But I don't give up. My hands may be empty, but it gave me even more will - even more reason - to fight.
My hands are already in tight balls, the knuckles cracking under the pressure. My first punch manages to make direct contact with Hunter's worthless face, his nose knocked out of place. I feel it shift under my skin with a sickening crunch.
My next punch is less successful. Hunter knocks it away with his forearm, his bad hand dangling limp as he slowly staggers towards me. In this moment, he appears as normal as he'll ever be: wounded and broken.
I punch again. And again. But my third punch is sloppy as my fury fades. Hunter sees me let down my guard, my strong posture weakening, and wraps the long fingers of his good hand around my enclosed fist. His hands don't look like a warrior's: they're thin and constrained, long fingers elongated unnaturally. They look like painter's fingers: delicate and not meant to harm.
Hunter twists my arm at an unnatural angle, but I spin away from his grip before he can cause any real damage. I didn't want a dislocated shoulder. Again.
Hunter's hand finds my throat, cutting off my air supply. My legs reaches out to kick him, but it makes no impact on the situation.
Despite my lack of oxygen, my hands don't fumble for the ones choking me. Instead, they take Hunter's healing hand before he can flinch away and crush it once more. He had been stupid enough to put the hilt of his sword in his damaged hand, and I would've sighed in relief as soon as he dropped it. Except I needed to find enough air to breathe first.
Hunter's face peels into a snarl. "Goodbye, Aurora," he whispers much too loudly than any whisper should be uttered. It cuts apart his jagged breathing, our confined shapes, my lost hope. It was the last voice I would ever hear.
The invisible wall is once again at my back. Although it does not theoretically exist, I can feel an agonising pain rush through my skin as Hunter forces me against it even harder.
My oxygen supply is now dwindling low as Hunter's hands remain at my throat. I attempt one more time to force them away, but he doesn't even budge an inch. Black holes have already begun to engulf my vision like an all consuming plague.
"Any last words?" Hunter jeers.
I raise my legs to kick out, but every kick is a waste of energy. I'm getting nowhere.
My acrimony is too much to contain. If I died right here, right now, like hell I was going to let Hunter have the satisfaction of my pleas for mercy.
"Go to hell," I spit.
And that's when the wall behind me shatters.
21 | Finale
❝I have lived that life already. In the mud, in the shadows, in a cell, in a silk dress. I will never submit again. I will never stop fighting.❞
I'm up on my feet and standing before Hunter can even blink. Despite the surge of questions skiving the raging tempo of my brain, I push them aside. I could figure out why the wall had broken later. I needed to focus on killing the bastard first.
With my hand around my recently suppressed throat, I stagger away from Hunter as he swiftly rises from his feet. He appears unscathed, but the rage boiling in his bottomless eyes tells a very different story. Something so deviously evil lies deep within his orbs, twisting into tight coils; ready to be unleashed. I know what he is capable of. We all do. And that's why he needed to die.
"Damien!" I shout, my pace picking up as I begin to breathe laboriously. My head spins, not enough oxygen flowing into my lungs. I can already feel the skin of my neck bruising, aching without my consent. I bite my tongue to make the pain go away.
He knows what he needs to do, but it's too late. I stumble on my own feet, my exhausted and crippled body unable to keep up with the pace. I sigh as I fall forwards, but I turn so I can see Hunter as he sprints straight towards me.
I scramble to my feet, only just quick enough before he can rip my head from my body. He still doesn't possess his sword, but his clenched hands are enough to portray just how angry he is.
"Just you and me, Aurora!" Hunter shouts, merely five meters away. I wish it was further. I wish we were on opposite poles of the Earth. Maybe then I could feel comfortable in my own skin.
My empty hands feel abnormally light not weighed down by a single weapon. But there's a crushing weight on my chest that refuses to lift. Every time I breathe, it's fixated there, compressing against my ribcage and refusing to let me inhale.
I hear Damien's heavy panting from beside me. I feel my body spark with courage - and the need to touch him.
I grit my teeth. "Go to hell!" The words flow from my mouth like a torrent of black ink.
Hunter's face grows notably angrier - more so than it had been before - and I watch as red lines of torment stretch across his face, lips elongated into a pale line. His high cheekbones made his face appear as sharp as razors; the face of a killer. It suited him, and his white skin. Everything about him I couldn't help but associate with death. Like the way a body turned the same shade as his skin when it was deprived of life.
Damien's dark cropped hair appears in my field of vision, and I nod to him as Hunter begins to let an agonising growl tear through his body. His teeth are bared, a crooked smile forming.
In one swift movement, my legs shift towards Damien as Hunter continues to run straight towards me. As soon as I get close enough to Damien, he flings the sword up in the air. Even from here, I can see the yellow-tinged blade, slick with wolf's bane.
