The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 89

POV: Cora

Fear was a cold, sharp thing in my throat.

The three rogues, cast out from their pack for their viciousness, had been hunting me for two days. They had smelled the magic on me, the scent of a witch, and had decided to make a sport of it.

I had thought I was dead.

I had stumbled, my legs giving out, and had looked up into the snarling faces of my own demise.

Then, he had appeared.

A ghost from the trees.

He looked half-dead himself, pale and sweating, leaning on a branch to keep from falling.

But the power that had poured from him… it was like nothing I had ever felt before.

It was the raw, untamed power of a true Alpha King, a force of nature that had bent the world to its will.

He had saved me.

And then he had collapsed.

I was still on the ground, trembling, when the woman rushed out from behind the trees.

She was beautiful, with fierce, protective eyes and a powerful aura of her own. A shifter.

She knelt beside the fallen Alpha, her hands moving over him with a frantic, desperate tenderness. “Zane!”

He was unconscious, his breathing shallow.

I pushed myself to my feet, my own fear replaced by a strange sense of obligation, and a dawning, professional curiosity.

I was a witch, yes, but my craft was in healing. I had been cast out from my coven for practicing forbidden arts, for blending my magic with the science of the human world.

“The silver is just the anchor,” I explained, my fingers hovering over the wound, feeling the cold, corrupting energy. “The poison itself… it is a witch’s curse. We call it ‘Shadowthorn’.”

Selene gasped, a look of horrified understanding on her face. Isabella. Of course.

“What does it do?” she asked, her voice a raw whisper.

I looked at the powerful, unconscious Alpha, and then at the terrified, determined she-wolf at his side.

They had saved my life. The least I could do was give them the truth, no matter how ugly.

“It does more than just corrode the body,” I said, my voice low and serious.

“Its true purpose is to attack the spirit. It feeds on a shifter’s raw emotions, their memories.”

I met her gaze, my expression grim.

“It twists them. It corrupts them. If left unchecked, he will not just die. He will forget who he is. He will forget everyone he has ever loved. He will become a mindless, raging beast, lost in a prison of his own poisoned memories.”