Alpha Asher By Jane Doe

Chapter 211

I was so unfathomably tired of death.

The pale rider and I knew each other intimately. We were partners in a dance I no longer remembered the movements for, one I wished would end already but knew never would.

There were so many fallen wolves. So many families to contact, so many devastating blows to land.

Just as many, if not more, witches littered the ground.

They had friends, I‘m sure. Families that would wonder where they were or if they were ever coming back. They would be mourned by someone, somewhere.

It had taken me months to no longer have nightmares of my father‘s severed head tumbling from his shoulders, rolling across the ground in a sea of blood. Every

time I escaped the pull of a nightmare, a new one sprouted in its place, brought on by all of the death and carnage.

Even now, after all these months, I couldn‘t even look at grass without seeing flashes of it covered in blood.

I kept to Asher‘s side, shifting between human and wolf as I killed in both forms. Each life I took broke something inside of me that could never be fixed.

Asher was horrifically elegant in his wolf form, slashing throats and sinking his teeth into anything that wielded magic. He knew the dance moves, knew death much longer than I had. There were rare beings in this world born and bred to send people to the other side.

Asher was one of these beings. The more ! killed and slaughtered, the faster I realized that I was not.

So, I piggybacked off his strength and ferocity, letting his one–track mind

smother my feelings of regret and doubt.

We searched through the sea of crimson high and low looking for Ember, but she wasn‘t here.

I used my magic sparingly, diffusing some of the more powerful witches before they had a chance to kill any more of our warriors. I‘d just slashed through a miniature fucking tornado when I hesitated.

The witch that had conjured it was a child, barely a pre–teen.

Her face was round, her cheeks plump and flushed with blood. The rise and fall of her chest were heavy, spattered with blood that could‘ve easily been hers or someone else‘s. Seeing my hesitation, she blinked in surprise. Her lips opened to form a small‘o,‘ and her fingers twitched like she wasn‘t sure what to do next.

Staring at her through Maya‘s eyes, all I could think was that she wasn’t supposed

battlefield against trained warriors. She should be starting high–school, frantic and on the verge of tears as she tried again and again

her, and my hesitation

face as she twisted it into a sneer. Asher‘s

‘Lola, watch out!

he barreled into the witch creeping up behind

a wolf with wheat–colored fur tackled the young witch and crushed her neck in its

of hot air from his snout. ‘You would‘ve died if I

choked on her own blood. Within seconds the light faded from her eyes, and the

Asher.‘ I whispered. ‘She‘s

he saw the truth for himself. Despite his strength, he had a heart just like

spine and hold his head high.

she is a child.‘ He replied softly. ‘A

hearing nothing but the carnage that

brushed his snout along my neck. His voice circled

You have the power, Lola. Use

because the moment I had Asher‘s approval, magic crackled and

stop, and I knew

mind, and I used the image of her locked away in a cell as inspiration for what came next.

my face and arms, but the clothes I kept as I shifted into my human

of having over a dozen extra limbs. I

were lifted into the sky, their arms pinned to their

wrapped around them, securing

arms, dragging the ones I‘d captured down to the ground where they remained pinned in place. Witches scrambled to escape the roots I commanded left and right. I began to tire so quickly that I had to bite my tongue to keep

but I held on until the witches were driven back into the forest,

an orchestra of deafening howls. Snouts were turned towards the sky and victories were bellowed in the only song we knew how to sing. When the

feet, I peered up at Asher, losing

said, his voice oozing with

managed to capture. There had been a few that managed to escape with the help of the others, but it didn‘t matter. The point of this was to end the fight, to stop the

magic was supposed to get easier.” I grumbled. “It feels like it‘s

it a lot lately.”

using it. I’ve got a

we‘re going to need more Hemlock…lots of

though my body felt like it weighed a ton, there was still work to do. Once the Hemlock was delivered, we administered doses to the witches and brought them to their own holding cells in different parts