Alpha [Epsilon #3] {ON-HOLD}

|07| Moonrot

(n.) a poison derived from the roots of a Moonrot plant, typically blue and opalescent in appearance

Darla dropped to the ground. The knife's hilt stuck out of her back, meaning the blade was nauseatingly deep.

Osyn looked over in an instant, keeping utterly still, as though paralysed, as the man turned his attention to him. Instead of seeing the man, however, he just stared at his wife, his face pale and his eyes wide and disbelieving. Slowly, the assailant approached him.

"NO!" I screamed, shifting into my wolf and trampling over the masses of confused and terrified people just to reach the stage. I didn't care. I hurtled for the Alpha, watching with horror as Osyn stood there, paralysed, as the assailant closed in on him. I wanted to scream at him to act, but his eyes were glued to his mate, and I knew for a fact that the fierce Osyn was no longer there.

 Once the assailant was within several yards, he withdrew a new knife.

I won't make it in time, I realised with a cold thump of my heart. Without thinking, I summoned flame the back of my throat, opening my maw and keeping my head angled towards the target even as I ducked and dived around panicked court people.

The assailant raised his blade, and only then did Osyn seem to stir from his trance. It would have been too late for him, though.

With a snarl of defiance, I let the fireball go. I watched it hurtle for the stage with the speed of a meteorite. It struck the assailant square in the chest, burning through his clothes and blasting out of his back with a bang! of red mist. His knife clattered to the ground. He dropped to his knees, mouth agape with horror as he stared at the open hole that my fire ball had carved through his chest.

The sheer amount of damage my attack inflicted didn't even register with me.

I pounced onto the stage, shifting back to my human form as I dashed past Osyn and picked up the assailant's dropped blade. I stuck it into the bastard's throat, despite him already being condemned to death by my earlier attack. As he choked and sputtered, fingers groping uselessly at the hilt, I rushed over to Luna Darla's side.

My stomach lurched as I dove down beside her. Her ice-blue dress was soaked in blood, and the knife was planted firmly in the middle of her back. I turned her onto her side – into recovery position – as I tried to assess the damage. It was impossible to determine what the knife had hit, or how deep it had gone, or how much she was bleeding internally.

Either way, one thing was certain: the wound wasn't healing, and the blood flow hadn't stopped.

I thought back to the light blue liquid I'd seen on the blade a few moments before, and my stomach sank.

Poison. He'd covered it in poison.

Shit!

Mind swimming with panic, I tried to align my thoughts as I applied pressure to the Luna's wound, though it was hard to do with a knife sticking out the middle. But I couldn't take it out – especially if she wasn't going to heal.