Page 65 of Her Eternal Mate

With that in mind, I fought more carefully, playing on the defensive. Blair rushed at me from afar, snout bleeding, limbs torn asunder. I swerved to my right and let him hit the tree trunk behind me, making him lose his balance and fall on his face.

I hurriedly slashed along his back, tearing more of his fur and skin, and then stepped back, waiting for him to charge again.

But Bair did not charge. He stayed where he was, tending to his wounds. My wounds were not healing fast, but he was. The skin had regrown on his face, and the flesh that I’d torn off his paw, back, and neck was coming back again.

The fight was back to square one, except that I was still recovering.

Blair sneered from the other end of the fighting circle.

I closed my eyes, let go of all my thoughts, and remembered how Blair’s father was the cause of all my suffering. I would have peacefully lived out my life if it weren't for him. I recalled how Blair had taunted me the first time I met him while trying to save Alexis. The moment when Blair had injected his serum in me atop the building, meaning to kill me, flashed before my eyes.

He was just as much in charge of my misery as his father was.

That did it.

That unlocked all the rage that I’d been keeping in check, allowing me to shift into the wolf within, my true feral form. I grew in size, becoming broader and stronger, and my injuries, although they did not heal, sealed up and prevented more blood loss. Now, I was almost Blair’s size, and the true battle could begin.

Blair tried to bite me, but I clamped his mouth shut with my mouth and tore away a part of his snout. Before he could get a chance to recoil or heal, I hit that same part of his injured snout, ripping off his flesh and revealing the bone underneath. Then I bit upon that injury again, ignoring all his attempts to fend me off.

Weakened, bleeding, and missing half his snout, Blair lay on the ground, unmoving.

It seemed like the battle was over.

As I walked over to him, I realized a little too late that Blair had been feigning. He might have been injured, but he was luring me in closer to deliver a fatal blow.

His enlarged claws dug into the skin of my chest, reaching past my muscles and touching my ribs. The pain was unbearable, but the realization that if he were to penetrate deeper, he would reach my heart was much more troubling.

I was trapped. His limbs were wrapped around me, his massive body crushing me under his weight.

Instead of trying to escape, I did the same as what Blair had done to me. I extracted my claws and dug them into his heart, feeling his rib cage brush against the tip of my claws. Two could play at this game, and if I was supposed to die in this battle, I was going to kill Blair with me before I breathed my last.

I could sense that I had hurt Blair just as severely as he had hurt me. He let go of me immediately, once again retreating to the corner of the battlefield.

The only thing that troubled me was the slow speed at which my wounds were healing. Blair was healing faster. In the time he had taken to retreat, part of his snout had regrown, and the claw holes in his chest were sealed again.

It felt like I was fighting an undefeatable enemy.

Surely, this was madness.

Blair charged at me again, stomping his paws harder than before, picking up great speed. I was barely able to get on my paws once again, still recovering from the painful injury in my chest. I wasn’t going to be able to move away in time.

Then, Blair jumped, doubling his speed, his claws reaching out for my face, his mouth open to viciously bite me as he landed.

I had known defeat on three different occasions in my life before.

One was when I fled from Germany. I could not have saved my people and my land against the violence of the Nazis. For me, fleeing was the same as admitting defeat.

The second time was when I was kidnapped by Edward Beckett. There had been nothing I could do all those long decades while he tortured me.

The third was when Blair “killed” me with his serum at Beckett Pharma’s tower.

Now, this seemed like the fourth.

My body, feral though it was, was drenched with all energy. I needed more time to recover than I had. Blair was just a few inches away from me, a momentous force coming unstoppably in my direction to rend me apart.

At least this time around, I was not running away. I was going to stand my ground till the moment I took my last breath.

But surprisingly, Blair never made it to the ground. His claws never touched me. His teeth never got too close around my neck.