Revenge to the Alpha Mate - Chapter 240

Chapter 240: Chapter 240
Celena’s Perspective

“…He’s dead.”

That voice—using Brett’s vocal cords to form utterly alien, icy syllables—kept echoing in my skull. It was like a rusted manacle, tightening with every reverberation, crushing my lungs, squeezing my heart until it felt ready to burst.

Some part of me had known. From the very beginning… a corner of my mind, the most rational and coldest corner, had whispered it, over and over: *He’s not coming back.*

But knowing was one thing. Hearing it confirmed, in that flat, cruel tone, from that familiar face… that was another.

Brett. The person who had grown up beside me.

He was gone.

Erased. As if he’d never been.

A candle snuffed by the wind. That’s what the monster had said.

I stood rooted to the cold, damp concrete, surrounded by scattered bodies and a clotting reek of blood. But I couldn’t feel the cold, couldn’t smell the rot. The world had dissolved into a blurred, buzzing grey. Jacob’s hand was still clamped around my arm, so tight I thought the bones might crack, but the pain was distant, unreal.

Then he yanked me. “Go!”

I followed without thought, a marionette with its strings cut. My legs moved on their own, chasing him into a pipe. Jacob ran ahead, glancing back to check on me. His profile in the faint, bouncing light was taut, his lips pressed into a hard line. He was tense, furious, alert, and… deeply worried for me. The emotions flooding our bond were a complex, searing heat, like a lump of hot coal trying to thaw my frozen senses.

Gradually, the noise of our surroundings began to penetrate the numbness. Footsteps. Many of them, echoing from different pipe junctions,messy and hurried. Muffled shouts. The clatter of metal. Heavy, ragged breathing. Pursuit. The flies drawn by the final slaughter and the ripples of power, just as the monster had said.

These sounds, and the growing aura of anxious radiating from Jacob, acted like a bucket of ice water dumped over my muddled mind.

Clarity returned.

Brett was dead. The knowledge landed with a sharp, clean agony.

But hurt or not, I was alive. Jacob was alive. And we were being hunted by a pack of hostile scum. Now was not the time to fall apart.

I had to get out. For myself. For Jacob. For… the faint, ghostly possibility that Brett would have wanted me to live.

“This way!” Jacob snarled, veering sharply into a narrower offshoot. I followed, my nose instinctively sorting through the flood of scents in the moving air: rust, mold, distant sewage, and… the growing closeness of unfamiliar signatures.

The first to find us weren’t Hunters. Or witches.

It was a powerful, unsubtle wave of werewolf stench, reeking of madness, filth, and raw aggression.

A rogue.

He must have slipped in through a vent, or had been lurking on the fringes of the battleground like a scavenger. He’d caught our scent—an irresistible provocation or an easy meal.

A raw, bestial howl erupted from a pipe to our side and rear, booming in the confined space, painful to the ears. It wasn’t a challenge; it was a call—for backup, or… a signal.

“Damn it!” Jacob cursed, surging forward.

But it was too late. Scrambling footsteps converged rapidly toward the howl’s source. The rogue wasn’t foolish enough to charge alone. Soon, we heard the heavy tread of human boots, the slick metallic *ch-chack* of rifles being readied.

Hunter scents joined the mix.

What I glimpsed next, through a bend in the pipe behind us, turned my stomach. The hulking, half-transformed rogue was actually running *alongside* several figures in Hunter gear! They weren’t attacking each other; there was a sickening… coordination. The rogue used his superior nose and speed to track and lead from the front, the Hunters followed with weapons raised, their muzzles aimed squarely down our escape route.

It was insane. A rogue acting as a Hunter’s hound? For what? Either way, these were beings unbound by any pack law, capable of anything.

“Split up! Cut them off!” a Hunter’s raspy voice commanded from behind.

Bullets followed. Not wild sprays, but coordinated fire, trying to bracket our potential dodges. Rounds sparked and shrieked off the rusted pipe walls, forcing us to duck and weave in the tight space, our pace crippled.