I grab the hilt swiftly, but I can't find the courage to turn around. The battle needed to be somewhere I had the advantage if I had any chance of survival. My brain flicks through the possible locations with each laboured footfall. The castle. I knew it better than he ever would.
The two armies have exploded into action around us. I sidestep as a rogue tackles a pack wolf to the ground, clawing off his helmet and exposing his head with one swipe of his dirty claws. I can see the brown underlying the ivory like a permanent stain. Blood had already contaminated the snow, those who barely got a chance to battle lying at disorientated angles, some with their eyes wide open, some with them closed. All I can hear is the overwhelming, collective clang of metal on metal, battle cries swapped for screams of agony. The stench of sweat is sickening, but thankfully it was masking the scent of blood - for now.
I don't even blink as I pass Damien. I'm so fixated on the stone structure before me that I can barely think about anything except for regulating my exhilarated breathing.
A snarling rogue enters my vision as I leap over a pile of shattered rock, the shards pointing up towards the sky like daggers. But as soon as he sees Hunter, who I presume is right behind me, he steps out of my way, his face a concoction of delight at the thought of my demise.
"Aurora!" Hunter calls. He sounds further away, but I already know I cannot outrun the beast. He must be ten meters behind at the most. The thought makes my muscles momentarily tense, but I shake my head to ward the stiffness away. I had to be brave, even if my heart was freezing at the sheer coldness of Hunter's stone one. "You can't run!"
Oh, but I am, I hiss inside my mind. I didn't need to make him any angrier than he already was.
Another pile of rock, and I'm past the collapsed wall. I think of everything that had been enclosed in the tight circle of the city. I remember the tents, housing multiple pack who were staying to speculate the Alpha Trials. I remember the happy cry of children, running through the mud without caring how much of the bronze got onto their clothes. And I remember being dragged through a crowd, everyone staring at me as I anticipated death. I remember where this story began. Maybe this is where it ends. That was merely weeks ago, but it feels like a century.
But I abruptly stop as a crowd of people join me in my bid towards the castle. Some are soldiers, too afraid to fight. Cowards. Others are children - those who weren't even meant to come with us today.
I spot a shock of black hair and tanned skin, and my heart stops. I can't feel it beat. Maybe that's because my body's turned numb all over. She looks tiny in comparison to the rubble, running p
ast the statue that once sat as the centrepiece to a memorial fountain without even faltering - she had grown so used to destruction, it no longer seemed out of place to her young eye.
Harper. And she's alone. I can't see Alex, nor Azra, nor her mother. They must've been separated.
No, I feel the words form at the back of my throat, but they do not form.
Snow crunches behind me, and I curse under my breath. My grip around my new-found weapon has tightened, knowing that no matter what, I can never let go. I almost recoil at the repugnant smell of the wolf's bane, the viscous yellow liquid slathered across the blade just like the snow carpeting the ground. The scent explodes in my nose; a putrid smell of poison and death. I almost pinch my nose as I gag. Wolf's bane was poisonous to werewolves, and even the smallest cut with this blade could render me lifeless.
The hair on the back of my neck rises. I know Hunter is there, ready to make his killer move. I can't see his face, and for that I am glad: the devil should not have the face of an innocent angel.
My eyes narrow, muscles winding, raring to contract. The quicker this was over, the better.
My father taught me what to do when someone crept up from behind. He had used me as the attacker, and I was scared out of my skin when he abruptly spun around, hands leaning out to enclose me in a tight hug. I can still hear his musical laugh echo in my ears. Even his death had not tainted that noise that surfaced many times in my childhood.
So I do exactly what my father did. My heel throbs as I push it down into the ground, keeping both of my hands stable around the iron. I don't raise my eyes, not even daring to glance into my competitor's pitiless ones.
The swipe doesn't hit home, and the momentum knocks me off balance. It takes me one second to fumble to stay upright, but Hunter knows my weaknesses, and he has been waiting for this moment.
Except he doesn't attack. In fact, he's further away than I originally thought. He already has another sword in grasp, but he doesn't seem hungry to use it.
I glare at him, loose strands of my hair falling into my eyes. What was he waiting for?
"Aren't you going to fight?" I yell, stepping towards him, each footfall falling with an agonising anger that I can't distinguish from my bones. It's like a fire refusing to go out.
When I get close enough, my free hand balls into a fist. I can't stop my body as my curled fingers make a direct route towards his smirking face. I wait for it to collide with freezing flesh, but Hunter effortlessly dives to the side, the movement seamless and without fault. It looks like he's floating on a cloud: untouchable and out of reach. How could something so sinister have such an elegant outlook?
My hand makes its way to his worthless face once more. He ducks this time, spiralling away until his thin posture is stood to attention behind me.
