Claws gashing through air, the whisper of wind that was a product of our own hectic movements, it wasn't really there, it wasn't kissing the earth supporting our feet, it was born from the energy that flowed through our bodies.

War in its purest form.

Airborne shapes of beasts that clashed with my wolves, bones that stuck out through flesh, wounds bleeding out truth, it was our whole world now, nothing more and nothing less.

The pack was finally united but couldn't survive this night. We would all die. Most of them would live.

Crimson was splattering my face, my talons tearing through, his own sinking in, splintering the skin, sailing further inside the liquid blur my body had become, teeth eating down, my own jaws biting back.

The Moon was gone with the approaching dawn. It was that time – the time when the darkness was so thick it rendered you blind.

Yet, we saw. Monsters always do. And each one of us was a monster.

Howls of the wounded and broken echoed around me as my own took their final breath. Defeat clamped its hungry teeth over our necks until the bones snapped in half and the last sliver of life was gone. Spilled red on this field.

Sounds of flesh meeting fur were reaching my ears. I couldn't look away from him to see who had died and who was still alive.

It was all there, in the periphery of my vision but undecipherable for the mind as I never risked a glance away from the man blocking my path.

But there was nothing to stop that knowledge from permeating a mind that had been held captive in the grip of the battle, that knowledge.

She was still here. She was fighting alongside her pack. She didn't leave.

A promise unfulfilled.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to stop death. I wanted to be the only one who died tonight.

'Help me change this cursed fate. Help me prevent them paying the price for my mistakes. Help me grow into my fur and become the alpha I should have been from the very beginning,' I wanted to pray to her but the Moon was already gone. Only the wild were here to give their twisted punishment to this pack.

The claws that grew on his fingertips now were taking chunks of my flesh where they connected, ripping it apart, baring what was lying underneath. His people were doing the same to mine.

Pain was engulfing my world, its reflection was on his face as he gave me more. It was the kind of torture that couldn't be prevented, that you accepted because of both hope and despair. Helpless.

The mockery in his laughter was ringing in my ear. Jaws that were neither human nor wolf snapped in anger at him. He was enjoying this fight, my every effort to block his swings at me and keep myself standing for as long as my wounded body would allow.

"Weak! Worthless!" Words tumbled out of his mouth in rhythm with his body movement. His face was no longer flawlessly perfect, his eyes were no longer dark like an abyss staring back but glowing with certainty.

He was not like the rest of the wildlings who couldn't change back and forth. He could do that. He could be human in appearance one moment and a monster the next.

Blood was trickling down my chest and saturating the fabric where it wasn't torn. It stuck to my skin and then more blood oozed from the gashes he left behind every time he'd get through. He snickered at me when he would hit the mark. I growled back when I managed to wound him.

"Do you see how stupid you really are now? Do you see how out of your league you are now, Regan?" He wasn't even trying to block me now, instead, he was holding himself open for my attacks.

Morphed hands stuck their talons in his chest, ripping the shirt he was wearing to shreds, they left blood trails.

Eyes flickering down for just a second, "Awww! That stings, Regan!" he said to me. The corners of his lips turned up. His fingers traced down one of those marks to uncover healthy skin under the blood.

"How?" I asked, not believing my eyes as I watched the wounds close a second after being inflicted.

The last traces of my hope disappeared with him being whole again. Unscathed. A man that couldn't be wounded. A man that couldn't be defeated.

"Do you see now, Regan? You never stood a chance against me. Never!" He laughed at me, the sound collapsing into silence as again and again, I tried. Fruitless efforts to find a weakness in him.

A new force carried into my punches, a new determination to break the healing sequence, to mess up with the cycle of the natural response of his body against the wounds mine was inflicting on him.

There was no weakness. He was untouchable. Something out of this world, unimaginable.

Hands falling to my sides, I chanced a glance over his shoulder to where she was fighting her friends, Micah and Adam. They had a faraway look on their faces as if they didn't know what they were doing.

"You're controlling them, aren't you?" I screamed at him.

I could see her lips moving but I didn't hear her words over the shouts and battle cries. All I could see was her swinging, pushing one off herself and then the other.

Both of them kept coming at her. No longer standing on the same side of the line, they'd crossed over to the enemy' side.

A dagger was flashing in the other girl's hands when Scarlet came unarmed here. She never expected something like this to happen. I should have known better.

"So what if I am? What are you going to do?"

I punched him in the gut. He staggered only to regain his balance a second later.

Following every move they made, their dance as lethally graceful as they come, she was my only focus as I watched them close in on her. Every breath a new strike, every move closer to harming her, I wanted to pull her out of her fight and send her away from here to meet the day and keep living.

A life without me. A life that would be happier and carefree.

"What, cat got your tongue, wolf?" Chuckling at his own joke, eyes probing at everything I'd thought I was but wasn't, body shapes flickering all around us, my mate struggling to get her attackers off herself, the male holding her in place as the female swung her blade...

"Just as I thought," Cole said, his head tilted up and a crazy laughter spilled out of his mouth.

I saw it, the moment when he lost control over Micah. I watched it as if it was playing in slow motion in front of my eyes. I listened to the distorted sound of his laughter, to the sounds of my own falling to their knees and meeting their end under the taloned hands of the wild...

The blade was aimed for her shoulder, but when the girl stumbled it stuck into her chest.

The laughter stopped abruptly interrupted by a scream. "No!" It was my own scream as I watched my mate's body fall, as I ran to where she was, holding her in my arms while she bled out.

"Regan..." she whispered, lifting her hand but never reaching me. It dropped down. Her eyes burned out of their light. It sounded like a sigh that left her lips and it was the last sound that sizzled out of her.

"Fuck! You were supposed to hold her – not kill her!" Cole shouted. I saw Micah's body tremble as she stared down at my mate's body.

I didn't understand what she was mumbling under her breath as she clasped her hands around her head and tried to pluck off her hair. A moment later, her eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped to the ground too.

I felt a hand on my collar as someone pulled me up to my feet. Cole turned me to face him, raising his taloned hand to my chest.

That hand reached me as the wild rejoiced in the dying cries of my wolves – nothing but whispers that would be carried by the wind.

Screaming and howling, both man and beast willed the claws to tear through our flesh, no longer fighting for another breath but welcoming the lack of one.

The world was still. The place was quiet. Silent tears rained on the ground, saturating my skin before they landed. My body shook when his hand snuck inside my chest, ripping skin and flesh and breaking my ribcage.

That hand was holding my heart in its palm. That heart was still beating through the grief of losing her as the claws were a hair short of digging into it, ending me like his people had ended mine.

I longed for that completion so we would be together on the other side.

"Do it!" I gritted out through the pain and looked at the abyss in the eyes of a monster. He pressed his claws harder, sticking them into my heart.

The eery smile on his face was the last thing I saw before darkness swallowed the world.