Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter

It was all-out pandemonium. The moment Neil, Scott, and Leo had reached the bottom, they were just in time to find Sophia readying to fight off Thorin. Two soldiers lay crumpled on the ground.

Her father and Matthew had clearly not expected that she had been able to shift to her wolf form without the full moon, and her father was going to suffer for it.

All three of them seemed to take in the scene around them within barely a second, their eyes flying over all the soldiers she’d taken down, and she could see it in their eyes too. Thorin hadn’t been nearly as organized or had as much manpower as they’d expected. But still, they stared at her in amazement.

When her wolf eyes met Neil’s, she saw how they were filled with pride, but mostly concern as he asked her telepathically, Are you alright?

Not having time to question why they were able to communicate being in different forms, she quickly said while an urgent growl escaped her throat at the same time, Get down! Matthew has a–

But it was too late. Shots went off. Her sharp wolf ears hurt even though she pressed them down at the back of her head to muffle the sounds as much as possible, but she didn’t dare flinch or look away.

Her heart leaped off a cliff, not the moment she saw Scott ducking and taking Leo down with him, for they were out of harm’s way. No, she watched in terror as Neil didn’t even try to get out of Matthew’s firing range. In fact, when the first shot went off, Neil had already been running to the demon.

She couldn’t stop watching, all her vital functions have stopped working, especially when she saw how Neil’s eyes flashed yellow and he growled a vicious snarl of unyielding and murderous intent.

After a few more shots went off, all miraculously missing Neil, Matthew had stopped trying to shoot him a few seconds before the muscled freight train was about to hit him. Or maybe his bullets were finished. Either way, the expression of absolute terror on his face was the best thing she’d seen… Well, ever.

She only watched long enough to see that she didn’t even need to tell him that Matthew had wanted to rape her again, as the mere sight of the satanic shifter sent Neil on a path of unrelenting vengeance. And the most glorious thing of it all was that she wasn’t frightened by that rage and pure power rippling like a live thing within her mate anymore.

Go back a few weeks, then yeah, she would have been peeing her pants right now at seeing that sort of fury within the man she loved. But now–now–she understood it, and felt it was justified, necessary, and maybe even a little hot.

Seriously, Sophia! Not the time…

Waiting to see Neil landing a punch so hard that she could hear something in Matthew’s face breaking under that powerful fist with a very satisfying crunch, before her attention snapped back to Scott and Leo, to ascertain that they were indeed alright, and hadn’t been shot after all.

They were fine. In fact, Scott was already running toward Neil and Matthew, wanting to let the vile male know his sentiments as well.

But something was bothering Sophia. It was as though something was scratching behind the door of her mind, that had closed somehow the moment she had been surprised to see the three most important men in her life coming to rescue her. What was it again?

Oh–

By the time she remembered, she was already watching Leo’s eyes being filled with fear as he saw something behind her. That was what the scratching had been about. She’d known that not only Matthew had been the threat.

“Soph–” Leo called, trying to warn her, but before he had half her name leaving his lips, she had already thought of ducking and turning around to swipe Thorin’s feet from under him in case he had a gun pointing at her head, but knew at the same time that if that was the case, that by the direction of Leo’s horror-filled eyes, the bullet would hit him instead of her if she ducked out of the way.

This reasoning happened in her head so fast and slow at the same time, there was just no way to explain how it was possible, but she turned and jumped the moment she heard the bullet being propelled from the chamber of the gun Thorin had pointed at her.

Sophia got hit in the shoulder on her side, and fell with unspeakable force to the ground, pain shooting through her body as the earth-shattering shock of the hit reverberated through her whole body. She’d never been shot before, but with the sheer speed and violence it all happened, was more surprising than the actual pain that came after. It made her almost regret not letting him shoot her in the head. Almost.

“Sophia!” She heard Neil call to her, not knowing whether he did in her head or not, but she could feel his intense panic as though it was her own.

She didn’t look his way. Instead, she showed him, and her father, that the bullet had done nothing to her. That it hadn’t shattered her teeth with the force it knocked and threw her to the ground. And most of all, that it wasn’t causing her pain or slowing her down in the least.

Back up on all-fours again, she was facing Thorin and was practically roaring with rage the moment their eyes met. Those merciless eyes that Sophia had been too afraid to look into for so long, she was now devouring with her own, her hunger for vengeance evident even to him as she saw that dawning realization there – the realization that he should have killed her when he’d still had the chance.

He then raised the gun to her head again to have another chance to shoot her, but before he could even point its end away from the ground, he was yelling in pain as she had her canines sinking into his wrist.

