"Alpha!" Jacob shouted, his heart galloping from his chest.
Scarlets screams reverberated around the wooden room, covering the sound of the storm raging outside the building growing into its own warning siren. The few lights in the room flickered in an out and Doctor Novache wasn't positive that it was solely the storms doing. He quickly shuffled to place himself between the traumatized woman and the enraged Alpha before him, holding his arms out as if to steady both of them, the lights flickering around him reminding him he didn't have his readers on.
"You said she was dead!" He roared, his muscular arm lifting to point accusingly at the elder doctor, his eyes swirling a deadly blue.
Orion stared at his mate, curled into a ball on the small hospital bed, reeking of fresh rain and full lavender, her body next to a red spot that Orion could scent as pure death. Her body was only covered by a thin white sheet soaked from her hair that completely covered her face. Her knees were tucked tightly beneath her and she rocked on the bed, her screams dying on her lips before beginning all over again like a wave crashing into the shore over and over again.
"She-she was!" Jacob stuttered, his eyes as large as saucers as he feared the mans convulsing body, rage tinting his dark tan skin beet red, his muscles shaking with the need for his Beast.
Orion took a step forward, his heart thumping in his chest as the mate he had only truly seen for a moment before being whisked away by his care team, sat right in front of him. He could see her toes, uncovered by the thin white sheet, she was missing her little toe on her right foot. Her toenails were dirty, covered in soil and they looked wet; but they were square and tiny, and Orion hated himself for thinking it, but cute. Her arms holding her sheet were covered in thick purple scars; Orion recognized the wounds, they were easily from a whip, and though he could see her arms were almost totally scar tissue he felt nothing but emptiness staring at them. A void, a hollowing never ending guilt that he hadn't been there to stop them from bubbling on her skin, to protect her from the pain. Her knuckles gripped the sheet so tightly they were stark white, feathering her to the world her was obviously not currently in.
"Alpha, I just came to the cabin to collect my medical bag when I found her outside the wing in the middle of this storm. I don't know how to explain it." Novache could see the pupil of his Alphas eyes dialate as his chest rose and fell like a raging bull.
His muscles in his arms flexed, the tension in his body building to the point Jacob feared a famous involuntary shift from his Alpha at any moment. He knew standing in the middle of his mate and him was a death sentence, especially with the impending shift that would come, but Jacob had seen the terror in that woman's eyes as she remembered her past. If he lived to help her, he would devote himself to it.
His Alpha deserved it.
Orion could see her fingers were covered in scars, but they were thin and nimble. Her fingernails were overgrown and broken, but he knew her hands were like a sculptures, the missing pieces to Praxiteles Aphrodite. And though her hair covered her face, he couldn't help but notice the richness of its color. A deep brown, melted dark chocolate with an Auburn undertone in the flickering bulbs of the room. The lights showed how dirty her hair was, caked in grime and dirt from an unknown origin, but the way the wet strands reflected the fluorescent light kept him from caring; he wanted to run his fingers through it.
Orion had been taking steps toward his mate, too consumed by taking in his living breathing woman to realize the closer he got the worse her screams became. Their sound increasing, a tremor building to her crescendo, her arms dropping the sheet to reveal her chest as she backed farther onto the bed to get away from this man. Orion stopped his trek at the sight of her chest, the light pattern of burns over his skin only making him want to feel their typography. His beast burned in his lungs, it's growl merging with his body, his vocal chords trembling to explode its hurt and rage and need to the world. He hated his mates injuries, he wanted to feed on the flesh of all who had contributed to her agony of life, and he hated her fear. He could smell her tears, feel the room vibrate with with her cries, and with Jacobs hand on his chest, he felt rage at her terror.
"Alpha, please stop." Jacobs voice trembled with talking to his leader in the manner he just had. He had seen this man rip throats from bodies for simple looks, he knew each second was a blessing as he tried to save this poor girl.
Orion's pupils snapped to the object keeping him from reaching his woman. His electric blue eyes swirling with the battle and rage of his Beast, he had forgotten his initial outrage.
"Alpha you hear three heartbeats." He hushed, his hand trembling against Orion's bunched chest.
Orion snarled, his lip curled high over his teeth as his beast fought to bring his canines out and rip this man apart; his words finally ran through his brain.
The snarl slowly died, and his lip dropped as the woman's screams faded to a distant ringing in the back of Orion's head. Yes, he could hear it. Four heartbeats prominent in the room, his, Novache's, his mates and a terribly fast yet faint heartbeat.
