Revenge to the Alpha Mate - Chapter 237

Chapter 237: Chapter 237
Celena’s Perspective

I was exhausted. My body felt like a collection of loosely connected parts, but my mind was painfully, unnervingly clear.

We were two people now, a single unit, doing something we had to finish ourselves.

I was so grateful to Jacob. The feeling was a heavy, precious weight settled in the softest part of my heart, welling up even before the love did.

He had seen right through me. He’d seen the still-boiling, stubborn magma beneath the thin layer of ice I’d tried to freeze over.

He had suggested this final search. For me. And for his own tangled knot of feelings about Brett—the guilt, the sense of unfinished duty.

This was my last hope.

Not the hopeless fantasy of bringing a laughing, hair-ruffling Brett home. The rational part of me, the part that had learned to view the world through a lens of icy clarity, had already pronounced a death sentence on that tiny possibility.

My last hope was for an answer. A period. A clean goodbye. To at least know *what* had happened, *why*, and *what* exactly had taken up residence in his skin. Then… then I could finally bury him properly, within myself.

Jacob understood.

That’s why he was here.

He didn’t need my thanks. I could feel it through our bond—a steady, calm certainty. His presence was enough.

We entered a town that felt forgotten by the world around three in the morning. The streets were empty. Streetlights cast sickly yellow pools. Most windows were dark. Only at the end of the main drag, in front of a two-story clapboard house, a neon “Vacancy” sign flickered a lurid pink against the silence.

The only motel.

The clerk was a skinny old man fighting a losing battle with sleep. He showed zero interest in a young couple checking in at this hour, took our cash, slid a brass key with a wooden tag across the counter, jerked a thumb toward the stairs, and retreated to his tiny TV. The room was small, smelling faintly of mildew and disinfectant. The sheets were rough but clean.

We collapsed onto the bed fully clothed. Jacob curled around me from behind, his arm a solid weight across my waist, his warm breath stirring the hair at my nape. There was no heat in it, just pure protectiveness and the weary comfort of shared survival. Surrounded by his scent and the steady rhythm of his heart, the coiled-tight wire of my nerves finally slackened, just a little, and I fell into a brief, dreamless sleep.

It felt like five minutes, but daylight had come.

Pale sunlight stabbed through the gap in the cheap curtains. Jacob was already awake, propped against the headboard, clicking relentlessly through channels on the room’s ancient portable TV. His expression was grim.

I rubbed my eyes, pushing myself up. “News?”

“Yeah.” He turned up the volume. A local news channel. A stern-faced anchorwoman was reporting:

“…the severe violent incident along Interstate 70 near Milton yesterday evening is now under investigation. Preliminary reports indicate an armed confrontation between two groups of illegal militants. Automatic weapons were involved, and several civilian vehicles were caught in the crossfire, resulting in multiple casualties and a major traffic closure. State Police and National Guard units responded swiftly, neutralizing the threat and taking several suspects into custody. Authorities stress this was an isolated incident. There is no cause for public alarm. The investigation is ongoing…”

The footage cut to blurred, heavily pixilated distant shots of the burning police cruiser, the twisted wrecks we’d seen. Then a clip of a uniformed, faceless official speaking at a microphone.

“The usual lies,” Jacob snorted, killing the power. The room was suddenly quiet save for the old air conditioner’s groan. “‘Militants.’ They can’t even be bothered to craft a decent story.”

But lies always contained fragments of truth. They’d mentioned “near Milton.” And the blurred footage showed landmarks—a half-collapsed billboard, the distinct style of a guardrail on a specific curve.

Jacob pulled out his phone, pulling up a map. We hunched over it, heads almost touching.

“Here,” I pointed to a spot near the river, set back from the main highway but matching the described direction and terrain from the news. In yesterday’s chaos, we hadn’t pinpointed it. Now, with the news hints and memory, the target clarified. It was on the edge of an old industrial zone, near abandoned freight lines and tributary creeks—complex terrain, sparse and dilapidated buildings. A good place to… handle messy business.

We had our destination.

We didn’t linger. Downstairs, tossed the key on the counter. The skinny clerk didn’t look up. We bought the cheapest coffee and sandwiches hard as rocks from the only gas station convenience store open early, swallowing them standing in the cold wind outside. Then we hit the roadside, thumbs out.

Hitchhiking was slow. Several cars passed before a battered pickup, smelling strongly of feed and motor oil, grudgingly stopped. The farmer driver was silent. He dropped us at the crossroads closest to our target area. We watched his truck rattle away, belching smoke.

“Now what?” I looked at Jacob.

He grinned, a flash of wildness and familiar cunning in it. “The old way.”

Jacob haggled like a born used-car salesman with a grease-stained man in overalls and a bald head. Ten minutes and a modest stack of cash later, we owned a mid-90s Ford Explorer with peeling paint and an engine that sounded surprisingly healthy. Spacious, high clearance, anonymous. Perfect.

We drove our “new” vehicle toward the map marker. The closer we got, the heavier the air seemed. More police cars—some speeding past, others set up at checkpoints. We took a detour, approaching via increasingly neglected back roads.

Finally, we parked the Explorer over a mile out, at the edge of a small copse of trees. We hiked the last stretch across scrubland and disused rail tracks, dropping to our bellies behind a brush-covered rise.

