Page 69 of Meeting Her Mate
I woke in my bed moments later, not a man but a beast. I could not recall who this stranger was sharing the bed with me. All I knew was agony, pain, and the unending deluge of insanity.
My vision was a sea of crimson.
Somewhere within the deep ravines of my thoughts, in the darkest of places, Edward Beckett laughed sinisterly. With that laughter rose the sheer anguish of the torture he had done to me.
In my deranged wolf form, I thrashed at the woman lying in my bed. Lashed out in the bedroom I was confined in. I hurtled, a hunkering wolfen body, through the house, laying wreck to everything in my path, and tore through the door as I raced to the only place which could restrain my psychosis.
The woods.
Chapter 25: Alexis
“Hurry!” I called out to the search party behind me.
“Slow down, Lexi. You’re bleeding,” Vincent brought my attention to the obvious. My mate had just transformed into a wild version and had now escaped. God knew where. He had slashed at me, but I had brought up my arms in front of me just in time to save my face and my torso. As a result, my arms bore scratch marks that were bleeding, not profusely enough to warrant a stop to this search.
When he had shifted and attacked, destroying half his belongings as he raced out, some part of me knew what had happened. Those damn chemicals that Edward had injected in him were making him lose control. This was the only explanation. There was no other reason why he would go berserk in the middle of the night.
“Lexi, hold on!” Vincent yelled. I stopped dead in my tracks and wheeled around to face him.
“Every second we waste squabbling, he goes away further,” I said, feeling helpless about the plight that had suddenly befallen my mate. “He could be anywhere.”
“Let me patch you up first,” Vincent said.
“And as for finding him,” Morgan, one of the pack members who were still celebrating in the night when Will shifted and ran for the woods, said in a calm voice. He had accompanied Vince and me, along with a couple of other men who were still awake to search for Will. “You can always use your bond with him. Sense where your mate is. Even maddened, he still remains your mate. The connection that you two share will guide you. Calm down. Breathe a little. Let Vincent bandage you up.”
“Thanks, Morgan,” I said, taking a deep breath as instructed, and allowed Vince to patch up my forearms with gauze and bandages.
“You take the North with Vincent, and we’ll search in the East and West. He could not have gone South,” Sutherland, another pack member who had been all too eager to accompany us on the search, said. Others present in the company, including Simon, Thomas, and Ronald, agreed with him and went off in their assigned directions.
“Tap into the bond, Alexis,” Vincent said. “He might be in an altered state, but you can still sense him.”
I tried. By God, I did. I closed my eyes and focused really hard on finding Will. All I could pick up was the noise of loud rage. It was like a black screen of deafening din that made it impossible for me to sense Will. His thoughts were there; I could feel them underneath the cacophony of madness.
Will!I called out.I know you’re in there. You must not lose control.
Instead of a reply, an earsplitting roar resounded from that telepathic darkness. Wherever Will was, he was not himself at all. Before I could give in to despair, I heard a faint sound.
Lexie!
This mere murmur was just vocal enough in my head for me to recognize it as Will’s voice. The darkness began giving way to a singular beam of light shining through the forest. Whereas a few minutes ago, I was clueless, now I had a direction in which to head. It was North.
I ran through the forest, crashing through the branches and brambles, scuffing against the twigs that jutted out from the trees, stampeding across the wide gaps where small streams flowed, and veering on the verge of chasms to avoid falling into them. Vince was not far behind.
When I came into the clearing, my body was exhausted, and the various places where the forestry had grazed me during my sprint were sore. But at least the bond had guided me to where I needed to go.
Will was there, in his wolf form, recoiling across the clearing. He gnarled and snarled, unfurling his teeth. As I approached him, he howled loudly.
“Will, please. I know you’re in there,” I said, realizing that this was one of those clichés that I had laughed at in my real life when watching a movie where the hero suddenly turned into some uncontrollable monster. But this was not a moment for me to cringe at this realization. It struck me that the characters in those movies were telling the truth. That the real hero was underneath this façade of monstrosity. Will was in there. I knew it, and I needed him to know this too.
Will roared in response and slashed at the air. He stomped his feet on the ground, making the dirt fly in the air, and then prepared to pounce.
As an alpha wolf, his stature was taller than the rest of the wolves, his form broader, his visage more fearful. I stood no chance in a battle with him. But this was not supposed to be a battle of strength. This was a battle of wits. And right now, Will does not have any. He was consumed by the madness that had been haunting him since the moment he found freedom.
It hurt me deep in my heart to see my mate like this. This was the first time I was seeing the physical manifestation of the rage, madness, and the effect of the experimentation upon him. His eyes were bloodshot. His fangs were jutting out aggressively. Will looked less like a majestic werewolf and more like an abomination out of some horror novelist’s fevered dream. Even as I stood there, far away from him, I became petrified at his frenzied form. Will’s fur stood out haggardly, and his entire body seemed to be jittering and seizing in the wake of his frenzy.
I held my hand up and approached him just a little.
Will grunted and stepped back.