Un.Bridled (Claimed Series #2) (21 page)

A loud
snap
echoed across the forest and a hollow thud followed shortly thereafter. Hayden whirled around, staring at Rachel’s fallen form with blank terror. The woman’s neck was at an odd angle, but that wasn’t what killed her.

A man with platinum blond hair stood over her lifeless body and tugged the missing knife from her chest. His dark eyes met Hayden’s and a small grin settled across his lips.

“Beautiful knives. Pity you can’t keep a better eye on them.”

He winked and Hayden saw red.

She snarled and charged, her fingernails elongating to sharp claws. If she weren’t so determined to use her knives on this nameless enemy, her wolf would have taken complete control.

As it was, she lunged at the man,
feinting a swipe with her blade and jabbing it up and under his blocking arm. The tip of the knife tore his shirt, but he moved skillfully away before she could do any damage.

He seemed proficient with the blade as he met her attacks with solid defense. He fought similar to Nicolas, in that he refused to stop smirking and grinning. Hayden never realized what Cole must have felt fighting someone who didn’t take him seriously. Now she knew.

The blond-haired rogue seemed to be humoring her. He detected each attack and countered it with one of his own. His hits were powerful, but Hayden had a premonition that they could have been a lot stronger if he felt susceptible.

Her anger slowly turned way to desperation and sorrow as she fought around Rachel’s lifeless body. She tried to avoid bumping into the woman, but her opponent seemed to find it humorous as he intentionally led her in that direction.

Calming, Hayden read his intentions and played that to her advantage. He thought her weak and an emotional mess. She pretended to remain that way as she blindly attacked him, but she also forced herself to take note of their surroundings.

As soon as his back faced the edge of the hill, Hayden acted. She swiped blindly at him, an attack he would see as another rage-inspired exploit. But at the last moment, before he could block the low thrust, Hayden changed direction and flipped the knife around. Using the butt-end of the blade, she slammed it into the side of his skull and kicked the legs out from underneath him. 

Mocking eyes widened as he began to fall. His fingers snatched out and hooked into her jacket. With a sharp tug, he pulled her with him. Unable to stop the descent, she fell and tumbled down the hill with her enemy, their limbs becoming a tangled and unrecognizable mess.

It was a steep hill and Hayden couldn’t grasp anything to stop and anchor herself. A wave of dizziness swept through her as she tumbled and rolled at breakneck speed. She tried to get a pinpoint on the man’s direction and catch him with the blade, but all that served to do was break her outstretched arm. It was a clean break, but the numbness and pain made her fingers slacken around the knife, causing it to fall from her hand.

Only fate would determine who would hit the tree first and sequentially stop their descent. Unfortunately, fate was not on Hayden’s side. The first tree that stood directly in their path was an unmovable obstacle. It did nothing to cushion Hayden as she slammed her head against it.

She experienced another wave of disorientation, and before she knew it, the blond-haired rogue was kneeling on top her chest, looking down at her as if he’d just won a prize.

His grin was back in place as he traced his knife—Hayden’s knife—across her neck. The tip of the knife prodded Nicolas’ mating mark. “There must be a strong man behind such a strong woman. I look forward to meeting him.”

She glared up at him. “His name is Nicolas Slayter.”

A part of her wondered why she identified Nicolas as her mate, but a more logical part of her acknowledged that Nicolas
was
the Alpha of the rogues. If this man were part of the rogues, then he would think twice before killing his Alpha’s declared mate.

At her declaration, the man turned motionless. Seconds later, his grin widened. “Hayden, am I right?” He chuckled. “You’re a smart lady, but word has it you’re more interested in the youngest Slayter."

Hayden gasped breathlessly as he added more weight on her chest. No matter how hard she struggled, he seemed to match it with more strength. Her arms were pinned at her sides, rendering them useless.

He pressed the blade against her neck, the cold metal making her more uncomfortable than the snow encasing her prone figure. “You should know, just because Nicolas is your declared mate, doesn’t mean I would have any qualms about killing you.”

“Then do it,” Hayden snapped.

The man tsked and moved the blade across Hayden’s cheek. “I find you entertaining enough to keep you alive just to see what trouble you’ll cause. That is, if you can survive a little silver poisoning.” He frowned in contemplation. “Where should we mark you? It would be a shame to mare such a pretty face, don’t you think? And your throat
should
be reserved for Nicolas and Cole. I’m never one to tamper with traditions.”