I whirl around, my hair catching in my face as it turns into a mask of anger and hatred. Again, I lunge forward, this time my fist connecting with the iron of his chest. I scrunch my nose up as pain coils through the fingers, but I distract myself by rearing out with my right leg. It lands right on his shin, but the blow is not powerful enough to knock him off balance.
"I admire your efforts, Aurora," Hunter purred as he took a step back as I try to bash him once more with my curled fingers. I reach out again, so angry, so enraged by him and his actions, that I am unable to stop myself from doing so. This time, he catches my hand, holding it securely in his paper-white fist. He looks me dead in the eye, the black all-consuming in the morning light. "But you're not going to win."
Finding whatever humanity is left within me, I pull my hand away with a quick burst of energy, rendering me exhausted.
"Say what you want," I spit. It drips from my mouth, entwined with blood. "You'll never get away with this." Panting, I feebly wave an arm to the inner walls of the city. All signs of fleeing deserters and those not fit enough to fight are gone. Damien is nowhere in sight, undoubtedly caught up in the massacre outside the piles of cobblestone wall. "But if I die today, there will always be someone else who will step up and oppose you. No matter where you go, people will hunt you, and one day, you will die. If not by me, by some other infuriated person sick of the death you bring with you.
"You're no leader," I continue, taking a step back as my palms begin to sweat. I can feel the sword slowly sliding out of my grasp. "The only reason they follow you is because they were forced to become monsters by you and your dad. They follow you out of fear, not because of who you are," I shout. My voice reverberates off every single bit of shrapnel and every bit of chiselled rock; a cave of my voice, breaking Hunter's soul agonisingly. Bit by bit. Cell by cell.
Because there was only one way I could beat him.
Hunter always appeared to be in a mentally stable mood, but he had created the delusion that he was superior, and that everyone envied him. He thought that he was the best leader the rogues had ever seen, and that he would lead them to victory. All I had to do was not crumble, but shatter the shield protecting his soul from the burning truth.
Hunter scrunches his hand tightly until his knuckles turn an even paler white than the tone of his skin. "Shut up!"
Some sick part of me wants to smile, but I press on. "You destroy everything you touch," I snarl, lips pinching up to expose my elongating canines. "So I suggest you take off that crappy piece of metal protecting your heart, and fight like a true leader."
Hunter glares at me, but after two seconds, he lowers his eyes as though he's ashamed of himself. The weapon slides from his grip, clattering to the snow-clad ground with no more than a silent thump. I raise my head as he pulls the armour off, revealing his plain navy t-shirt beneath. A sweat stain runs across the centre of his chest, just above his pulsing heart.
The boy's jaw pulses as he raises his head back to its original proud position. His leg shifts, taking a step forwards with a menacing presence. I can feel the darkness suffocating his body, reaching out towards me and wrapping around me like elongated tentacles.
"You have your fair fight," he smirks, all signs of anger having vanished. I almost bite my tongue - again - in frustration. There had to be a point where he broke. Where he was so enraged, nothing could soothe his temper. I just had to keep pressing further. "But you're not going to win."
I bow my head to the side. "I'm sick and tired of you saying that," I state bitterly, swallowing nervously as I bring myself to place a footstep towards him. I force myself to bury my fear deep inside my soul, next to where my love for any other human being used to be locked away. This time, I'm the one who's exacerbated. The sense tingles through every cell of my skin, alive like warriors fighting an endless battle. "Yes, you're stronger than me. Yes, you're faster than me. Hell, you're better than me in every way, but you need to get it into your psychotic mind: even villains have downfalls," I muse. Hunter's already put his barriers back up, the true emotion behind his infinite eyes obscured. "And yours will be more than spectacular."
To my astonishment, Hunter doesn't laugh. Instead, a wolfish smirk grows on his lips like it's been tattooed onto the pale lines.
I feel my stomach stir at his response. He was growing less and less predictable with every passing second. "Do you want a fate worse than death?" The words forming from my lips are not my own. They are my father's. I remember him threatening a wolf that had betrayed us to the rogues when I was still a part of my pack. "Because that can be arranged."
"You make me laugh, Aurora," Hunter chuckles, his sword back in the palm of his hand within the blink of an eye. I didn't even see the movement. "With your snide words. Thankfully you won't be talking for much longer."
Something inside me explodes. An inferno bursts to life. A tsunami surges through my veins. A tornado stirs my insides. And lighting strikes directly into my ire.
My swords arcs across his body, slashing a bloody hole in his shirt. The navy material doesn't appear darker as his blood soaks through the material.
I stagger back, wondering what would happen. Was the wolf's bane str
ong enough to kill him all by itself? Or did I need to stab him through the heart?
Hunter's laugh echoes through my ears, but I don't hear anything else except his indecisive laugher. It haunts me, and no matter how much I attempt to focus on the wind whistling irritably through the slumbers of rock, I can't. My werewolf senses are failing me.
THE ROGUE WOLF Page 27
