Free Alpha's Child by Aubrey Rose Page A

as well as before. It seemed to flicker in and out. Perhaps his connection with Jordan had temporarily interfered with—
    The thought jolted him like a full-body electric shock.
    Why was Jordan left alive?
    “Damien!” Julia cried, and then the full force of their connection slammed back into place. Her fear gripped him at the same time that the scents swirled in his nostrils. A dozen—no, two dozen—no, more—
    Wolves .
     

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Julia
    Julia’s legs stopped moving of their own accord well short of the tree-line, refusing to enter the scene that awaited them in the clearing beyond. The ground around Julia’s feet was white with frost as though it was winter, pure and glistening, but in the clearing there were great swathes of scarlet, like some grotesque art installation. The centerpiece was a motionless mass of tattered fur, sprawled in a steaming bath of blood. Julia instinctively put her hands across her belly protectively, her throat gagging.
    Damien was in the clearing, sniffing the ground. He had not yet reached Jordan. It tore at her heart to see her mate groping his way toward his lost friend. Damien probably still had hope that his friend could be saved. He couldn’t see what Julia did. Couldn’t see that there was no hope.
    Julia’s maternal instincts screamed at her to flee from this place of death as fast as she could, but she could not leave Damien here, not now, and Jordan had been her friend too.
    She took a step forward, but Dee moved in front of her. “Let him say goodbye,” she whispered.
    Damien was now standing beside Jordan and moving his head back and forth over the body as if he didn’t know what to do. Julia tried to send him her love across the distance between them. She tried to feel his anguish in a desperate attempt to take some of the weight off his heart.
    But something strange was happening. She’d thought she understood the Calling by now, but the connection that had been growing ever stronger between her and Damien had frayed as they followed Jordan’s trail. Now it was flickering in and out. Or was she imagining it?
    Damien howled. The sound seemed to tear its way out of his throat, so raw and full of anguish that it froze Julia’s blood. Dee stiffened at the sound, her hackles rising.
    But no—Dee wasn’t reacting to Damien’s howl. She was looking in another direction.
    Julia whipped her head in this direction and found herself staring into a pair of yellow eyes glowing through a tangle of bushes just ten yards away. She turned to bolt but there were eyes that way too. They were all around her.
    Lithe, sinewy wolves slinked forth through the trees, jaws dangling open hungrily, eyes burning out of their jet black fur like hellish embers.
     

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    Damien
    Julia. The twins. He had to save them. Damien’s mind raced but it had nowhere to go. He considered attacking the pack as a diversion, sacrificing himself in hopes of allowing Julia and Dee to escape, but that was hopeless.
    And yet, if the pack intended to just kill them, they would have pounced by now. What did they want?
    “My pack is larger than yours,” Damien said loudly, on the meager hope that this was not Trax’s old pack but an unfamiliar one. “If you kill us, they’ll hunt you down.”
    “We know who you are,” said a cold voice, “and how many you are.”
    The wolves were in a broad ring around Damien, some of them growling deep in their throats. Their bloodlust was palpable, but they came no closer.
    Except one—presumably the new alpha of one of Trax’s splintered pack. This wolf’s stride was slow and casual, almost languid, his paws dragging slightly along the grass with each step. Damien could sense the bulk of his weight as he strode across the ground.
    “My name is Grath,” he said. “And you are Damien, the Blind One, are you not?”
    “Let the females go,” Damien said. “This doesn’t concern them.”
    “I beg to differ,” Grath said. He was walking