Chapter 10
1596words
Leo Wilde gripped Ella's wrist tightly, pulling her as they ran through the tangled tree roots.
"Hurry! Ella! Just hold on a little longer!" Leo's voice sounded somewhat distorted in the wind and rain, "Our people are just ahead waiting for us!"
Ella moved her legs mechanically. She dared not look back.
She could feel him.
Even across miles, she could feel Karen Wolcoff.
The mark on her neck was like a red-hot branding iron, frantically burning her skin. It wasn't just pain, but a kind of "tearing." The bond was protesting, screaming, because she was actively moving away from her other half.
Karen's despair, rage, and that almost world-destroying... agony, were flowing continuously into her consciousness through this mark.
The giant wolf in his heart was howling, and the little wolf in her heart was responding with the same pain.
Ella gritted her teeth, forcing back that morbid impulse that made her want to turn around.
He's a liar, she told herself. He's a monster.
They finally burst out of the dense forest and slipped into an extremely hidden cave at the foot of the mountain. The cave was dry, with a small campfire burning inside.
"You're safe now." Leo released her, finally showing a tired smile. He took off his half-dried coat and draped it over Ella's trembling shoulders.
"Thank you..." Ella's voice was hoarse.
"Don't thank me, Ella. I arrived too late." Leo's green eyes looked especially gentle in the firelight. He reached out, wanting to touch the mark on her neck, but restrained himself, stopping midway.
"He... he did this to you." Leo's eyes were filled with the familiar compassion and anger that Ella knew from childhood. "Don't worry, I will never let anyone hurt you again."
Ella curled up beside the fire, wrapped tightly in his coat.
Leo's words "I've come to take you home" still echoed in her ears.
Home...
She had no home anymore.
She leaned against the cold rock wall, the adrenaline slowly fading away, replaced by a bone-deep numbness and emptiness.
The pain of the bond continued, but what hurt even more was her shattered faith.
This was not at all what she had imagined.
Ella closed her eyes, unable to help recalling a time long ago.
When the Red Moon Pack had not yet been destroyed by the flames of war, she was just a teenage girl. Her favorite thing to do was to sit with other girls from the pack under the full moon, gathered around the elderly "Moon Crone" Aurelia.
Aurelia was the oldest Omega in the pack, her face covered with wrinkles, but her eyes always shone with wisdom and gentleness.
"Grandmother," Ella remembered resting her chin in her hands, asking with eyes full of aspiration, "does the Moon Goddess really prepare a 'mate' for each one of us?"
Aurelia smiled, weaving a grass wreath in her hands, her voice gentle and distant: "Of course, child. The Moon Goddess never makes mistakes. Your mate is the other half of your soul. He will... treasure you more than his own life. He will hold you in the palm of his hand, you are his only precious jewel."
Ella once believed those stories without question.
She remembered back then, her friends, those girls who have now all passed away, always liked to tease her about Leo.
"Ella doesn't need to find her mate," one girl mischievously pushed her shoulder, "maybe it's Leo! Even your fathers are the best Beta partners!"
"That's right, that's right!" another one chimed in, "My mother says, if you two could end up together, that would really be..."
"Don't be ridiculous!" Ella remembered her face turning red at the time, secretly glancing at Leo, while Leo just stood coolly to the side, though the tips of his ears had also turned red.
Even her father, when he was alive, always liked to pat Leo's shoulder and say with a smile: "Good boy, you must protect Ella well."
Everyone thought they would be a perfect match.
And whether they were or not, Ella had once eagerly anticipated her eighteenth birthday, anticipated that partner who would treat her as a "treasure."
She slowly opened her eyes, the firelight reflected in her moist eyes, cold and empty.
Treasure?
Grandma Aurelia was dead. Those ancient parchments carrying beautiful love stories had turned to ashes along with her people.
"Leo..." Ella's voice was hoarse as she spoke.
"Hmm? I'm here." Leo responded immediately, handing her a water pouch.
Ella didn't take it, she just stared bewilderedly at the firelight: "I don't understand... I really don't understand."
"What don't you understand?"
"Bond." Ella unconsciously touched her neck, where the mark was still stinging, "It's real. I felt it... Leo, that feeling was so real. I couldn't resist it. He felt it too."