The devastation spread out before us. The carnage we’d seen from a distance through smoke was now presented in intimate, horrifying detail up close. Twisted vehicle carcasses had been dragged to the perimeter. Vast swathes of earth were scorched black. Spent shell casings littered the ground like a carpet of copper coins, glittering in the morning light. Several dark, ominous stains had soaked deep into the soil—dried blood. The metallic tang of it, mixed with the sharp bite of cordite, assaulted my senses even from here.

Yellow police tape fluttered limply everywhere. But as Jacob had predicted, the police presence wasn’t dense. Only a few uniformed officers patrolled the edges, their focus seemingly on keeping curious civilians and media away. The evidence teams appeared to have wrapped up their main work; larger equipment was being hauled off. An air of “mopping up” hung over the place.

But my wolf’s nose caught more than that.

The scent of blood… it was too fresh. Not just yesterday’s. There had been bleeding here, within the last few hours. The cordite smell wasn’t entirely stale either. A chill traced my spine. Had Brett—or the thing—not fled far? Was it still active nearby?

I couldn’t help but edge forward for a better look, my heartbeat picking up. Maybe it wasn’t far! Maybe we could—

A large hand shot out from beside me, clamping around my forearm with a grip that made me flinch.

“Don’t move!” Jacob’s voice was the barest exhale, forced from the depths of his throat. His body had gone rigid, like a predator catching a dangerous scent. His eyes were locked on the battlefield, but his nostrils flared subtly, his brow furrowed.

“What is it?” I whispered, infected by his sudden tension.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he turned his head to look not at the battlefield, but in the opposite direction—toward a deeper area of older structures: what looked like abandoned warehouses, a repair shop, and a stone building with a pointed steeple that might have been an old church or town hall.

“Smell,” he breathed, just the one word.

I forced myself to still, to push past the overwhelming blood and gunpowder, and cast my senses out like delicate filaments, sifting every nuance the wind carried. Dust. Rotting wood. Rust. Bird droppings… and then, I caught it.

A thread, incredibly faint yet unmistakable. A cold, complex aroma. Like aged herbs. Like the ash of burning sacred wood. Like the cloying sweetness of some nocturnal bloom. Underneath it all, a trace of… non-human, arcane energy residue. It wasn’t like Rose or Maya’s more familiar witch-scent. This was more obscure. The pressure it implied was greater.

The smell of witches.

And not just one. The scent was faint, but I could distinguish at least three different “threads” woven together, distinct hues in a twisted braid.

Just what kind of trouble had Brett stumbled into?

Jacob gave a slight tug. We melted back from the rise like shadows, using the brush for cover, retreating swiftly and silently from that zone of death and unknown danger. We didn’t speak, but our bond hummed with high alert and a shared, urgent consensus: *Get out. Now.*

We circled wide, eventually coming up near the steeple-topped old stone building. It looked like it had been converted into a community center or tiny museum, a faded sign by the door. Upstairs, there was a small café, its windows offering a direct view of the distant battlefield and the rise where we’d just been hiding.

We played the part of backpackers, trudged upstairs, ordered two cups of coffee cheap enough to strip paint, and took the corner table by the window. The vantage point was excellent.

We waited about half an hour, our coffee going cold. Then, they appeared.

From a narrow alley, three women emerged. They dressed plainly, almost drably—dark skirts or trousers, simple cuts. But their posture, their aura of detached calm utterly at odds with the decaying surroundings, instantly drew my eye. They didn’t even glance at the battlefield, as if it were merely an eyesore. They gathered at the mouth of the alley, speaking in low tones. One of them lifted her head, seeming to “look” directly toward our café.

It wasn’t a true look. It was a sweep of perception. I immediately dropped my gaze, pretending to stir my cold coffee, my heart hammering against my ribs. Jacob picked up a faded tourist magazine from the table and leafed through it with apparent boredom.

I was certain it was them. The feel was similar to Rose or Maya, but… more dangerous. Older. Less concerned with blending in.

They didn’t linger long, disappearing down another street. We waited another twenty minutes, until that cold, otherworldly scent had dissipated on the wind to near imperceptibility.

“Go,” Jacob said, dropping cash on the table.

We left the café. We didn’t return to the Explorer. Instead, we walked several blocks, finding a more run-down but seemingly operational motel in a different area. Its neon sign was missing letters—”Mo—l”.

We paid cash under fake names for a room on the first floor, at the very end. It was smaller than last night’s, with peeling wallpaper and pipes groaning in the walls.

Only when the door was shut and the thick, smoke-smelling curtains drawn did we relax, both of us sliding down to sit back against the door, onto the thin carpet.

“I swear,” I breathed, my voice still unsteady, “this place is a hundred times more complicated than we thought. Besides the witches… other scents. Lots of humans smelling of gunpowder and blood. Not police. Armed… something. The Hunters might be gone, but other ‘things’ have been drawn here. Or were here all along.”

Jacob took my hand. His palm was warm and dry. “I know. I caught them too. Rust. Gun oil. And… greed. Fear. Lots of it.” He pulled me into his side, resting his chin on top of my head. “We stay put. We observe. This is the eye of the storm now, little wolf. We have to be very, very careful.”