Page 89 of Alpha's Rejected Warrior
In the center of the room, Holden sits cross-legged on the polished stone floor with his back to us, his dark hair falling forward as his head bows in concentration. He’s positioned perfectly in the center of a glowing yellow circle that radiates an unsettling, pulsating light across the chamber walls.
Symbols I don’t recognize fade in and out along the circle’s inner edge, pulsing with the same yellow glow. Lines converge at the center, forming a triangle beneath Holden’s meditative form. A low hum coming from him reverberates throughout the chamber, raising every hair on my arms.
The destruction of the door breaks his concentration. His head turns toward us, eyes blazing that same eerie yellow as the circle beneath him. For a heartbeat, that supernatural glow bathes his face in harsh light. Then recognition crosses his features, and the brightness fades from his gaze.
“You!” I say. “I should’ve known from the beginning!”
“You’re too late, Truth Seer!” His face twists, initial surprise morphing into pure rage. “You’re too late!”
Light engulfs Holden’s form as his body lifts from the floor. He sweeps his arms forward, bringing his hands together into a triangular symbol and pressing it to his chest.
“Don’t let him get away!” I leap toward him.
A blur of black fur flashes past me, close enough that her coat brushes my shoulder.Rhiannon.Heat radiates off her body as she rockets forward, and in that instant of contact, my heart stutters before locking into that same impossible rhythm from the courtyard. Only this time it’s stronger, even more blended, like a single heartbeat split between two bodies.
A presence brushes against my mind. Foreign, feminine, and ferocious.
Ethan, what—A thought that isn’t mine slices through my head.
I stumble. Blink hard. It vanishes so fast I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Rhiannon’s wolf form stutters mid-leap, her head whipping back with a look of unguarded shock. She senses it too, and it’s thrown her off in the middle of an attack.
But she recovers her momentum and unleashes a thunderous roar that resounds through the chamber as she lunges toward Holden with deadly precision.
Right on her heels, Akila surges forward in her wolf form, her snarls echoing off the stone walls as she closes the gap with frightening speed.
Light erupts like a detonating star, flooding the chamber with blinding radiance. I throw up an arm to shade my eyes, squinting against the searing brightness as Holden’s power obliterates every shadow, every detail around us.
For a second, everything disappears. The room, the wolves, Holden himself. All of it is replaced by the roar of blood in my ears and adrenaline rushing through me. Only it isn’t just me. That same shared rhythm slams back into place, harder this time, like my pulse has latched onto Rhiannon’s and refuses to let go. I can’t see her, can’t hear her, but she’s right there, beat for beat, like she’s hardwired straight to me.
The brilliance vanishes in a blink, and three sets of paws slam against bare stone where the young Shaman stood just moments ago. The room is empty. Holden has escaped.
The wolves’ bodies ripple and compress, their powerful forms shrinking and reshaping until Rhiannon and Akila stand before me in their human forms, breathing hard from the exertion.
Rhiannon’s fingers press flat against her chest like she’s checking her own heartbeat. Her gaze lingers on me for a few seconds before her expression quickly reverts back to hard and controlled. Whatever just happened in that blast, I didn’t imagine it. She felt it too.
Later. Think about this later. If there is a later.
“Fuck!” Conan emerges in the doorway, kicking the nearest piece of debris. “That bastard.”
Jayme,Rhiannon’s voice rings through my mind, loud and clear.
I jerk back. My mouth opens before my brain catches up.
“Jayme.” We say it aloud together.
Her eyes go wide. She knows what just happened.
Without warning, she bolts from the room.
The rest of us scramble to catch up, our footsteps pounding the stone floors, the frantic sound chasing us through the empty corridors.
We burst into Stasio’s destroyed chamber to find Xander crouched over Jayme’s unconscious form. Both are human again. Jayme lies curled in a fetal position on the debris-strewn floor, fresh wounds marking his bare skin, but nothing life-threatening from what I can see.
Xander looks up at us, sweat gleaming on his skin from the fight. “He just shifted back. One second he was trying to tear my throat out, the next he collapsed like this.” Xander’s eyes transfer directly to me. “What happened?”
“We found Holden,” I manage to say.