"Who else is here?" Orion growled.
"We need to step outside." Jacob begged.
"No, I won't leave her." Orion hadn't been there to see his mates condition when they arrived.
He knew the damage Sabina had described had been terribly underplayed while he flew the plane to his territory, he heard from the nurses that had been caring for his mate she was due to die any second. They muttered about her condition and her body as if it was an undiscovered insect and he wanted nothing more than to murder them for talking about such a sensitive subject so nonchalantly. She was his mate. Finally, after so fucking long he had been gifted a woman to age him, to give him pups, to love him on a level only she could, and they mocked her life.
This was their Luna, their Alpha Female!
They were exiled, without a hesitant thought from Orion.
He had called Doctor Novache back from working in Ketchikan for the mundanes hospital to care for his mate. He was her sole caretaker, and despite his urging to visit his beloved, Orion couldn't bring himself to. He had thought if he didn't form a connection with her, a bond, that her passing would hurt him less. The tease of finally being given his mate from his Goddess, only to be ripped away in days was too much for his soul to bear. His land seemed to reflect his turmoil, a storm settling roots over their mountain that refused to leave and only increased in severity as his Lunas health deteriorated. He couldn't rip himself from under that Spruce to be by her bedside as she passed away. Or to view her body when Novache notified him of her passing. Seeing her here, now, alive and well enough to flush her face with screams that never ended; he would never leave her side again.
He was a foolish man, afraid of nothing on this planet until he felt his soul change as he recognized her as his mate. She was not dead, for whatever reason, and he would not leave this room until she was well enough to leave with him. He would never leave her alone, in the unknown again, Orion was a selfish creature after living all his life alone. But he would never be selfish, for her, again.
His steel gaze pulled itself from his woman, and rested on Novache's grey iris's, "Explain, now."
Jacobs body trembled, the unknown repercussions of speaking the actual words in front of the already traumatized woman boiling in his stomach as pure fear for her health. He looked over his shoulder as the woman finally fell silent, her eyes full of tears streaming down her face as she braces herself on the bed. She was ready to run, to hide, do anything to protect her form the literal mountain of a Beast in front of her, separated only by the large older man. But she was frozen, fear oozing through her body slow like oil, she had heard his words, heard his question, and she was still; a calm before the storm.
The lights stopped flickering, and the thunder heavily rumbled in the background.
She hadn't noticed the heartbeat.
But it was there, it was a thrumming in her own body, a movement of a fluttering heart like a humming birds wings.
Ice built in her veins.
Her limbs shook, mocking the movement of the leaves on the trees battered by the storm outside. She stared at the Doctor with pleading eyes, her lips trembling as her mouth fell open. It was her final memory, replaying itself over and over in her head.
Terrorizing her.
Molesting her thoughts.
She couldn't be.
"Orion, please, I beg of you let us step outside." Jacob almost felt tears warming his nose, burning his eyes, as he stared at the woman on the precipice of mental collapse.
"Fucking say it!" His Alpha roared, his teeth lengthening in his mouth and eyes boiling over to the electric blue that stilled Novache's heart.
"She- she shows signs of sexual assault. She's pregnant." He couldn't bring himself to say it louder than a whisper.
Orion's heart halted in his chest, sound became absent to his auditory senses, the world exploded before his very eyes in a mixture of rage and the need to protect his mate- his young.
His young.
His wolf recognized no difference, this was his mate, this was his woman. She carried a pup. His, it was his. His child that rested in her womb; the growl had built, exploding from his throat as he moved toward his woman.
She, on the other hand, did not have the same thought. This was a disease, this was a parasite, feeding on her body without her consent, sucking her blood from her veins and her life from her heart. He had implanted an insect in her, Apollo had cursed her with his act of rape, placed a soul-feeding vampire in her womb.
She wanted that little beast out from her flesh.
With a roar of betrayal, Scarlet felt her wolf come to the surface of her body for the first time since her first shift. It's pain and howling filling her brain as it lent her its claws; Scarlet did not hesitate before attempting to rip the devils fetus from her body by force. Her knuckles cracked and broke as long claws hardened and grew a deep brown from her fingertips, the tips sharp as razors with their being unused.
Her flesh tore under her elongated nails, blood pooling to her sides and staining the white sheet that had covered her innocence moments ago, smelling so strongly of death.
Novache and Orion leapt within a heart beat to hold the weak woman's arms down, her half human- half werewolf howls filling the entirety of the hospital wing as she attempted to terminate her own pregnancy.
Whaaaaat?
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