Chapter 115

My hands hit the door, jarring them with the force as I burst onto the roof. Ava screamed and ripped the
kids behind her body, using herself as a shield, and I twisted, slamming it shut.

The racket coming from the stairwell was deafening as I stared at the door where I had just abandoned
my mother pulling my gaze from the door. Ava rushed over, jamming a piece of a broken pipe she
ripped off from somewhere through the handle and line that ran to the vents on the roof above the door.

Yet all I could think was, I left her in there. I ran and left her behind. Ava whimpers as she secures the
bar; I didn’t have to tell her. She knew because mum didn’t come out behind me. Yet as she turned to
look at me, I could see her heartbreak.

My entire body shook with adrenaline and shock. I left her. I thought when a tiny hand slipped into
mine. Looking down, I find Valarian looking at me.

“Grandma will be okay,” he says, only I knew she wouldn’t be. I swallowed and blinked back tears
before turning to him and picking him up. “Yep. She found another open door,” I tell him while walking
over to the girls. I placed him beside the girls, where they were huddled on the ground by the air
conditioner vent.

Ava moves to the ledge of the building, and I follow her, checking over my shoulder to make sure the
kids don’t follow. She looks over, and so do I, and the City was in utter chaos and ruins. Buildings in the
distance were on fire, screams rang out loudly, and a frenzied battle could be seen from here on the
main street. Warriors were trying to hold the forsaken back from the borders. Valen was right. There
were hundreds of them. They just kept coming.

The street directly below us was a scene from a horror movie as our men tried to keep them back. Two
forsaken were dragging another wolf off, and I didn’t want to think what they were doing to him as they
yelped loudly.



“Her tether?” Ava asked me, and I swallowed.

“Not broken yet. She is fighting,” I whispered, staring out blankly. I noticed from up here that not one of
those forsaken were trying to get into Nixon’s pack directly across from us.

They were targeting ours the Slasher pack.

“How was the city outnumbered?” Ava gasps when an explosion goes off down by the cafe on the main
street.

There was no other way to describe it, and the Pack warriors were outnumbered.

Slashers Packs men were trying to stop them from getting in, but a few slipped through, and just like
our men, they couldn’t hold them back, they just kept coming It should be impossible that so many
could go unnoticed, but when one of the sky-rise apartments across from us caught on fire, more
screams rang out from the apartment building as Forsaken got inside, and I just hoped the roller
shutters and the locked stairway door held.

The mind-link opens up, and I hear Zoe.

” Is Casey alright?”

“We are on the roof,” I answered while peering over my shoulder to look at the children, and she sighed
before she sobbed through the link.

“And Marcus? Is he there yet? I am being blocked out. I can’t get a hold of anyone,” she asked, but I
couldn’t lie to her either.

“Not yet, but …. Zoe, the city,” I don’t finish. The place looked like a battlefield. “As long as Casey is
safe,” she says. “Are you safe?” I ask her.



“I’m in the basement with some of the younger workers. But Macey, she….”

“Macey, what? Zoe?” I asked, panicked.

“She heard the sirens when I opened the doors and bolted out. We tried to stop her, “Zoe says.

“She has no phone.We have no service in here, and ….”

“She has no pack link,” I finish for her. My heart was beating faster at her words. “We think she went to
warn the rogues at the reserves and homeless shelter.

This side hasn’t been hit yet,” Zoe tells me. Yes, because they were all over here trying to access our
pack and Slashers, while Nixon’s remained untouched. That wasn’t a coincidence.

The mind-link is stretched when I feel Valen force it open, and Zoe is shoved out.

“We are trying to get to you. You just need to hold tight a little longer,” he said, though pain radiated
through the bond, and I knew he was hurt.

“What about Marcus? Zoe is trying to get a hold of him.”

“No idea. Everyone is blocking the pack link so we don’t become distracted. We… the mind-link cuts off
abruptly only for Zoe to reopen it, having felt the connection from Valen override hers.

“Marcus?”

“They lost sight of each other. Marcus is fine, Zoe. Valen would have felt the tether break,” I tell her,
though I had no idea if that would remain true.

I felt helpless as I watched our pack getting slaughtered on the streets below while I was holed up on a
roof, unable to help them.



Tatum POV

Teeth, claws, blood, and fur. Everything was a blur as I tried to hold them back. I was screaming
through the link for Valen to get here when a few slipped past me. Men called through the link that they
were on the way. Yet as one fell, another replaced it.

They seemed to just keep coming, and I was taking a beating. The venom in my system was starting to
make my muscles ache and lock. The only thing keeping me on my feet was adrenaline and knowing
that Taylor, Valarian, and Casey were in that stairwell. I just hoped they got inside the building and
weren’t sitting ducks. My back leg is ripped into simultaneously as two attacked snarling.

I pivot and twist, nearly ripping my leg off in the process.

Yelps and snarling ripped from the stairwell, causing me to become distracted as I tried to double back
only to be jumped on. His claws ripped through my fur, making my back arch, and his teeth were like a
serrated knife as they tore into the back of my neck. The stairwell, the stairwell, I kept thinking, while
trying to toss him off as more flooded into the stairs, escaping past me while I was being ripped to
shreds.

My teeth sank into its front paw, and I felt the crunch as its bones broke under the pressure of my jaw,
forcing him to release me long enough to fling him off. I turned, running for the stairwell, my vision
blurring as I ran when forsaken were suddenly running back out of the stairwell. My heart jolted seeing
the rabid creatures running when one dropped as a huge, molten-colored wolf tore into its neck.