Jacob shoved me hard behind a thick support column and rolled the opposite way. Bullets stitched the ground where he’d been. “Don’t stop!” he roared back at me. “Forward! Third left!”

I gritted my teeth, lunged from cover, and ran again. My heart hammered, from exertion or from sheer, furious disbelief.

Gunfire, howls, and shouts echoed and multiplied in the Pipeline Maze, pressing in from all sides. We were rats in a sewer, chased by cats and mad dogs.

Fortunately, our pursuers’ focus wasn’t entirely on us.

Part of the Hunter group—likely the more experienced core—broke off, cursing as they chased deeper sounds and scents. The pressure from those left on our tail lessened, but remained lethal.

“Here!” Jacob yelled again. He’d found a vertical shaft leading up, sealed by a rusted iron grate. It had been pried open violently, bent and twisted, leaving a gap just wide enough to squeeze through. Faint daylight filtered down from above, along with… a familiar, complex urban stench.

Garbage. Rotting food. Stale wastewater. Strong, but in that moment, it smelled bizarrely… safe. It was the smell of the surface world, chaotic but mundane.

“Up! Now!” Jacob cupped my waist and heaved. I scrabbled at the slick, brick-lined walls, hauling myself upward hand over hand. The smells of trash and decay grew overpowering, nearly masking our own wolf and blood scent.

Below, I heard the pursuers’ footsteps and the rogue’s frustrated snarl. They seemed to hesitate at this exit to the “normal” world, or were judging if we’d truly gone up.

I finally dragged myself out of the shaft, landing in a narrow alley crammed with black trash bags and corroded dumpsters. Full, pallid daylight hit greasy asphalt. Jacob scrambled out right after me, quickly wrenching the bent grate roughly back into place and dragging heavy bins over it.

We didn’t pause, sprinting down the alley until we spilled onto a back street, merging with the thin early-morning traffic and a few pedestrians. We slowed to a walk, heads down, looking like two filthy, exhausted vagrants, avoiding stares of distaste or pity as we trudged toward where we’d left the car.

Only when we were inside the battered Ford Explorer, the door slammed shut with a solid *thunk*, did the wire-taut strand of my nerves finally snap.

I turned to look at Jacob in the driver’s seat. He was just as filthy, grime smudged on his face, his eyes still scanning our surroundings with relentless vigilance. A small cut on his temple had crusted over. His fingers were clenched on the steering wheel, knuckles white.

He wasn’t looking at me. He was still on duty, protector and mate, confirming our safety.

But I looked at the line of his jaw, the stubble shadowing it, the corded tendons in his neck… and suddenly, the dam holding back everything inside me—the suffocation, the numbness—shattered.

The tears came without warning. Hot, violent, instantly blurring my vision. I didn’t move gracefully. I threw myself across the seat, wrapping my arms around him with all my strength, burying my face against his neck, against the grit and dried blood and *him*.

My body began to shake, a fine tremor escalating into uncontrollable tremors. All of it—the fear, the grief, the rage, the despair, the hollow, world-ending void I’d been holding at bay for the entire run, for even longer—came pouring out in a scalding flood. I sobbed, breath hitching in ragged, animal-like gasps, my fingers fisting in the fabric of his shirt as if letting go would mean falling into an endless dark.

He was all I had left now.

I felt him go rigid for a heartbeat. Then, the arms that had been locked on the wheel, muscles coiled, slowly, almost hesitantly, lifted. They came around my shuddering back. At first the hold was light, as if afraid I’d break. Then it tightened, crushing me against him, holding me so fiercely it felt like he was trying to pull me inside his own skin. His chin settled on the top of my head, his cheek pressed against my sweat-damp, dirty hair.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t say “don’t cry.” He didn’t say “it’ll be okay.” He just held me. Tight. Letting his steady heartbeat, his warm solidity, his silent, overwhelming presence contain the entirety of my collapse.