She looked up, her eyes filled with painful confusion: "Before that massacre, I had never seen him. Until he grabbed me... we both discovered it at the same time. The Moon Goddess... how could she designate a monster who slaughtered my entire clan as my 'destined partner'? Grandmother Aurelia said... the Moon Goddess never makes mistakes."
Leo's face darkened. He stared silently at the firelight, seemingly pondering this unsolvable puzzle as well.
"I don't know, Ella," he finally spoke, his voice carrying the same exhaustion and confusion as hers, "I only know he is our enemy. But... the 'Bond' is the power of the Moon Goddess, it cannot lie."
He raised his head, his green eyes looking exceptionally serious in the firelight: "I saw it. At the altar, when he marked you, that wasn't fake. I also saw how desperate he looked when he chased after you... that wasn't fake either."
Ella hadn't expected Leo to admit this point.
"Then... why?" Ella's tears welled up again, "This is too cruel. Why would the Moon Goddess do this?"
"I don't know." Leo shook his head, clenching his fists, "Perhaps the Moon Goddess is punishing him this way? Making him fall in love with the enemy he slaughtered?"
He looked at Ella, his eyes full of pity: "Or perhaps she is testing you, Ella. Testing whether you would be bound by this false, imposed 'bond' and forget our true blood feud."
Leo took a deep breath, his voice firm yet gentle: "I cannot explain the Moon Goddess's intentions. But I know one thing: a fated mate should be your 'treasure,' not your 'cage.' Karen Wolcoff used you, he deceived you with that 'Blood Covenant,' he doesn't deserve you."
He gently wiped the rain from her face.
Ella looked at him, at his sincere, concerned green eyes.
This was the Leo she remembered.
Her tense nerves finally found a moment of relief.
But as she looked at him closely, Ella realized this wasn't quite the Leo she remembered anymore.
"Leo..." she reached out with trembling hands, touching a faint white scar on his chin, "You... this past year..."
Leo's hand, which had been tending the fire, suddenly froze.
The gentleness on his face disappeared for a moment, replaced by an extremely profound gloom that Ella couldn't understand.
"......Very bad." He said in a low voice, with a weariness and hoarseness in his voice as if he had crawled out of hell.
"I watched them kill my father with my own eyes." His voice was flat, yet it made Ella feel cold all over. "I hid among piles of corpses, smelling the blood of my people, not daring to move... for two whole days."
Ella drew in a sharp breath, covering her mouth.
"I escaped into the wilderness." Leo continued, his green eyes terrifyingly hollow. "I lived like a wild dog, Ella. Hunted by Wolkoff's patrols, bullied by other Rogues. I've eaten tree bark, fought with beasts over rotting meat."
He laughed self-mockingly: "Every night I wondered why was I the one who survived? Why did the Moon God make me bear all this alone?"
Ella's heart was gripped tightly by these words.
"Leo..."
He raised his head, that gloomy aura instantly vanished, replaced once again by an intense, almost obsessive tenderness.
He gently wiped the rainwater from her face.
"...Until I heard they had taken a survivor from the Red Moon Pack. A girl."
"That's when I knew the Moon Goddess hadn't abandoned me." His gaze locked onto her with burning intensity, "She left you for me."
He paused, as if not wanting these sad memories to creep into Ella's dreams, his voice very soft, "Anyway, you're safe now, you're with me. I will protect you. I swear, I will never let you be harmed again."
Ella looked at him, at the pain in his eyes and the weight of that solemn oath. This person who had been her only surviving "family," whom she had trusted since childhood.
She finally found a piece of driftwood to cling to in this endless nightmare of a night.
She nodded and leaned on his shoulder, closing her eyes in exhaustion.
The pain of the bond continued to sting.
But at least in this moment, she was no longer the "cure" imprisoned by the Alpha.
She was free.
She leaned on Leo's shoulder, but didn't see that Leo Wilde was looking down at her.
In his green eyes, that tenderness and compassion was slowly fading away, replaced by something obscure in the firelight, extremely profound—possession.
He had lost everything.
And Ella was his "hope" to reclaim everything, as well as the "property" he was ultimately unwilling to let go.
