Alpha Asher and Lola novel Chapter 216

Chapter 216

I woke to the tang of blood in my mouth. and the stinging pain of something sharp prodding me in the ass.

“Agh.” I hissed in pain.

Turning onto my side, which wasn’t any better, I felt around blindly for the perpetrator. My fingers froze when I registered the gritty substance covering the floor-the ground, I mean.

It was dirt, scraggly and moist as it became compacted under my nails. Just about every muscle in my body ached like I’d ran a marathon. I tried to push past that pain, stretching out my senses until my eyes decided too corporate. 1

Cold lapped at my bare skin, grazing places that should’ve been covered by clothing but most definitely weren’t. If I had to guess, I might’ve assumed I was outside somewhere but that couldn’t be possible.

Other than the heavy pants of my breathing, there was nothing but silence. If I were outside, I should’ve been able to hear crickets chirping and leaves crunching beneath the feet of the smaller forest dwellers. There was none of that, not even the whoosh of wind passing through treetops.

My fingers trailed over something long and hard, and I grunted as I finally found the object that had been jabbing me.

“What the hell? Is that a twig?” I grunted, smacking my lips as I struggled to speak.

The tang of blood coating my tongue felt… off. There was something abnormal about it, but I couldn’t pinpoint it at the moment. 2

It was a stick in my hand, I was sure of it.

The surface was rough like bark, but damp as though the early morning mist had already passed through.

Finally, I was able to crack my eyes open. The only source of light was the silver marble hovering in the sky, making it easy to adjust to my surroundings. My eyes latched onto the stick in my hand, only it wasn’t a stick.

I gasped, flinging the jagged femur bone into a patch of brush.

Bits of bloody flesh clung to my fingertips, picking up dirt as I scrambled onto all fours and whipped my head around.

No, this can’t be what she saw. 1

They were everywhere, scattered in a perfect ring around where I’d woken up. Animals, dead animals. Their blood watered the earth, soaking it in a sea of crimson so severe that even the starving soil failed to soak it all up.

The most sickening part-the part that twisted my stomach into knots and filled my mouth with the acrid taste of bile, was that most of them weren’t even whole.

Their corpses had been torn to shreds, limbs ripped from torsos and heads clawed from the rest of their bodies.

There were pieces of deer, elk, foxes, even a couple of bears. Fucking bears. 1

Peaking out from in between flashes of crimson were the milky white shards of broken bones. Among the mix was the femur bone I threw.

Even though it was right in front of me, my eyes struggled to grasp what I saw. The information simply wasn’t registering, smothered by shock and the realization that the blood in my mouth wasn’t human blood.

It was animal blood, and from the taste, it had come from more than one.

A stag’s head sat just five feet away from my face, its milky eyes burning into me. Its stare felt accusatory, like it knew what I had done before I did. The sprawling

network of its horns were coated in blood, matching the jagged piece of its spinal column that protruded from its shredded neck.

I didn’t begin shaking until a flash of red hit my peripheral and I dared to look down.

What sent me into a panic wasn’t that I was naked, but that I was covered in blood. My neck, all the way down to the pads of my feet was coated in the flaky, drying substance.

‘Asher!’ I called out on instinct. ‘Fuck, Asher. You need to answer me, you need to answer me now.’

Again, I scrambled, but there was nowhere to go without stepping over the mutilated bits of animal corpses.

Silence rang down the mate-bond in loud, consuming waves. The words I shouted-screamed down the bond were smothered by a wall of pure agony, of horror so strong that my body chose to revolt and spew every vile thing I’d eaten onto the forest floor.

“Oh, Goddess.” I cried out, staring at my blood-covered face in the pool of my own vomit.

It reeked so bad, carrying the same ungodly stench as the decapitated animals. I knew the truth, and there was nothing I could do but accept it and let it smother me.

I hadn’t just killed these animals. I’d slaughtered them, and then, to make matters even worse, I’d eaten them.