Cold metal suddenly dipped beneath the collar of Hayden’s sweater and teased the top of her breast. Her eyes flashed. Instead of struggling and rebelling, she kept eye contact with the beast above her, staring at him levelly.

He tipped back his head and laughed gleefully. “The chest it is.”

The tip of the blade carved into her skin, breaking it enough to draw blood. Hayden bit her tongue and her pulse quickened. The silver instantly left her skin hot and feverish. Was this going to be her end? She couldn’t help but to think it was a shameful way to go.

When he finished sketching into her skin, he removed the knife and her sweater fell back in place. “Nice sweater, by the way.” He winked again. “And a sincere thanks for the knife. I hope we can play with them again.”

Through jaded eyes, Hayden watched as he stood up and retreated. He never turned his back to her, an action that spoke volumes. For all his mockery and insanity, he still considered her enough threat not to leave his back defenseless.

Instead of hurling a knife at him, Hayden simply laid in the snow, staring up at the dark sky. Unshed tears pooled in her eyes and she tried to prevent them from falling. She felt used, ashamed, and defeated.

No matter whom she tried to help, it always backfired. Looking back on it now, she wondered how she could have let her guard down so quickly after the three rogues had attacked them. She
should
have scouted the area before deeming it safe enough to relax.

Such a foolish mistake, yet it was significant enough to kill Rachel.

Hayden arched her neck and inhaled the cold air, a lousy attempt to steady her emotions. At her sides, her fingers curled into tight fists. The heavy residue on her palms reminded her of the blood she spilt from her fallen enemies.

She tried counting. Adolf claimed it helped ground an individual. In the end, Hayden barely made it to three before she began sobbing. Clutching at her face, she desperately tried to muffle her cries.

He said
if
she survived the silver poisoning.

Hayden wondered if it was even possible to survive it at all. Back when Tracer had infiltrated Cole’s house, Hayden had stabbed her thigh with a silver dagger in order to stop herself from killing Addie. At the time, Cole had used a tonic, a water-type substance that had cleansed the silver from her wound.

The application of the tonic had hurt more than the initial stabbing, but at the moment, Hayden found that hard to believe. While she hadn’t been stabbed this time around, she was still experiencing excruciating pain that would have made the tonic application feel like a minor sting.

Face down in the snow, Hayden’s body was aflame and she trembled feverously. The area where the rogue had carved her skin was a sharp contrast in temperature from the rest of her body. It was freezing. So much so that it burned.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she savored the feel of ice and snow against her flushed cheek. Her body felt weak and jelly-like. To make matters worse, her heightened senses were gone, making her feel exposed. It was if her wolf had retreated to the farthest recess of her mind to escape from the silver.

She hadn’t felt this vulnerable in a long time. She felt… human.

A hand suddenly touched her shoulder, causing Hayden to flinch away. But the hand proved relentless as it shook her, trying to get a proper response.

“Hayden.”

Hands forcibly turned her around and she found herself staring up at a face she thought she’d never see again. “You’re not real,” she slurred through her fever. It must have been an illusion. A very welcoming illusion.

Cole frowned down at her, his hands patting her body, looking for the source of her current state. He paused on her recently healed arm and quickly broke it again, setting it back into the correct
placement before it could heal incorrectly a second time. She didn’t voice her protest, though the pain prevented her from breathing.

“Where is the silver?” he asked after finding her relatively unscathed.

Hayden wondered if she had nodded off, because Cole gave an impatient grunt at her lack of response and began to yank at her clothes. It didn’t take long before he tugged down the collar of her sweater and discovered the bloody mark left behind.

His expression froze before lines of rage darkened his face. Deep emeralds eyes flashed amber and his fingers bunched possessively into her sweater. Whatever the blond-haired rogue had carved, it clearly didn’t sit well with Cole.

Though he picked her up gently, his body was rigid and his face was forbidding. Hayden stared at him and continued staring when he looked down at her.

Her lungs wheezed with each inhalation she took, but she managed to speak clearly. “Why are you always here to pick up the pieces?” she asked softly. “Why are you always here to see me at my worse when all I want is for you to see me as capable?”

The line between his eyebrows disappeared and his gaze softened. He reached down and traced the thin skin underneath her lashes. “You have beautiful brown eyes.”

