Page 67 of Her Eternal Mate

“It’s okay. I figured, what with it being my last fight and all, I had to give it everything,” Will said, closing his eyes. I put my hand on his heart, checking to see if his heartbeat was still there. It was faint and palpitating, erratically beating in spurts, then slowing down all of a sudden.

“You’re not dying on me, Will. Not after everything we’ve been through!”

“No. There has been enough death as it is. I want to live, Alexis. But first, I want to rest. I think I’ll rest for a long time now,” Will said, closing his eyes and resting his face in the palm of my hand.

“Morgan! John! Anyone?” I called out.

“I’ve got him, Lexie.” It was Vince who came to my side. I looked up at him and saw that he was accompanied by Maliha. “We’ll take him to the clinic. Maliha will look after him, won’t she? You can wrap things up here.”

“Make sure he’s stable,” I said, watching Vince and Maliha hoist him up. “Actually, I should come with you.”

“No,” Vince said. There was a bit of stern authoritativeness in his voice that surprised me. “This thing…this war…is far from over. The wolves need someone to lead them right now. These soldiers, the dead bodies, it has to be cleared. And Blair’s headquarters too. There’s no one in a better position to lead these people than you. When it’s all over, we can all take care of Will.”

He was right. The soldiers who stood frozen on the battlefield had to be taken care of. This fight was not over yet. I nodded at him and watched him take away Will.

Don’t worry about me. I’m not dying yet,Will’s voice suddenly resounded in my head.

I love you,I responded.

And I love you too,he said.

Now that I knew that he was okay, I turned my attention to the battlefield. First, I confirmed to see if Blair was indeed dead. His headless body was not writhing anymore, and the wounds that he had succumbed to had not healed, proving that he was not going to come back from this.

But just as I had ascertained it, something strange started happening. All the soldiers who stood frozen on the battlefield started quivering, shaking, and grunting, still rooted to their spots.

I braced myself for combat, but it did not look like these soldiers were coming back to life. Quite the opposite; one by one, they started falling down, their ears, eyes, and mouths bleeding, and there they stayed, unflinching, unmoving.

“What the fuck is happening?” I shouted.

“It looks like they’re dying,” one of the pack members said. “But why? We didn’t do anything.”

I dialed Maliha’s number and waited for her to pick up.

“Maliha, what is happening with the soldiers?”

“Uh…The device…we never got to run a complete test on it. I think it’s malfunctioning. And it’s already installed on the radio tower, so there’s nothing I can do other than shut it down. But that would force the soldiers back into wakefulness. What do you want me to do?”

“Right now, I just want you to be by Will’s side. Leave the rest to me,” I said.

“You realize that the device is overcharging the signals, killing these soldiers, right?” Maliha said hesitatingly.

“I know,” I said, hanging up the phone.

“What do you think we should do?” Morgan asked, coming up from behind.

I turned around and saw that by now, the rest of the soldiers had all fallen to the ground as well, some of them dying, most of them dead.

“We take them back to the headquarters. If any police or official catches sight of so many dead soldiers, it’s going to raise questions. We can’t have them lying here like this,” I said. “Take them to Blair’s headquarters in batches. Tonight, that’s the only thing we’re doing.”

“What happens when we take them there?” Morgan asked. “Are we going to bury them?”

“No, you leave that up to me,” I said.

***

This herculean task took nine hours to complete. All the pack members pulled their weight, some in werewolf form, others in human form. Through their teamwork, they had come up with a convenient way to transport the bodies. Half the pack shifted into werewolves while the other half stayed human, harnessed the werewolves to sleds, and piled the sleds with the dead bodies of the soldiers.

Given that there were thousands of soldiers and only fifty or so could fit on the sleds at a time, it took the twenty-five makeshift werewolf sleds three rounds each to clear the battlefield of the soldiers.