“You fucking bitch!” He accused, holding his mutilated wrist in his hand against his chest, as he dropped the sawed-off double barrel shotgun to the dirty floor.

No. Fucking. Wonder – Sophia thought in outrage as she watched the weapon there. The one he’d used on her. No wonder the hit had sent her flying halfway across the barn with its force. And no wonder it felt like half of her side had been blown away. Not daring a look there to inspect the damage now, she stubbornly kept her snarling wolf face directed at the man that had taken everything from her.

Her mother. Her childhood. Her innocence. Her dignity. She’d be damned if she allowed him to take anything more from her.

As though Thorin saw that she was about to lunge at him, he held up his hands in surrender, and Sophia had no idea why, but it stopped her from doing what she most wanted to do in the world.

Sophia could hear that there wasn’t any fighting going on with Matthew behind her anymore, and she could feel that Neil’s fury had dissipated, but was now angry and cautious for another reason. She knew he was watching her and Thorin. All of them were. What she did now would be seen by them all, and she didn’t want to look like a monster ripping her father’s throat out while he was clearly surrendering – though she felt like she should have done that by now.

Instead, she remained dead still, her eyes not leaving him once, for if he flinched too fast, Sophia was going to use that as justification for taking him out.

“You know, your mother was–”

The white wolf growled loudly, telling him that he had no right to plead that he was guilty, much less ask for forgiveness if that was what he was going for – but he had even fucking less of a right to talk about her. Sophia and Leo’s mother that he’d so brutally taken from them.

“Just hear me out,” he said placatingly, seeming sincere, and she had no idea why she was inclined to give him a chance, but she did. “Your mother was also very talented. Also able to shift without a full moon, fast healing, but the moment I found out she had other abilities as well, ones that shouldn’t have been possible, I knew what she was – a filthy Lycan. I knew I had to do something, as her powers just grew stronger and stronger with age. By this time she would have been unstoppable…”

If this was his way of working up to an apology, he was doing a really crappy job, Sophia thought, still watching him intently, keeping her growls at a minimum.

“And you knew what else she was?” he asked, his voice raising an octave, his eyes growing wilder, and his lips curling in disgust. Sophia could feel Neil’s warning the very same instant she felt her body tense and ready for action. “She was a spying whore–”

He reached for the gun he’d dropped with blinding speed, with the hand that wasn’t all bloody and useless, but she was quicker.

Sophia kicked the shotgun out of reach right before his fingers could even reach it. Bent forward and on his knees in front of her face, his eyes came up to hers for only long enough for her to see pure, unadulterated dread flashing there before she tilted her head and had his entire face inside her mouth.

His screams filled her very stomach as she lifted and twisted his head, and threw him against the cement wall that chipped into splintering pieces on impact. It all happened so damn fast, that Sophia had no time to think about what she was doing. It was as though her reflexes and instincts had taken over, and she had just tossed him through the air as if he wasn’t a large shifter male, but some ragdoll.

The silence after the deafening screams and final crash was even more deafening as the dust settled. She just watched Thorin’s lifeless body there, unable to believe what she’d just done.

“Sophia,” she heard Neil coming up to her slowly from behind, carefully bending by her side and starting to gently stroke the fur along the length of her neck. “You did the right thing. He was never going to stop. He was crazy. Beyond reason.”

I know, she told him, still staring at his body there. I was just thinking that the last thing he ever saw was the inside of my mouth… and all I can feel right now is regret that I brushed my teeth for the past month…

Neil’s stroking suddenly stopped as he stared at her in speechless stupefaction, before he launched into a laughing fit. His eyes even started to tear up, while Scott and Leo were just looking at him as though they thought he’d just lost his Goddess-damned mind, clearly having missed their mental conversation.

As Sophia turned and looked toward where she’d seen them fighting Matthew last, she saw that he was tied up against a thick wooden pillar with hay bale twine, wrapped all around him. He was unconscious, face bloody, and beaten up, but still alive.

“He’s going to prison,” Scott informed her. “He will pay in there for what he’s done.”

She doubted that any misfortune to befall him in prison would ever repay for all the vile things he’d done. Not only to her, but to Bella and those other girls as well, but she nodded her acceptance nonetheless.

Neil suddenly stopped laughing, but not because he was finished doing so. As she lifted her face to look up at him, she saw that the blood had drained from his own face as his wide eyes took in the sight of where Thorin had shot her.

“Sophia–” he gulped, and she could feel his panic again, so strong that the emotion alone almost knocked her to the ground. “We need to get you back to base – fucking now!”