulder, eyes shining with disbelief, relief, and hope. Seeing me alive is breaking his focus.
"Knox, watch him!" I shout.
He flinches at the sound of my hoarse, broken voice.
Viper's fist slams into Knox’s ribs, and there is an unmistakable crack that turns my stomach. Knox barks in pain and hits the ground hard, one arm folding protectively around his side.
Viper follows him down.
His fists hammer into Knox’s face and body, blow after blow, each impact driving him deeper into the dirt. Blood spatters across the grass. Knox tries to block and twist away, but Viper is too strong.
Blaze staggers into view behind Viper, his sidearm already raised.
He fires twice into Viper’s back.
The shots hit, and it's enough to make Viper stop beating Knox into the dirt. His head lifts, his shoulders rolling as the wounds start healing almost immediately.
At first, I think he’ll turn on Blaze.
Instead, his black eyes find me.
He rises from Knox’s prone body and starts stalking straight toward me.
"Oh fuck," Shade says, jumping in front of me with his gun raised. "Whatever you think you can do, baby girl, now is the time."
I reach for our bond, the one that I felt in my heart even before we made love in the cellar.
Beneath the rage and sickness, I know there must still be the faintest flicker of my mate.
Viper said that he loves me.
Tonight, I need him to prove it.
My limbs are weak, and I step around Shade anyway. He curses under his breath and reaches for me, but I shake my head, keeping my eyes locked on the Alpha coming toward us.
"Viper!" I shout. "Who am I?"
The beast roars back, but I don’t tremble.
The sound should send me scrambling behind Shade. It should hollow me out, leave me shaking and small beneath the weight of all that violence.
Instead, the strange certainty I've felt since I woke settles through me. It's quiet, steady, and familiar in a way I don’t have the strength to examine.
I felt it once before, in the hospital, when everyone else saw a lost Alpha and I simply saw Viper. Back then, the certainty came in a wave that made me brave despite the fear clawing through me.
This time, there isn't a wave that comes quick and recedes quicker.
Instead, that knowing confidence pumps through my blood and stays as part of me.
Death doesn't scare me.
I know what death feels like now. I know what it is to have the world end, and to come back anyway.
Viper in Blood Lust does not scare me.
But losing him does.
I square my shoulders, draw a careful breath, and hold my ground the way Knox taught me in training.
"Who am I?" I ask again.
Viper’s stride falters.
His head lifts, nostrils flaring as he drags my scent into his lungs.
A strange pattern of emotions cracks through the snarl of violence written on his face. Curiosity, confusion, and grief all flash in rapid succession.
"Tell me who I am, Viper."
He slows to a stop an arm's length away, his chest heaving, sweat gleaming across his skin.
The black in his eyes recedes enough for a faint glow of green to break through.
It's all the confirmation I need to see.
He's still in there.
I can feel Shade’s tension, his gloves creaking on the rifle as he prepares to defend me with lethal force. He won’t need to, though.
I can feel Viper’s bond pulsing as he tugs at it, as if testing the connection, checking if I'm actually real.
His harsh voice rasps through clenched teeth.
"Omega?"
I hum softly and give him the biggest smile I can manage. "Yeah, big guy. I’m your Omega."
Viper shakes his head, his fists clenching and releasing at his sides. "You’re not. I saw you and held you. You were…"
His voice breaks on a whimper before he can finish.
"I know," I say, keeping my hand steady as I reach for him. "But I’m real. Come and see."
‘Halley, be careful,’ Shade warns through the bond, but doesn’t intervene.
Viper stares at my hand, blinking fast. His shoulders bunch as he fights against the rage still bubbling under his skin.
One wrong move, and he could tear my hand from my body.
I push past the pain in my bruised vocal cords and manage the gentlest purr.
It's soft and broken, barely strong enough to be heard.
But Viper hears it, and it works instantly.
His shoulders relax, sloping downward as the tension drains from him, and after a long, trembling exhale, he reaches for me.
Our fingertips brush.
Tingles explode as if it's the first time we've touched all over again.
Viper stares at our hands.
Then his wild eyes roam over me with an urgent hunger. He drinks in my face, my throat, my exposed mating gland, my healed neck, my chest, my hips, and finally lingering on my breasts.
A low growl rolls out of him.
It's not threatening.
I know that sound. It's the growl of an Alpha who is possessive, reverent, and starved for his Omega.
His body is reacting faster than his mind, and his hips make aborted, sharp jerks.
It draws my eyes down to his beltline.
Oh.
A turgid length grows beneath my gaze, tenting his trousers.
Well, I guess this is how our first encounter in the hospital went too.
I calmed the beast, and now I have to tame him.
"Uh, Sparkles," Blaze calls from behind Viper, scenting the air. It no longer smells like corrupted Alpha. There is a heady, unmistakable musk in the air. "Don't think LT wants to kill you anymore. He wants to fuck you up in a whole new way."
Viper steps closer.
A little gasp slips free as he crowds me back against the tree, careful not to crush me, but feral enough to make every nerve in my body wake up.
He lowers his face to my throat and drags the tip of his nose along my jaw, breathing me in like I am the only thing left in the world he cares about.
When he reaches my mating gland, he stops.
His inhale turns ragged. His hands flex against the bark on either side of me, caging me in without touching me.
"My Omega," he grunts.
The words vibrate through me, rough and broken and full of need.
I glance at Shade over Viper’s shoulder, my heart racing for a completely different reason now.
‘Safe to say your theory is confirmed,’ I think. ‘He definitely remembers me.’
I squeak as Viper suddenly spins me around and pulls my hips back until I am bent over with my hands braced on the tree.
His body is huge and shaking as it crowds mine, and I barely get a moment to think before my bottoms are pulled down around my ankles.
Cool air kisses my exposed slit.
"Mine," he growls.
Oh frack.
One enormous hand is pressed against the trunk beside my head while the other locks around my hip. He presses his face into my neck, breathing me in with rough, desperate sounds that make my knees weaken for an entirely different reason.
Okay, yup. This is happening.
I'm being mounted by an Alpha in Blood Lust.
Heat rushes through me, tangled with fear, relief, and the dizzying certainty that he knows me.
I know he does because he's being gentle with me, even now.
‘Baby girl?’ Shade’s voice brushes down our connection, tight with worry. ‘Are you okay with this?’
I look at him over Viper’s shoulder. Shade is pale, rifle lowered but not forgotten, his eyes fixed on me with aching concern.
Knox is still on the ground, bloodied and struggling to rise, terror and hope warring across his face.
Blaze stands with drying blood on his cheek from hitting the tree, watching Viper like he’ll tear him apart if I give the word.
They’re all waiting for me.
Protecting me.
Even from each other.
My heart swells until it hurts.
‘I’m okay,’ I send back, and this time I mean it. 'I want this to happen.'
It's that inexplicable knowing again. A current in my veins that tells me this is right.
Viper's fingers flex at my hip and he drags them back until my back is bowed and my ass raised. I tilt my head to the side, gifting Viper my submission and accepting whatever fate my Alpha bestows.
For a few breaths, he only shakes against me, huge and feral and heartbreakingly lost.
"Viper?" I ask.
In answer, he sheaths his length inside me in one sharp thrust.
"Ah!" I scream into the night air, gasping in shock as my walls spasm around the intrusion.
"Fuck. Halley!" Knox shouts. "Are you all right?"