My own mate bit to kill me.

Unable to stop myself, I shifted into my human form and grasped my bleeding abdomen. Blood poured out of my stomach, the muscle torn in three different places. I winced and scrambled back, pain shooting through me and my wolf.

"Bria," I whispered, wanting her to gain back control.

She could do it. She could escape whatever type of spell that Thiago had placed over her. This wasn't the real her, and it surely wasn't her wolf. If her wolf recognized me, she wouldn't be reacting this way. We were mates, forged by the Moon Goddess.

"Bria, answer me," I whispered through the link, wanting her to acknowledge me. "Mate."

Instead of answering me or even looking me in the eyes, she backed up a couple inches. Fear flashed through her eyes. As if she finally understood what she had done, Bria stopped and stared at me in complete shock. Then she turned around in disgrace and sprinted after Thaigo, following in his fucking footsteps while I bled out everywhere because of her.

She didn't answer me. She didn't look in my direction. She just took off through the woods, running after Thiago who had brainwashed her into thinking that I needed to be eliminated, that I needed to die by her hands.

Thiago must've still had control of her.

In a wave, all of Thiago's warriors followed Bria through the woods, rushing past her and running faster and harder to follow Thiago to wherever he had gone. I stumbled to my feet and toward her, tripping over my own legs and collapsing to the ground.

"Mate hurt us," my wolf said through my head, his voice lower than it usually was.

He didn't understand that this wasn't Bria. All he thought was that the woman we waited over forty-three years for had intentionally bit us because she wanted to kill us, that she didn't love us anymore and would do anything in her power to run away.

Determining to prove him wrong, I stood to my feet again, walked two feet, and fell. Blood poured between my fingers, and I called out for Bria to stop again. I called her name, first then last, told her that her mate wanted her back, that we still loved her no matter what.

Yet she didn't stop running.

She would go back to Thiago to regroup and come at us harder and faster than they had last time. Who knew what kind of torture shit he had been hiding around the castle. I had seen the stuff he had in the prison cells and dungeon.

If they captured my pack...

I glanced around to see my pack and Adan's pack lying on the battlefield. Most were still alive, but some weren't moving even in the slightest. I clenched my jaw and growled again, standing and moving forward another few feet.

Someone needed to stop Thiago.

If I didn't stop it, Bria would kill me and have to live like that forever.

My mate deserved more than that. She barely knew about wolves, barely understood how we lived or how to control herself. Thiago knew exactly what he was doing this entire time. He was grooming her to be his perfect pet, to be the destruction of the wolf species.

If there was even a sliver of her consciousness left, she must've been terrified.

I wouldn't let her do this by herself. I would fight like hell for her.

So, despite my bleeding stomach, I shifted into my wolf and followed behind her.