by Mia Rose
Table of Contents
Book 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Book 3 Curse of an Alpha
Chasing the Alpha
Full Moon series
Mia Rose
Book
2
Edited by
Natasha Lind
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Contents
1. The Truth
2. The Regrets
3. The Plan
4. The Way
5. The Reconciliation
6. The Calling
7. Game
8. The Choice
9. The Discovery
10. The Betrayal
11. Frustrated
12. The Pack
13. The Hunt
14. The Memories
15. Noelise
16. The Cure
17. The Doctor
18. The Hunters
19. The Strategy
20. The Discovery
21. The Revelation
22. The Final Battle
Book 3 Curse of an Alpha
About the Author
Afterword
Chapter 1
The Truth
“It was you.”
Time stood still. Declan felt, in that moment, the entire world come to a screeching halt, like it was no longer able to spin on its axis. He closed his eyes and waited to feel the pain, the searing heat coming from the bullet wreaking havoc in his body, but it never came. The screaming did not emerge from his lips. He opened his eyes, dreading to turn and see the scene behind him. Whatever he saw, he already knew would be much worse than having been shot himself.
The screaming stopped and in its place, a weak whimpering came from the white wolf lying behind him.
“Cassidy?” Declan whispered. His eyes grew wide as he took in the gaping hole where the bullet had entered her body, the fur and skin already rotting and falling to the wayside. “Cassidy, no!”
“Declan,” she cried out, her voice caught on the edges of desperate breaths, “come here. Come close to me.” She made demands as the female alpha of the pack even with her final breaths.
“Cassidy, I am so sorry. I didn’t think she would ever…” but he was cut off by the confusion in Cassidy’s eyes.
“Declan, I…”
Cassidy moaned in pain and he watched in horror as her hair and skin persisted in peeling off of her bones, leaving her with nothing but a skeletal structure and the anatomy held within.
“Declan, listen to me. I know that woman.” Every word was pushed out of her with extreme effort, as if she was trying to speak underwater.
“What do you mean?” He hadn’t even realized he was crying until he tasted his salty tears that slipped into his mouth. “How?”
“She came by the apartments,” her voice was so low, he had to lean down to her muzzle to catch the words she was saying. “She said she wanted to rent a unit. I didn’t think… I didn’t know.”
In that moment, Declan realized what was happening; Cassidy was blaming herself for this massacre. He refused to let her go while believing that.
“Cassidy, there’s no way you could have known. I mean, Noelle…”
Cassidy tried to say something but she was seized by a coughing fit, and blood began dripping from her mouth. The poison was eating her from the inside out. In the distance, Declan could hear the humans collecting Garret from where he laid on the ground. They continued racing off to their cars.
“What did you say, Cass?”
“I asked, how did you know her name?”
All eyes were on Declan although he doubted than anyone in the pack, even with their senses in overdrive, could make out anything she was saying by this point.
“You told me, Cassidy. Or I heard the humans say it… I, I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“No, it was before,” she coughed uncontrollably and sucked in a huge breath.
Her eyes widened and Declan thought at first it was because she was nearing the end, but then Cassidy said the words that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“It was you.” She choked out another cough and Declan saw her chest give into one final heave before falling and refusing to rise again.
Cassidy was gone. His fellow alpha was gone. His mate was gone.
And she was right, it was all on him. He turned his muzzle to the sky and let out a deafening and desperate cry. It was a cry for Cassidy to return, but even more than that, it was cry to the heavens above to let him take it all back. Every choice and every action, he wanted to undo it all from the day he first met Noelle.
Noelle. The name brought chills to his spine. His cry turned quickly from a desperation to a different kind of longing… one of revenge. He promised himself in that moment two things: he would never compromise the safety of his pack again, and he would do everything and anything in his power to avenge Cassidy’s death.
Declan buried his nose in the little patches of fur that she had left. He hadn’t noticed the echoing cries of the other wolves in his pack and he hadn’t paid any attention to the footsteps trotting closer behind him.
