Possession (The Mate Games 3)

“Coward,” I spat.

“Aleksandr, be calm. This is right and safe for all of you.”

The final shimmers of the portal faded, and a searing pain snapped through me, deep into my chest, leaving behind a cold and hollow chasm. She was gone. Taken from me by my own flesh and blood. Fury burned in the pit that remained where my heart should have been.

Violence was the only language I knew.

Where my father, my hero, had once stood was now only an enemy. My muscles rippled, swelling in a now-familiar sensation as my beast took hold. The shackles they’d foolishly thought would contain me broke with a quick twist of my wrists, falling away silently into the freshly fallen snow.

“What have you done?” I threw myself at him, my fists aimed at his face.

He caught both with his open palms, stopping me with a strength that surpassed my own. “Alek... you don’t want to do this.”

“Yes, I fucking do.”

I lashed out with my leg next, trying to sweep his feet out from under him. It was only because he was distracted trying to restrain me that I caught him off guard and knocked him flat on his back.

He grunted, black bleeding into his irises, snuffing out the icy blue. “Stop this.”

I growled, low and deep, beyond speech. I jumped on him, cocking back my arm and preparing to smash my fist straight into his jaw.

“I said stop. This.” With a mighty roar, my father launched me into the air, using the force of his powerful arms and legs combined. I flew back and slammed into a tree, hard enough it may have hurt if I wasn’t so energized by rage and pain.

The crack of the tree echoed through the forest, sending birds flying through the morning sky, fearing the disturbance, knowing better than to stay. Monsters lived in these woods.

Today, that monster was me.

I pushed myself up, the metallic tang of blood filling my mouth. I wiped a hand across my lips, and it came away crimson. The sight of it only made my need to destroy stronger. I spat out a mouthful, the red drops profane against the purity of the snow.

A boulder the size of a small car sat to my left. Without stopping to consider whether it was even possible, I grasped it, muscles shaking not with strain but barely suppressed fury as I hefted it up out of the frozen earth.

“Alek...”

But I didn’t care for my father’s warning. He was the reason my bond had been severed. He stole my mate from me, and now he had to die.

I hurled the stone straight at him.

A look of unmitigated rage crossed his face. His eyes bottomless pools of black as he bared his teeth and snarled. Without blinking, he caught the massive rock and tossed it back to the ground as if it was no more than an inconvenience. “It’s not nice to throw things.”

The earth shook even as the stone sank into the ground. “You took everything from me.”

“You are a child throwing a tantrum. I will not speak with you until you learn some control.”

“Then this is the last time we will speak, old man.”

Pain lanced my father’s features. “Then you leave me no choice.”

Before I could even register his next move, he raised a hand up to the heavens. The cloudless sky turned black as pitch a second before thunder rumbled in the distance.

The flash in his eye was my only warning before the bolt of lightning came down, forking before touching his hand and coming straight for me. All I knew was pain, then darkness, and finally... relief.