12. The Beta
DERIK
I was not in control. Everything was too loud, too chaotic.
My head was f****d, the pain on the edges of the link making my control and sanity fray at the edges. I needed everything back to the way it was; I needed my brother back; I needed my mate. I needed to kill those f*****g vampires.
I didn’t get those urges, or at least when I did, I could control them. But I hadn’t for days, not since Brax had gotten to the forest and found so many of our pack dead with no trace of Lorelai or Nikolai.
But I could feel them—not fully, since she refused to open the link, but the ache was there. They were suffering, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
We didn’t have the numbers or the resources to go in there for a rescue mission.
Even if we did, the wolves wer