“Declan.” It was Gabriel, Declan’s right-hand man, his beta. “Declan,” he said again, “what should we do now?”
Declan raised his head to face his friend. The fury in his eyes animated the emerald-green hue further, making them bur
n with an intensity to cause any inferior creature to run and hide.
He responded, “Now, we go home. We make sure everyone else is safe.” Declan looked down at the body of his lost mate once more. “Then we come up with a plan to kill them all.”
Noelle drove like a madwoman to the hospital with her mother sobbing relentlessly next to her in the passenger seat. Her father laid in the backseat, still unconscious and still losing a lot of blood.
I didn’t even know a human body contained that much blood, she thought. She ran a red light and the large truck that was going in the opposite direction swerved and barely missed them. Finally, they pulled up to the emergency room entrance and her mother fell out of the car, crying and screaming for help.
“Help us!” Abigail demanded, “My husband, he’s been attacked!” Noelle ran to the other side of the car and opened the door to see her father’s face looking ashen. She felt sick to her stomach. She closed her eyes briefly, but Declan’s painful howl reverberated through her mind and snapped her eyes open again. She couldn’t think about that right now. She couldn’t think about anything other than her father.
A young African-American guy (who looked barely old enough to be out of high school), came running outside wearing a medical uniform. He took one look in the backseat and started calling out medical jargon that Noelle could not piece together. All she got was, “…lost a lot of blood” and “…surgery now!”
“Ma’am, you’re his wife, correct?” Noelle’s mother just stood there looking helpless.
She had this fragility about her suddenly that suggested if anyone touched her too hard, she would shatter into a million pieces.
“Ma’am, we need to know what happened.”
“He was attacked,” Noelle answered, “We were in the woods, my whole family, and my father was attacked. We couldn’t see… we couldn’t see what it was exactly. We heard him screaming and found him on the ground, unconscious.”
“Okay. We are going to take him into surgery right away, he’s lost too much blood to wait. We won’t know what to expect until we are in there, so just hold on.” With that, the man ran after the rest of the team that had already begun wheeling her father away.
Every step they took, every inch they placed between her and her father, Noelle felt her heart sink lower and lower into the abyss of her stomach. A panic attack lingered on the horizon of her mind.
I did this, she thought, this is all my fault.
One by one the wolves made their way back to the clearing where their cars had been left. They all morphed back into their human bodies, and the bones cracking and snapping into place were the only sounds you could hear for miles. A sullenness had fallen over the group as each of them took in the momentous occurrence of the evening. One of their leaders had died. Not just one of their leaders, but one of the people who had helped them the most during their own transition into this world. They relied on her for strength and wisdom and now… now, she was gone.
Gabriel did not speak one word to Declan as they climbed into the car. Neither of them mentioned the fact that they were now one person less. Gabriel stared out of the window for the entire drive back to the apartments where they lived and Declan didn’t bother trying to say anything to encourage him. Declan had enough of his own demons he was trying to fight off.
They arrived back at the apartments and slowly, all of the pack members climbed up the stairs and retreated into their rightful room-homes. Declan could only imagine the conversations taking place and the tears that were shed in Cassidy’s memory.
We’ll have to do a funeral or a memorial for her, he thought plainly.
His thoughts were interrupted by Gabriel, “Don’t beat yourself up about this, Declan. There’s no way we could have known what was in store for us there. You tried your best to protect us all.”
Declan watched as his friend walked down the dim hallway and pulled open the door to his own apartment. He gave a small, sad smile to Declan before stepping across the threshold.
Declan walked even more slowly back to his own apartment, the one he shared with Cassidy. He stood at the front door and stared at the knob that she all too recently worked on fixing, in an effort to clean up the place. He inserted the key and listened for the small click. He swung the door open and waited. He waited to be greeted by the beautiful blonde woman with the remarkable sweetheart face and eyes for him only. He waited for the smell of her to be carried over to him. He waited for a long time, but nothing happened.