Exhausted, Hayden closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, daylight had suddenly arrived, brightening the landscape and washing everything in white haze. The dark bark of the deciduous trees stood out against the white sky, their spidery branches arching and stretching above her. Squirrels scurried up and down their trunks and birds sang jovially as they flew branch to branch.

Hayden watched nature’s entertainment through hooded eyes. As she regained sharper consciousness, she became aware of the hard cushion behind her. Arms, which seemed to be sculptured from stone, wrapped around her and cradled her against a firm chest. She knew she was leaning against Cole, but she couldn’t
feel
him.

The familiarity she was accustomed to in his company was no longer present. He seemed alien now and far more intimidating. Even if she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel the aura he carried through the eyes of an ordinary human. There was a clear, unspoken warning not to get too close.

No wonder why Gregory Martin, Blake’s human brother, was so frightened of Cole.

“When will she be back?” Hayden mumbled. Her question was ambiguous, but they both knew she was referring to her wolf.

“Shortly.” His hand lifted from her leg and pressed against the burning abrasion on her chest. “By separating herself from you, your wolf was able to detoxify the silver from your body. If the blade had pierced muscle, you wouldn’t have survived without proper treatment.”

They were sitting against a rocky terrain, or more specifically, Cole was leaning against a bolder with Hayden lounging between his legs and against his chest. Now that her wolf was subdued, the cold affected her as if she were human. But with Cole cocooning her body, his body heat protected her against the bitter wind.

“How were you able to find me if my wolf was…”

“I could still feel you, even though you could not feel me.”

His large palm remained covered over her chest, as if he could somehow will the hurt away. She tried to relax into him, but without her wolf linking them together, he seemed unapproachable, cold.

“I never asked you before,” Hayden started lowly, unsure of how to proceed when she didn’t feel her usual confidence. “But is that a normal occurrence for people like us? We can feel each other and find one another, but that seems impossible if we aren’t mated.”

She remembered her first night in Oregon. Even if they had just met, Hayden hadn’t been able to sleep because Cole had been pacing anxiously downstairs. At the time, she’d thought it was because he was her Alpha and they’d established some sort of bond that way.

“For people like us,” Cole repeated her words lowly, amused. “You mean because we are life mates?” His nose traced her temple and warm breath ghosted lightly across her cheek. “I imagine it’s a
normal occurrence, yes. Our wolves acknowledged each other during our first encounter and we’ve only continued to grow closer. Our link is already established, but it will increase in strength once we mate.”

Immediately, Hayden noticed he put a slight emphasis on
once
they
mated
and not
if
they mated. She knew they needed to address their relationship in more depth, as it had been neglected for far too long. But she couldn’t do it now. She wouldn’t.

Gathering up her strength, she pulled away from him.

His arms reluctantly opened up around her, allowing her to scramble away from him. She braced her hands on the ground before slowly standing. As expected, the world spun and she was quick to crouch down again.

Avoiding eye contact with Cole, Hayden gradually composed both herself and her pride. It was imperative she stood on her own feet. After her failure yesterday evening, she felt wounded in
more ways than one. Her pride was damaged and she needed to find her confidence again.

“Why is this time so different?” Hayden asked her silent spectator. “You refused to support me after I witnessed the Hunters’ execution of the rogues. You said an Alpha had to stand
on their own. What makes this time any different?”

“You’d rather I treat you with curt indifference?”

Hayden glanced his way but looked away before she could establish eye contact. She blamed her submission on her absent wolf. “Yes,” she said simply.

Cole took a long while to respond. “But this time
is
different and it calls for different handling. You require a gentler hand, though you wouldn’t agree with me.” He added the last part before she could tell him otherwise.

Pressing her fingers into the snow, Hayden bowed her head and sat back on the ground, suddenly overwhelmed with grief. “I should have protected her better. I was careless. He just… he took advantage of my slipup. He made sure I would never make the same mistake twice.”

“I saw her body. And the others.” Cole made an abrupt movement. No longer lounging against the rocks, he swiftly took position next to her. He stood close, to offer company, but far enough to give her space. “You cannot be so hard on yourself.”

“But she was more than just a mistake I could learn from,” Hayden insisted. “I judged her too quickly, Cole. She was a decent person. She had a son. She had no voice…”

“It is unfortunate that she was killed. Her son will need his pack now more than ever. But it was not your fault.” He crouched down and peered intensely at her averted face. “It wasn’t your blade that killed her.”

