Ancientt (Elaine Waters)

Swapped Luna part 17

Added 2024-10-29 04:33:57 +0000 UTC

Previously…

VICTORIA

“It’s alright. I’ll revert everything,” says Maeve.

Her eyes narrow. “You just have to die first.”

PRESENTLY…

THORNE

She’s gone.

Maeve has managed an elaborate escape and snuck out of the clinic.

And I’m fucking pissed.

Why? Why does she refuse professional help? Why cling to her mental illness?

I try my best not to blame her. She’s a victim of her own mind. Only the moon goddess knows why she has cursed her.

I know she won’t get far. Not when my territory line is so heavily guarded. Besides, her trail shows that she was running in her human form with inadequate footwear.

This part, I don’t understand. She could run a lot faster if she shifted to her wolf form. But now that I think about it, it has been a while since I last saw her shift.

It’s like ever since the accident, she never shifted again. A strange hiatus for a werewolf.

As I follow her trail, I feel lucky that her absence was noticed almost immediately after her escape. If it wasn’t noticed until the evening, she could have actually gotten a chance at slipping past the patrol guards who are more concerned about keeping people out than those trying to leave.

A dozen men follow me in the search. We run through the woods, spread in a line to comb through every bush and boulder. No part is going overlooked.

An hour into our search, I hear from the line of communication that they found “them.”

I’m instantly alert, because I’m only looking for Maeve. No one else should be with her.

I run with newfound purpose, feeling panicked. I had been so confident that she would be found unharmed. But what if something went wrong?

I break into a clearing, my feet stumbling to a stop. I find Maeve and a pale female, who I don’t sense is a werewolf. She looks sickly and her temple is bleeding. Her face is hollow and her hair cut unevenly.

Maeve holds a rope in her hands, looking terrified. She’s dragging the sick female whose wrists are bound tightly by the rope.

“Thorne! Thorne, help me!”

“You…found her? The…ghost?”

Fuck…Victoria was telling the truth. All this fucking time, she was locked away. Telling me the truth while I refused to listen.

“This is…” I stare at the bound, unhealthy female. Her eyes are hazy. It’s then that I realize that she’s heavily bleeding from her side. She has been stabbed.

This is Maeve, trapped in another body. The woman that was once my mate is now fading. And I don’t know how to feel about it, because I love Victoria, not Maeve.

Regardless of which female the moon goddess declared my mate, my heart only belongs to Victoria.

I feel like the ground opens up betneath me. My senses blur. I can’t hear much. The sound of my men’s approaching footsteps is muffled. And the metallic scent of blood barely registering.

I’ve never felt weaker.

How the fuck could this have happened? They swapped when Maeve fell off the balcony, but neither of them died. The only thing that died was my mate bond to Maeve. And then my bond to Victoria was formed.

“She attacked me,” Victoria says, crying as she holds the rope. It’s strange to wrap my head around the sight. Victoria is in Maeve’s body. Two different women that I got to know. One that I hate and one that I love, sharing the same identity.

“I…”

I suddenly forget all about my status. I’m no leader, no Alpha right now. I’m stunned as Maeve bleeds out inside Victoria’s body, at the very verge of death.

“Thorne…” whispers Maeve inside Victoria’s sick body. Bleeding out onto the grass.

“She swapped us back,” whispers Maeve. “I am…Victoria. I am…back in my body. Help.”

I growl, frustrated by the fucking confusing back and forth. I don’t believe her. I don’t believe this bleeding woman who is running her serpant tongue just like Maeve is known to do.

Victoria drops the rope and runs toward me, wrapping the arms that belong to Maeve around me. She whimpers. “I’m sorry that I ran. Please, take me home. Kill her.”

Kill her? Kill Maeve in Victoria’s body who is already bleeding out and close to death?

I hesitate. My Victoria would have never wished death upon anyone. She’s too gentle for it. She has a taste for baking treats and serving others, not for murder.

But then again…she has been haunted and tormented. She has been locked in a clinic for two weeks, treated like an insane person while speaking the truth that I didn’t want to hear. That trauma could have changed her. Tainted her. All because I was too stubborn and prideful.

“Alpha?” speaks one of my men, seeking instructions.

I return Victoria’s embrace and part my lips to issue orders, but I’m interrupted by thundering footsteps. Fang’s familiar scent reaches me.

I turn to face him right as he lunges, his jaw spread wide before clamping around Victoria’s arm.

“Fang!” I roar, reaching for him right as Victoria screams.

He’s attacking her! Why? Why, after they became such close friends? They’ve bonded and became inseparable.

Unless…this isn’t Victoria.

FUCK.

I run to the female bleeding on the grass. The one with pale skin and cropped hair but still incredibly beautiful because she’s Victoria. My mate. I undo the rope around her wrists, collecting her in my arms. Warmth and sparks electrify our skin. Something I didn’t notice when Maeve was pressed against me, begging me to murder a bleeding Victoria

They swapped back to their original bodies.

Fang saw the truth. He could tell who Victoria was while I failed to tell the difference like a fucking idiot.

“Thorne…” she whispers. Fading from me.

And I fucking hate myself for not listening to her even at the end. She had tried to tell me the truth yet again, and I failed to listen

My men work to separate Fang from Maeve as he tries his best to maul her.

My hands tremble as I fall apart. My eyes stinging with tears for what might be the first time in my life.

What do I do? My mate dying. Dying in my arms.

She won’t make it if I try to carry her back to the pack. The distance is too great.

With my heart at my throat, I lean in and kiss her cold cheek and listen to her shallow breathing. My heart aches with a ferocity that threatens to make my heart burst.

And then I shift my face lower, and carefully sink my teeth into the nape of my neck. Following instinct. Injecting her with my mark. Hoping that my bite and the tears streaming from my face are enough for the goddess to pity me and save her.

As I set my mark, Maeve screams from a distance.

“Luna!” The men shout for her. “Luna!”

Fang growls as Maeve screams, until she can’t anymore.

I pull my teeth from Victoria’s neck and look at Maeve as she writhes on the floor. Fang didn’t do much damage to her. She’s suffering because I marked another female.

She writhes on the ground, seizing, until becoming still.

A male touches her wrist in search of a pulse before yanking his hand away.

“She’s…”

Dead. She’s dead. And I’ve got no tears to give.

I turn back to Victoria. She has fallen asleep. But her temperature is increasing, and there’s a constant tug at her side as her stab wound is stitched together. It’s working. She’s healing.

But that’s not enough. She needs a blood transfusion to make up for all she has lost. My bite will increase her cell production, but I don’t know if it will happen fast enough. I need to get her home.

I lick her bite for good measure, letting my saliva seep in for the healing to increase. Then, I skim my teeth across my wrist and drip blood into her mouth.

I pick her up carefully and rise. My men are froze in their spots, unsure what’s unfolding because in their eyes, the dead female on the ground, Maeve, was my mate.

Fang steps over Maeve’s body, kicking some dirt with his hind legs at her corpse. Then he comes to me and whines as he looks at Victoria.

“Let’s go, boy,” I tell him. Feeling incredibly ashamed that he could see what I couldn’t.

I begin the long way home, rushing while trying my best not to jostle Victoria. My steps desperate and my heart pounding so hard that it rocks my entire body.

I can’t lose her. It would kill me.