Noelle and her mother sat in the waiting room silently. The rest of her family had slowly filed in shortly after Garret had been taken into surgery. One of Noelle’s aunts had taken over explaining what the doctor had said to them. Abigail sat in the corner of the room, completely collapsed into herself as if Garret had taken all her bones with him when he left.
“Mom,” Noelle tried to get her mother to look at her, but Abigail kept her eyes facing forward at nothing. “Mom, he’s going to be okay. He’s going to be alright, truly.”
“You don’t know that, Noelle,” her mother whispered, still refusing to look in her direction.
“I have hope. I feel it. He will be okay.”
Abigail turned to Noelle, but instead of looking relieved or comforted, she looked as infuriated as Noelle had ever seen her.
“You are only saying that to me because you need to believe it for yourself,” her mother was seething and her words had taken up volume with every syllable she spat out. “You just feel guilty and now you are trying to make up for it!”
“Guilty?” Noelle was shocked, her entire family was watching them speak, now.
“You shot the wrong wolf!”
“Mom, I…”
“Abigail,” Noelle’s aunt stepped forward and gently placed her hand on her mother’s shoulder, “I know you are scared, we are all scared. But this is not the time or place to discuss this. I’m sure we already have enough explaining to do once the doctor comes out.”
Noelle’s mother burst into a fresh bout of tears and the family swarmed around her trying to offer condolences and support.
Noelle decided to go for a walk to try to clear her head and sort through the events of the evening. Here’s what she knew for certain… she knew that Declan had called her asking which place her family would be this night, and she’d told him to steer clear of his usual hunting grounds. It seemed that he clearly went there with a purpose. She also knew that Declan had been the one to grab her father and tear into his torso, leaving him for dead. And she knew that she had pulled the trigger of the gun aimed directly at the white wolf standing protectively behind Declan’s head. She knew that her mother believed she had missed and shot the wrong wolf, but she herself, knew better than that. After everything, even after what he had done to her father, Noelle could not bring herself to harm Declan directly.
As she made her way back to her family, she saw the doctor emerge from behind two, solid, wooden doors. It had a giant red sign warning against any non-medical staff from entering. She tried to judge the outcome based on his face, but he didn’t give anything away.
“Ma’am,” the doctor addressed her mother, “the surgery went well, we were able to reset his collar bone that had snapped. He’s lost a lot of blood tonight, so he probably won’t be awake for too much longer. We have set up a blood transfusion for now.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Abigail stood up shakily and walked over to the doctor.
To everyone’s surprise, she took him into a tight embrace and cried quietly into his shoulder thanking him over and over again.
“Of course. But I do have to say, Ma’am, the wounds on his torso were extremely severe. No animal that I have ever seen around here would have been able to do that. You’re sure you didn’t see what attacked him?”
Noelle held her breath and her mother took a small step backward before responding. “I’m sure, doctor. We were all still by our cars and he had gone ahead to find a good spot for us to sit. We were supposed to go st
ar gazing.”
“Okay,” the doctor said, but something in his voice indicated that he didn’t quite believe them, although he wasn’t going to push it any further. “The police will be in soon to collect a report from you in a little while. For now, you may go in and see him.”
Noelle walked closely behind her mother trying to think of something —anything —she could say.
“See, Mom? I told you he would be okay.”
Abigail kept looking ahead, following behind the doctor and Noelle barely caught the words coming from her pressed lips, “Lucky for you.”
Noelle was awash with exhaustion and regret. She had truly killed Declan’s alpha.
“It was you.”
Chapter 2
The Regrets
“I hate insomnia.”
Declan could not sleep. He could not even think of sleep. Every time he even dared to close his eyes, all he could hear was the sickening thump of the bullet cascading into Cassidy’s flesh. He just pictured himself and Gabriel dragging her body to the car and lifting her inside. Once they had gotten home, they’d placed her in the basement until Declan had a plan of what to do next. The problem with a dead werewolf was you couldn’t exactly leave the body lying around for some idiotic human to find.
“Cass, I am so sorry,” Declan whispered to himself, he felt fresh, hot tears stinging his eyes, threatening to spill down. “I was so stupid. I guess I still am.”