The Alphas Broken Mate novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Silver

"No," Caius said.

He did not kneel.

He stepped in front of me, and the wind turned his black cloak out like a wall.

"Let the healer go, uncle," he said.

"Kneel, nephew," Osric said gently. "Or she dies on the count of three."

Caius put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

The trees behind us exploded with hooves.

Forty riders broke out of the dark and charged the slope, and Osric raised his hand.

"Fire."

Thirty crossbows snapped as one.

Caius turned his whole body and wrapped his cloak around me.

I felt the bolts hit him.

One went through the cloak and into his chest, high on the left side, with a dull wet sound.

He grunted and did not fall.

The rest hammered into the earth around us or glanced off his shoulder.

"Back!" Osric shouted, over the thunder of our riders. "Take the healer! Dawn, nephew! Bring the voice!"

His lanterns went out one at a time, and the men on the ridge melted into the dark.

Caius took one step and his knees gave.

I caught him.

I went down in the grass with his head in my lap and my hands on the bolt.

The silver was eating into his skin.

Thin black lines spread from the wound across his chest, crawling toward his heart.

"It's nothing," he said. His lips had gone grey. "A scratch."

"Liar," I said.

The old woman and two of her sons carried him into the barn behind the ruined house.

They laid him on a heap of old straw, and the old woman cut away his shirt.

She took hold of the bolt.

"This will hurt," she said.

"Do it," he said.

She pulled it out in one move, and he made a sound I will hear until I die.

A dark stream ran down his ribs.

The wound did not close.

It smoked.

"Silver," the old woman said, softly. "It will not heal on its own. Not for any wolf."

"Unless he has a mate," I said.

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Unless the mate marks him," she said. "Blood on blood. The bond does the rest."

She herded her sons out of the barn, and she shut the door behind them.

The lantern hung from a beam above us and made a small yellow room of straw and shadow.

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