Page 38 of Fated Alpha Baby

He’s receiving a message through the mind link. A message that has him staggering backwards the second he snaps out of the daze.

“I have to go,” he says, voice horridly dark, twisted, as he points a finger at me. “We’re not done with this conversation. I suggest you go back to my house and keep watch over our daughter. There are demons on our tail.”

With that, Conan spins on his heel and storms out, shutting the door behind him with a loud thud that cues Dorothy’s arms around me.

That’s when I crumble, sobbing uncontrollably.

Conan knows Clarissa is his daughter now.

And this hits me harder than it should have when I thought I could use this to hurt him instead.

Who was I kidding?

Conan never stopped having power over my emotions.

Chapter 11 - Conan

My blood boils through my veins as I rush out into the forest toward the southern ridge. The thickets of trees and undergrowth flash by in blurs that should be green, but all I can see is red.

Red, hot anger, searing through every nerve as if it were fire I wield as my special power, spurring every giant leap and pounce over the rocks and through the forest on my way to the southern ruins of Bitterroot Valley.

Anger directed at Hannah quickly turned to anger that needed to be directed at the demons the moment Simon called through the mind link to alert me of the sightings.

It’s starting again. Things in the valley had been quiet for a few weeks, almost as if the demons were working strategically. Waiting for me to make my next move.

Waiting for my fated mate to emerge.

I can’t tell what enrages me more—Hannah’s deceit, or the demons and their evolving techniques.

Right now, all I know is that I must fight them, and the dark cloud covering the southern quarter of the valley is unnatural, the air pungent with sulfur and decay as the valley wolves push forward.

Our wards and runes don’t seem to be holding long enough, nor strong enough to keep the demons off the region. I join Damian and Heinrich, accompanied by their soldiers, at the border of Ashclaw territory—once protected by the Ashclaw wolves themselves, now left in ruins, abandoned, and subject to the energy the demons gravitate toward.

They’ve been siphoning the energy of the remains of the Ashclaw Pack—the pack that had been wiped out decades ago—along with our powers. But the valley wolves are no longer vulnerable to being drained with their alphas mated to witches.

But the only witch fit to fight right now is Annika, Heinrich’s mate. She rides his back, clutching fistfuls of his chestnut brown fur, and a pang of jealousy erupts from somewhere deep inside.

I had always been opposed to the mate bond, but now that I’ve been mated to Hannah, there’s a void in my chest, in my life. A void only she can fill, and I understand it now. And now, after learning that she had my child eight years ago and didn’t tell me, I feel wronged, unable to foresee a future for us.

How can I forgive her for what she did?

How can I overlook her deception when I was just trying to overlook how her leaving destroyed me for eight long years?

“Conan! Look out!” Simon barks from beside me, his telepathic call snapping me out of my daze, only to hear the sounds of relentless screeching and bleating cries surrounding the valley.

The demons whisk in distorted patterns through the air, pairing up in groups of threes aimed at each alpha, more dark apparitions floating toward the soldiers from the ruins of the south.

One flashes too close to me, but Annika blasts it with a thunderous gush of fire that pushes it back toward a group.

The closer they drift toward the Ashclaw ruins, the stronger they become.

The broken remains of stone homes and burned earth pulse faintly beneath the moonlight, crimson veins of energy running through the cracks in the ground like blood pumping through open wounds. The ruins breathe with dark magic, feeding the demons until their skeletal bodies swell with molten power.

“They’re drawing energy from the ruins!” Annika shouts from Heinrich’s back. “The Ashclaw remnants are amplifying them!”

A demon lunges toward Damian, claws wrapped in black smoke. Annika counters instantly, fire erupting from her palms in a roaring arc that crashes into the creature head-on.

The effect is immediate. The demon shrieks violently as flames consume its body, the fire burning through it faster than anything else we’ve used against them.