Hayden’s eyes widened and she stared at Cole in dismay. “But it
was
! I turned my back, thinking the threat was gone. He retrieved one of the knives from the earlier victims and used it to stab Rachel…”

“Hayden,” Cole interrupted sternly. His tone did not possess gentle consoling, but unrelenting authority. “It was not your
hand
that killed her, but his own. He is the only one responsible for her death. You have shown significant strides in your training. Remarkable strides. But you are not a seasoned fighter. Unfortunately, to become a seasoned warrior, you need to make mistakes and learn from them. If you never fail, you can never improve.”

She should have expected Cole would give her brutal honesty. Truthfully, she preferred it to coddling. He had a peculiar way of reaching her and setting her straight. Her grief and guilt over Rachel’s death was still painful, but somehow, Cole was able to make it bearable. 

Bracing her hands on the ground, Hayden tried to stand a second time. This time, as she got to her feet, she endured the dizziness and weakness. The longer she stood, the firmer her stance grew and the stiller the world became.

Hayden unfastened the first few buttons of her jacket and moved her sweater away from her chest. The skin around the knife wound was almost blue, but she could still see the rough sketch of the letter ‘E’.

“His calling card?” she asked bitterly.

When Cole didn’t answer, Hayden looked down at him. He was crouching at her feet, appearing like a coiled hunter, ready to spring instantaneously. Apparently, he didn’t find her cynicism regarding the marking amusing, for he stared up at her with dark brooding.

“What did he look like?” His pupils were dilated and a sharp canine relentlessly poked his bottom lip.

Though she had never encountered that particular tone and look before, she was well aware of what it meant. “He’s mine,” she informed selfishly. “He could have killed me, but figured I would be further entertainment for him. He treated me like a toy.”

“He marked you,” Cole countered lethally. “It’s a territorial instinct I will not tolerate.”

A fraction of her old self reacted upon hearing his possessive tone. “Tracer left his mark when he
Sired me.” She touched the horizontal line across her throat. “Nicolas claimed me.” Her fingers splayed across the mating mark. “And now
he
left his mark on my chest. Are you sure you aren’t just frustrated that you don’t have your own claim?”

Cole shot up from the ground faster than her human reflexes could track. He lunged at her neck with his teeth and Hayden scrambled backward, hitting her heels on a rock and falling to the ground.

Before she hit the snow, Cole grabbed her around the shoulders and held her just inches from the ground. His eyes were narrowed and his canines had yet to retract back into his gum line.

“If you weren’t so vulnerable and unable to defend yourself, I might just have accepted that challenge.” His pupils were so dilated, only a sliver of amber could be seen around the outer rim.
“Perhaps later. No, definitely later.”

He then released her, letting her drop to the ground. Hayden grunted as she hit the hard surface, her eyes wide, and her heart accelerating quickly. She watched as he prowled past her and toward the shoreline of a small creek, his knee-length coat swaying around his legs.

Swallowing, Hayden collected her bearings once more. Knowing she wouldn’t get the name of her assailant without Cole finding out his identity as well, she turned to the next pressing matter.

“The pack—”

“Is safe.” Cole crouched next to the narrow stream. A section of ice was broken and he cupped a handful of water, using it to scrub his face. “Aside from you, I was able to get everyone out unharmed. When I was confident they had a relatively safe path to our sanctuary, I left Blake in charge before pursuing you.”

She was scared to ask. “Were there many casualties?”

Cole turned motionless, a few water droplets descending down the hard angles of his face. “Yes. There were casualties. Most were at the hands of the rogues, who were waiting deeper in the woods.” He stared down at the half-frozen stream, his haunted gaze similar to the one Hayden wore when recalling Rachel. “You wouldn’t identify any of the causalities, but there were enough of them to cause a noticeable decrease in our numbers.”

Hayden immediately felt guilty for being relieved that she didn’t know any of the casualties. She knew what Cole was experiencing. He was upset for not being able to save everybody. “Where did the others go?”

Cole ran a hand through his wayward hair, slicking it back with the water gathered on his palm. A few stubborn strands of hair fell forward, clinging to the side of his damp face. “The other Alphas have their own emergency retreats. We will reconnect when we reach our destinations.”