If Only

Chapter 20 - Not Afraid

His neck beneath my hands as his face turned blue, his body bleeding from every place that it possibly could as I pounded my fist into him once more.

I released a growl as I stormed down the hall, the large size designed for incidents such as this allowing me to keep my pace without difficulty. Wrath had taken me over, a familiar, burning feeling I embraced with open arms. Tyson had no fucking idea what was in store for him. By the time I was done with him, he would be praying for death.

"Alpha," Zane yelled, running to catch up with me. He reached out to place a hand on me and I shoved him off roughly, causing him to stumble slightly.

"Move," I commanded, so much force and dominance in the order that Zane was wincing as he fought against it.

"Greyson!" Lizzy said then, rushing forward with tears in her eyes as she took Zane's place in front of me.

"You can't do this right now," Zane asserted.

"Watch me," I snarled in response. I didn't know who in the hell he thought he was; telling me what I could and couldn't do.

"So you're just going to leave Sammy then?" Lizzy questioned, and I hesitated, only for a moment. But it was long enough for Zane to seize the opportunity.

"Believe me when I say that fucker is dead. But he can wait, Sammy can't," Zane reasoned.

"Did you fucking see what he did to her?" I roared through the link, all lessons of control that I had learned and trained so hard to obtain completely gone, as if they had never existed in the first place.

"We all saw. And he's going to die, but we have to wait. For her, we have to wait," Lizzy asserted, the authority of Beta Female leaking into her tone.

Fierce rage swelled within me, a small piece of me knowing that she was right and hating every part of it.

I hated it because killing Tyson would be easy. But facing Sammy, looking at the one person in this world I was supposed to protect above everyone else and seeing how much I had failed as her mate, that would be anything but easy.

"He's right," Will agreed, Paige nodding her head beside him.

"I can't help her," I admitted, hating how true it was. There was nothing I could do to ease her pain, to make any of this better. This was a problem that I couldn't fix.

"You know our kind is the strongest when they're by their mate, physically and emotionally. She needs all the strength she can get right now. Even if she doesn't understand why yet," Lizzy insisted, knowing first-hand how comforting the mere presence of your mate can be.

In all honesty though, we didn't know if it truly was that way for Sammy. We didn't know if she could feel any type of semblance of the mate bond. All we knew was that she could feel the sparks at physical contact. I glared at Lizzy, giving her a you don't know that look.

"I may not know for sure, but I'm not about to gamble my best friends life so you can get your revenge," she growled, standing her ground and refusing to move from in front of the steps leading downstairs.

My breaths came out in shallow pants as I finally mustered enough strength to force myself away from the stairs. Away from the door that would lead me outside towards the one thing I wanted to do most. Towards the one piece of absolute shit that I wished I would have the ability to kill more than once. I walked away from her and back down the hall, not allowing myself to look back, not sure I had the strength to ignore the temptation coursing through me.

I focused on slowing my breaths as I reached my study, shifting so I was able to open the door with my hands rather than break it down. Growing up, my father used to tell me that just standing inside of this room made him think better. I wasn't sure I shared the same sentiment, as much as I wished I did.