Chapter 12

The aftermath of the pack compound's invasion attempt was a grisly, sobering affair that left me shaken to my core. Karl wasted no time in dragging me through the smoldering ruins, allowing me to bear full witness to the butchered, mutilated remains of the foolhardy intruders who dared challenge his brutality.

Severed limbs and piles of gory entrails intermingled with the scorched wreckage of what I could only assume were explosive devices or incendiary weapons. The unmistakable stench of charred flesh and wolfsbane lingered like a toxic miasma, searing my nostrils and pricking my eyes with unshed tears of horror.

Throughout it all, Karl stalked beside me with the restless, predatory grace of a born alpha warrior. His pale eyes glinted with dark satisfaction, even relish at the total destruction his forces had unleashed upon the would-be usurpers. When he noticed my revulsed staring at one poor soul's eviscerated torso, he rumbled humorlessly, "Don't avert your gaze, little Lexi. Bask in the harsh reality I've shielded you from until now."

Despite my instinctive revulsion, some deeper, primal part of me couldn't help studying Karl's expression more intently. Beneath the surface pleasures he took in such excessive violence, I glimpsed the first hairline fractures in his icy mask of control.

There was a manic edge burning in those frigid depths, an unsettling hunger that seemed to crave ever-increasing levels of bloodshed and chaos. As if the turmoil and death surrounding us was the only force capable of sating some ravenous inner demon he kept shackled within.

It dawned on me then just how precariously Karl's grip on his sanity teetered at any given moment. This was a male accustomed to constantly walking the razor's edge of his own destructive impulses, an alpha who had witnessed and perpetrated such unspeakable savagery that it had irrevocably shattered whatever humanity he might have once possessed.

He was the true monster the other packs had warned about - an unstable, violently unhinged warrior who could implode at any moment if his ingrained chaos wasn't allowed an outlet through periodic upheaval and slaughter. The stark realization caused an involuntary shudder to race through me.

As if sensing my spike of unease, Karl whirled on me with a suddenness that made me flinch back instinctively. His features had contorted into a terrifying mask of pure feral menace, lips curling back from elongated fangs as a deep, rumbling growl of challenge reverberated through that barrel chest.

"Scared of me now, aren't you, my willful little mate?" he rasped, every syllable brimming with scarcely contained violence and perverse want. "Good...you'd be a fool not to know the true depths of darkness dwelling inside this beast you've inexplicably been bound to."

Somehow, even as every sane instinct inside me clamored to flee, to put as much distance between myself and this unraveling masculine fury, I held my ground. Perhaps it was my own wolf's innate stubbornness refusing to submit to any male's dominance...or maybe the undercurrents of pure sin smoldering in Karl's gaze were already working their insidious magic over my traitorous body's baser impulses.

Whatever the reason, I lifted my chin in a defiant tilt, allowing every ounce of my haughty alpha pride to straighten my spine. "I'd never be fool enough to deny the severity of your depravity," I spat back, mustering every shred of the spite and derision I felt towards this callous, unfeeling wretch. "But you'll get no cringing cowardice from me, monster. Not while my heart still beats."

A breathless heartbeat passed in silence between us before a wicked glint flashed through Karl's narrowed stare. Then, moving with dizzying swiftness, he closed what little distance remained between our bodies and seized my face in an unforgiving grip, fingers digging into my jaw. The viselike hold kept me immobilized even as his towering figure eclipsed my vision completely.

"That arrogant fearlessness is precisely what ensnared me to you in the first place," he growled in a conspiratorial rasp that somehow seemed even more perversely intimate despite the brutality of his restraining hold. "Your soul sings with barely contained savagery...a feral, untamed spirit that could so easily match the ferocious beast slumbering in my own if properly roused to frenzy."

His other hand trailed down the side of my neck in a feather-light caress utterly at odds with his forceful manhandling. A shiver of instinctive feminine awareness danced across my sensitized skin, the delicious contradiction of tenderness and domination playing cruelly over my senses.

"I find myself wondering what sublime ecstasies I might draw from those enticing lips once I've subjugated your wild pride...once I've bent that glorious defiance to my feral whims completely and utterly," he mused in a deceptively soft, sensual timbre that oozed sin.

Then, as abruptly as his intensity had flared, his grips fell away and he straightened with a scathing look. "Until that day comes, I urge you to relish that spark of rebellion fueling your impudence. It only stokes my ardor to see it extinguished from your eyes forever, replaced by soulful obedience and abject need for this merciless brute you secretly crave."

My choked gasp of indignation and outrage stuck in my throat as Karl spun on his booted heel and prowled away, leaving me reeling in his wake. My head swam with denial even as the undeniable proof of his words blossomed as slick, perverse arousal at the very core of my femininity.

The mating pull thrumming through my veins was inexorably shifting from a subtle simmer to a ravenous conflagration. My wolf howled with equal parts feral rapture and utter dismay at the intoxicating musk of undeniably virile, violent masculinity wafting from our tormentor.

Every instinct in my baser nature clamored to succumb utterly to Karl's sadistic, dominant masculine energies, to abandon coherent thought and lose myself in his primal savagery. To surrender to the darker, more uninhibited fantasies flashing with tantalizing clarity in my mind's eye.

The friction of his corded muscles and caging weight pinning me as a helpless captive sacrifice to his ferocious lusts...the tangy coppery essence of blood and sweat mingled on the air...the rapturous agony of his fangs scoring deliciously agonizing marks that rendered me utterly his...

With a shuddering gasp, I slammed up my tattered mental walls to barricade those insidious imaginings before they could completely unravel what little semblance of dignity I clung to. My traitorous body throbbed in miserable denial of its baser needs, a hollow black pit devouring me from the inside out.

Stealing one last lingering glance at the aftermath of Karl's ruthless display of dominance reasserted over his territory, I swallowed hard against the painful knot in my throat. There was no denying the truth of my circumstances anymore, no matter how reprehensible or terrifying.

I was an omega wolf inexplicably ensnared in the cosmic mating bond with the most violently untamed, chaotically unhinged alpha in existence. The darkness inside Karl resonated with the wildest, most recklessly captivating aspects of my own feral nature, awakening perversely delicious hungers I didn't dare explore too deeply.

For the first time since stumbling hapless into his vicious clutches, I allowed myself to wonder – had our fatefully tangled souls recognized a kindred, destructive yearning in one another from the start? Were we both equally starved for the intoxicating flood of uninhibited savagery two such beasts could surely unleash if allowed to completely unravel in each other's company?

The thought chilled and inflamed me in equal measure, leaving a sheen of cold perspiration to bead across my flushed skin. Because if even half of that tantalizing possibility were true...then the powder keg of our burgeoning mating dance might soon detonate in the most cataclysmic of detonations. One that would leave both our eternally damned souls forever scorched in its unholy devastation.