Chapter 115
My hands hit the door, jarring them with the force as I burst onto the roof. Ava screamed and ripped the kids behind her body,
using herself as a shield, and I twisted, slamming it shut.
The racket coming from the stairwell was deafening as I stared at the door where I had just abandoned my mother pulling my
gaze from the door. Ava rushed over, jamming a piece of a broken pipe she ripped off from somewhere through the handle and
line that ran to the vents on the roof above the door.
Yet all I could think was, I left her in there. I ran and left her behind. Ava whimpers as she secures the bar; I didn’t have to tell
her. She knew because mum didn’t come out behind me. Yet as she turned to look at me, I could see her heartbreak.
My entire body shook with adrenaline and shock. I left her. I thought when a tiny hand slipped into mine. Looking down, I find
Valarian looking at me.
“Grandma will be okay,” he says, only I knew she wouldn’t be. I swallowed and blinked back tears before turning to him and
picking him up. “Yep. She found another open door,” I tell him while walking over to the girls. I placed him beside the girls, where
they were huddled on the ground by the air conditioner vent.
Ava moves to the ledge of the building, and I follow her, checking over my shoulder to make sure the kids don’t follow. She looks
over, and so do I, and the City was in utter chaos and ruins. Buildings in the distance were on fire, screams rang out loudly, and
a frenzied battle could be seen from here on the main street. Warriors were trying to hold the forsaken back from the borders.
Valen was right. There were hundreds of them. They just kept coming.
The street directly below us was a scene from a horror movie as our men tried to keep them back. Two forsaken were dragging
another wolf off, and I didn’t want to think what they were doing to him as they yelped loudly.
“Her tether?” Ava asked me, and I swallowed.
“Not broken yet. She is fighting,” I whispered, staring out blankly. I noticed from up here that not one of those forsaken were
trying to get into Nixon’s pack directly across from us.
They were targeting ours the Slasher pack.
“How was the city outnumbered?” Ava gasps when an explosion goes off down by the cafe on the main street.
There was no other way to describe it, and the Pack warriors were outnumbered.
Slashers Packs men were trying to stop them from getting in, but a few slipped through, and just like our men, they couldn’t hold
them back, they just kept coming It should be impossible that so many could go unnoticed, but when one of the sky-rise
apartments across from us caught on fire, more screams rang out from the apartment building as Forsaken got inside, and I just
hoped the roller shutters and the locked stairway door held.
The mind-link opens up, and I hear Zoe.
” Is Casey alright?”
“We are on the roof,” I answered while peering over my shoulder to look at the children, and she sighed before she sobbed
through the link.
“And Marcus? Is he there yet? I am being blocked out. I can’t get a hold of anyone,” she asked, but I couldn’t lie to her either.
“Not yet, but .... Zoe, the city,” I don’t finish. The place looked like a battlefield. “As long as Casey is safe,” she says. “Are you
safe?” I ask her.
“I’m in the basement with some of the younger workers. But Macey, she....”
“Macey, what? Zoe?” I asked, panicked.
“She heard the sirens when I opened the doors and bolted out. We tried to stop her, “Zoe says.
“She has no phone.We have no service in here, and ....”
“She has no pack link,” I finish for her. My heart was beating faster at her words. “We think she went to warn the rogues at the
reserves and homeless shelter.
This side hasn’t been hit yet,” Zoe tells me. Yes, because they were all over here trying to access our pack and Slashers, while
Nixon’s remained untouched. That wasn’t a coincidence.
The mind-link is stretched when I feel Valen force it open, and Zoe is shoved out.
“We are trying to get to you. You just need to hold tight a little longer,” he said, though pain radiated through the bond, and I knew
he was hurt.
“What about Marcus? Zoe is trying to get a hold of him.”
“No idea. Everyone is blocking the pack link so we don’t become distracted. We... the mind-link cuts off abruptly only for Zoe to
reopen it, having felt the connection from Valen override hers.
“Marcus?”
“They lost sight of each other. Marcus is fine, Zoe. Valen would have felt the tether break,” I tell her, though I had no idea if that
would remain true.
I felt helpless as I watched our pack getting slaughtered on the streets below while I was holed up on a roof, unable to help them.
Tatum POV
Teeth, claws, blood, and fur. Everything was a blur as I tried to hold them back. I was screaming through the link for Valen to get
here when a few slipped past me. Men called through the link that they were on the way. Yet as one fell, another replaced it.
They seemed to just keep coming, and I was taking a beating. The venom in my system was starting to make my muscles ache
and lock. The only thing keeping me on my feet was adrenaline and knowing that Taylor, Valarian, and Casey were in that
stairwell. I just hoped they got inside the building and weren’t sitting ducks. My back leg is ripped into simultaneously as two
attacked snarling.
I pivot and twist, nearly ripping my leg off in the process.
Yelps and snarling ripped from the stairwell, causing me to become distracted as I tried to double back only to be jumped on. His
claws ripped through my fur, making my back arch, and his teeth were like a serrated knife as they tore into the back of my neck.
The stairwell, the stairwell, I kept thinking, while trying to toss him off as more flooded into the stairs, escaping past me while I
was being ripped to shreds.
My teeth sank into its front paw, and I felt the crunch as its bones broke under the pressure of my jaw, forcing him to release me
long enough to fling him off. I turned, running for the stairwell, my vision blurring as I ran when forsaken were suddenly running
back out of the stairwell. My heart jolted seeing the rabid creatures running when one dropped as a huge, molten-colored wolf
tore into its neck.
