Alpha Queen (Claimed by Wolves #4) - Callie Rose Page 0,24

the two most dangerous people in my life.

“Sigils,” Cleo muses as she comes closer. Her shoes click on the basement floor, and it sounds so fucking real that goosebumps break out over my skin. “But why, hmm?”

Then she lifts a single hand, holding it out toward me, and the pain of Clint’s carving grows exponentially. The pain grows until I’m filled with red-hot agony, and Cleo’s magic is everywhere, all around me, inside me, tearing me apart from the inside.

She’s attacking me, like she did the first time she dragged me into the connection. This is it, this is what I was afraid of.

I scream, harder and longer than when Clint’s knife first dug into my skin. I know nothing but blinding pain, and my vision explodes in white flashes until I can’t see the basement. Not even the harsh halogen lamp can shine through the haze of fear and agony.

Like a coward, Cleo decided to use this vulnerable moment against me. She knew that while I was trapped in this nightmare with the man who carved the sigils into my body, I’d be weak enough to hurt.

But what she doesn’t know is that I’m not the weak little girl I used to be.

I reach deep inside myself and grasp wildly for the magic inside me—that roiling, black and smoky darkness that sometimes feels as if it has nefarious intentions for me. During the battle against the whole coven, I wrangled it into submission and made it do my bidding.

I intend to do the same thing here.

Plunging both my arms into the metaphorical darkness, I latch my fingers into the magic and yank.

Power explodes around me. Even with my vision hazy from Cleo’s attack, I can still sense the tendrils of power whipping around me and reacting to my command. Then the connection between me and the coven leader is snapped in two, and I fall away—away from the pain, away from the memory, away from the in-between place where she can hurt me.

I jerk awake, back in the golden daylight that spills into Archer’s room, arms and legs flailing as I try to breach the line between fantasy and reality. Several strong hands reach out, catching my limbs and holding me down with aching gentleness.

Ridge looms over me, cupping my face in his hands. “Sable. Breathe. You’re okay.”

I gasp for air as both of my own hands go to the place on my abdomen where Clint was carving. The aftereffects of Cleo’s attack still sizzle through me, and even though I no longer feel pain, I can still feel her magic. Feel the effects of what she did to me.

“You’re—back,” I finally manage to gasp out, as if that’s the most surprising thing in the room right now.

Ridge nods, and his thumbs brush gently over my cheeks. “Just in time, it seems.”

All four of my mates are here. They hover uncertainly around me, like they’re not sure what to say or do. I sit up and reach for the sheet at the bottom of the bed to cover my naked body. Not because I feel uncomfortable in front of them, but because I need to feel safe again after what the psychopathic coven leader did.

Archer slides his warm hand into mine. “Was it Cleo?”

The sound of her name being said aloud slices through me no differently than Clint’s knife did as he carved a spell into my body.

I jerk my chin up and down, my stomach churning. “Yes.”

I take a few minutes to breathe and to rebuild my defenses against Cleo. My mates don’t pressure me to speak—I have a feeling they know exactly what I’m doing. When I feel like I’m protected to the best of my abilities, I give them a brief breakdown of what happened, from the moment she yanked me into the cave until I managed to snap her hold on me and get the hell out of Dodge.

The looks of concern on their faces grow darker as I speak. I’m already freaked out by how easily Cleo snatched me from right through my magical barrier, so the way they exchange worried glances sets my nerves even more on edge.

“But worse than her finding me is the question of how she pulled me into a memory,” I finish, staring down at my hands so I don’t have to see their expressions. “That shouldn’t even be possible, right? It’s like she had total access to everything in my mind. She could have pulled me into any