And it took me a second to realize it was Claire. Yet she didn’t look like a pack wolf but one of the
forsaken. Her blood-red eyes were savage, and venom was oozing and dripping from her teeth. Panic
coursed through me, knowing if she turned on me, I would have to kill Everly’s mother when her head
twisted in my direction. Her lips pull back as she drops her head, snarling and stalking towards me
before she runs at me.



I snarled back when she lunged, only she missed, and I jumped aside, skidding on the slickened,
blood-soaked floor, only to see her rip into a forsaken that must have been coming up behind me.

Four more rush through the barrier and I jump over her, jumping into the fray. She was a full-blown
forsaken. However, she was fighting our side, not theirs, which gave her an advantage, as they kept
recognizing her as their own. With the savage gleam and the way she fought, you could tell John
trained her himself.

She was just as lethal, but with a vicious edge, she tore into them, locking her jaw each time and
tearing them to shreds, not even flinching as they tore into her back. Relentlessly, she fought, saving
my ass twice and I hers as we fought tail to tail, trying to hold them back.

My back leg was useless, and I was running on three, the other hanging behind me. “We’re in the
street,” Valen called, and I couldn’t reply. I was too focused on the wolves in front of me. We needed to
try to push them back to the street. Claire was taking on three, but even she was on the losing end this
time as I ripped one off her that was ripping into her flank, her jaws locked around another one’s neck.

My paw swipes at the other, and we push them back and keep pushing them back up the ramp.
Daylight broke as we kept forcing them further back when she let out a whimper as we made it out the
front of the hotel. Pivoting, I ran towards her when a deafening howl ripped through the air as she
swayed on her feet. Her throat is torn out, and her front legs buckle when a giant black and grey wolf
starts ripping them off her, and another Forsaken tackles me.

I break the wolf’s neck and turn my head to find it was John. The three dead, forsaken lying around
him, and John now stood naked petting her wolf. Her chest rises and she wheezes as blood pools
around her when her chest appears to deflate.

And the agonized howl that turned to a wail shook me to the core when I heard Everly’s wailing scream
ring out above as she felt her mother’s link disintegrate. 8 Everyone stops at the noise, even the



forsaken who are flooding into the street. Valen’s wolf was huge and the one beside him equally big,
and I recognized the wolf as the Slasher packs Alpha.

When Marcus’s Grey wolf rushed past me toward the forsaken, his coat tainted red, and the chaos
started again. John’s angered roar made my fur stand on end, and he shifted. He erupted and barreled
towards the forsaken with blind fury, ripping them apart as the bloodshed started again. Yet as an
observer, I realized something. They were heading here, and they were running for the Alpha’s homes,
making this targeted and well thought out.

From what I heard, the rogue’s side and Everly’s hotel side of the City remained untouched by the
information coming through the link. The carnage only happening on one side. Nixon had to be behind
it. And he was casting the rogues as the ones starting it. Chaos ensued as we battled, our men falling
and the forsaken kept coming. Valen and the Slasher pack Alpha, even John and Kalen, were lethal
beasts.

The four Alphas working together as they got right in the middle of the battle, huge towering beasts
compared to the Forsaken. Not a speck of fur was left untainted, their coats dripping in blood, both
theirs and the Forsaken. This is what made them Alpha’s, pure lethal muscle and precision like no
other. Despite their massive sizes, they were fast and ran through them like a bowling ball knocking
down pins.

The street’s gutters ran like rivers with blood, and it stained everything. They didn’t stop, but neither did
the Forsaken. These numbers should not exist! How could they outnumber us? Three packs were
fighting, and we were still somehow outnumbered, or so we thought until the snarls shook windows.

The deafening force of pure rage reverberated around the street, everyone stopping to stare down the
end of the road looking for the source of the rumbling noise when Macey appeared. My heart stopped
as she ran from down the street straight at us with a huge bat in her hands. Fear coursed through me,
and I ran towards her as the forsaken took off in her direction.



Only to start skidding across the ground as they tried to stop and double back when the Rogues tore up
the street towards us. I stopped as she led her army of Rogues to the battle, and they were a sight to
be seen.

Our men were given rest as they jumped into battle without hesitation. Saving those who shunned
them, cast them out, and fought as one. Pack members and Rogues were fighting alongside each
other and painting the street red with the blood of the Forsaken and proving their innocence and their
own desperate need to fight for our City. Teeth sank into my neck, and I was flung across the road.

My head smashed into the gutter, and I could hear screaming in the distance before I felt air blow the
fur across my face as her bat connected with the wolf’s skull with a thud. My eyes blurred as I opened
them to see her bashing its skull into the earth with brute force.

Her clothes were stained with blood, her arm bleeding from where she had been bitten. But even
covered in blood, she was beautiful as she fought. And I caught sight of Zoe’s small white wolf
protecting Marcus, who was trying to protect her when Macey screamed. My heart thumped and felt
like it left my body as I tried to get to my feet, staggering as the venom took hold.

Only it wasn’t a scream of pain but a war cry as she flung her bat at the wolf, ripping into Alpha John.
She grunts when she is tackled from behind, only for Kalen to rip the wolf off her. I was delirious as I
tried to find my footing and get to her, and I felt my surroundings flip and turn on their axis before I
succumbed to the nothingness.


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