And it took me a second to realize it was Claire. Yet she didn’t look like a pack wolf but one of the forsaken. Her blood-red eyes
were savage, and venom was oozing and dripping from her teeth. Panic coursed through me, knowing if she turned on me, I
would have to kill Everly’s mother when her head twisted in my direction. Her lips pull back as she drops her head, snarling and
stalking towards me before she runs at me.
I snarled back when she lunged, only she missed, and I jumped aside, skidding on the slickened, blood-soaked floor, only to see
her rip into a forsaken that must have been coming up behind me.
Four more rush through the barrier and I jump over her, jumping into the fray. She was a full-blown forsaken. However, she was
fighting our side, not theirs, which gave her an advantage, as they kept recognizing her as their own. With the savage gleam and
the way she fought, you could tell John trained her himself.
She was just as lethal, but with a vicious edge, she tore into them, locking her jaw each time and tearing them to shreds, not
even flinching as they tore into her back. Relentlessly, she fought, saving my ass twice and I hers as we fought tail to tail, trying
to hold them back.
My back leg was useless, and I was running on three, the other hanging behind me. “We’re in the street,” Valen called, and I
couldn’t reply. I was too focused on the wolves in front of me. We needed to try to push them back to the street. Claire was taking
on three, but even she was on the losing end this time as I ripped one off her that was ripping into her flank, her jaws locked
around another one’s neck.
My paw swipes at the other, and we push them back and keep pushing them back up the ramp. Daylight broke as we kept
forcing them further back when she let out a whimper as we made it out the front of the hotel. Pivoting, I ran towards her when a
deafening howl ripped through the air as she swayed on her feet. Her throat is torn out, and her front legs buckle when a giant
black and grey wolf starts ripping them off her, and another Forsaken tackles me.
I break the wolf’s neck and turn my head to find it was John. The three dead, forsaken lying around him, and John now stood
naked petting her wolf. Her chest rises and she wheezes as blood pools around her when her chest appears to deflate.
And the agonized howl that turned to a wail shook me to the core when I heard Everly’s wailing scream ring out above as she felt
her mother’s link disintegrate. 8 Everyone stops at the noise, even the forsaken who are flooding into the street. Valen’s wolf was
huge and the one beside him equally big, and I recognized the wolf as the Slasher packs Alpha.
When Marcus’s Grey wolf rushed past me toward the forsaken, his coat tainted red, and the chaos started again. John’s angered
roar made my fur stand on end, and he shifted. He erupted and barreled towards the forsaken with blind fury, ripping them apart
as the bloodshed started again. Yet as an observer, I realized something. They were heading here, and they were running for the
Alpha’s homes, making this targeted and well thought out.
From what I heard, the rogue’s side and Everly’s hotel side of the City remained untouched by the information coming through
the link. The carnage only happening on one side. Nixon had to be behind it. And he was casting the rogues as the ones starting
it. Chaos ensued as we battled, our men falling and the forsaken kept coming. Valen and the Slasher pack Alpha, even John and
Kalen, were lethal beasts.
The four Alphas working together as they got right in the middle of the battle, huge towering beasts compared to the Forsaken.
Not a speck of fur was left untainted, their coats dripping in blood, both theirs and the Forsaken. This is what made them Alpha’s,
pure lethal muscle and precision like no other. Despite their massive sizes, they were fast and ran through them like a bowling
ball knocking down pins.
The street’s gutters ran like rivers with blood, and it stained everything. They didn’t stop, but neither did the Forsaken. These
numbers should not exist! How could they outnumber us? Three packs were fighting, and we were still somehow outnumbered,
or so we thought until the snarls shook windows.
The deafening force of pure rage reverberated around the street, everyone stopping to stare down the end of the road looking for
the source of the rumbling noise when Macey appeared. My heart stopped as she ran from down the street straight at us with a
huge bat in her hands. Fear coursed through me, and I ran towards her as the forsaken took off in her direction.
Only to start skidding across the ground as they tried to stop and double back when the Rogues tore up the street towards us. I
stopped as she led her army of Rogues to the battle, and they were a sight to be seen.
Our men were given rest as they jumped into battle without hesitation. Saving those who shunned them, cast them out, and
fought as one. Pack members and Rogues were fighting alongside each other and painting the street red with the blood of the
Forsaken and proving their innocence and their own desperate need to fight for our City. Teeth sank into my neck, and I was
flung across the road.
My head smashed into the gutter, and I could hear screaming in the distance before I felt air blow the fur across my face as her
bat connected with the wolf’s skull with a thud. My eyes blurred as I opened them to see her bashing its skull into the earth with
brute force.
Her clothes were stained with blood, her arm bleeding from where she had been bitten. But even covered in blood, she was
beautiful as she fought. And I caught sight of Zoe’s small white wolf protecting Marcus, who was trying to protect her when
Macey screamed. My heart thumped and felt like it left my body as I tried to get to my feet, staggering as the venom took hold.
Only it wasn’t a scream of pain but a war cry as she flung her bat at the wolf, ripping into Alpha John. She grunts when she is
tackled from behind, only for Kalen to rip the wolf off her. I was delirious as I tried to find my footing and get to her, and I felt my
surroundings flip and turn on their axis before I succumbed to the nothingness.