Lethal✔️

Chapter 51

Axel's POV (SURPRISE!):

Come to the conference room. NOW. We are under attack, I mindlink the warriors that came with us to Red Crescent.

Ares looks like she's about to black out, and her face is purple as she chokes on the nonexistent air.

"Ares, Ares, stay with me," I plead as I hold her in my arms, but her eyes flutter shut, and her heartbeat is so faint I can barely hear it.

The warriors appear almost instantly and attack the Red Crescent wolves. Gwen subdued their Delta, holding one of her daggers against his neck as she snarls at him. Cain must have told the warriors about the Elemental, because one of the wolves injects him with wolfsbane.

But Ares still doesn't breathe.

"No, no, no," I whisper in horror, and lay her on the ground on her back and lean over her. She isn't breathing. Her heart stopped beating completely, and I felt her bond to the pack- to me- completely break off.

Pain flooded throughout my body like a tidal wave. It felt like I had been impaled with a spear, and I heard Cain yell out- in pain, anger, both. The warriors had subdued all the Red Crescent wolves and were restraining them. Cain was on his knees, tears streaming down his face as he looked at his mate's lifeless body.

In all the years of knowing my Alpha, I never saw him cry.

His body was hunched over in pain, no doubt from the bond being broken. It hurt me, and I wasn't even her mate.

No. It couldn't end like this. Ares couldn't just die. She was undefeatable, not even the Moon Goddess herself could strike her down.

I start doing CPR on her, shattering her sternum under my hands as I press down on her chest over and over again. I put my lips on hers, puffing air into her nonreceptive body. Her lips are still warm.

Gwen screams.

No, no, no! She couldn't be dead. She was young- so young. Despite all she had been through, she still had so much left to learn, to experience.

She never got her pups.

I keep doing CPR, and my vision becomes obfuscated by tears as I think of her as I knew her in life.

How her muscles would flex when she would punch the hell out of me, harder than any male wolf ever could.

The first time Cain allowed her to train, and she challenged me without hesitation, without fear. She had been eager- far too eager for the chance to unleash the full extent of her strength on me. I was cocky, stupidly so.

I never underestimated her again.

When we were attacked with Onyx in Blue Moon, and she fearlessly singlehandedly killed wolf after wolf, absolutely no emotion on her face as she did so, like it was a minor inconvenience instead of a serious threat against her life. It's just the way Ares was: Calm, brutal, capable.

More compressions on her chest, more puffs of air into her lungs that did absolutely nothing. She was dead.

When we played duck, duck, goose with the pack pups, and she had a beautiful smile on her face as she let the baby wolves tackle her. She would have made an excellent mother, raising pups just as fierce and deadly as her.

The resolution on her face when she told Cain she would take my lashes for me. The lashes I deserved, because I had knowingly and intentionally let her escape, thinking it would be best for her to get far away from Blood Lake and Cain.

I had already lost her once. When we all thought she died after Wilson took her, my grief was exceeded only by Cain's.

The image of her, chained up at Wilsons, blood coating every inch of her body would burn in my mind for the rest of my life. I made a vow that day to never let her be that vulnerable again, to protect her with my life, no matter if I forfeited my own.