The Game Of Quadruplet Mates
Chapter 49

Jeremy

June crumpled like paper on the ground, falling to her knees and screaming with a pain so evident that everyone around her dropped to their knees as well, heads bowed and shaken to their core. Our strong Luna was in a sea of tears and screams and hurt. Her anguish is so severe that for a moment I am just frozen, unable to understand what had happened exactly.

Konstantin, Larissa and I had been running... racing through the destruction and devastation, pushing against the smoke, the death and the fires that burned like hell had come for us. It had been a very long day and I had watched so many d i e, so many bodies fall and the waterfall of blood that spilled from everyone.

But this is war.

It was expected.

Which is why we had been running so fast, trying to get to her by following the pained howls that pierced the night, replaceing June at the end of it. She was locked in a battle with my mother, a trained warrior specializing in pain and torture. I was horrified. I was scared. For June was truly no match. She was against a real monster now.

And this monster is the worst of them. I've been beaten bloody by this woman for most of my life. The scars on my body still had that echo of pain that shook my soul from time to time, remembering every single moment of brutality that came from my mother. But seeing her with June is just... it scared me.

It scared me so much that I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak or think. My mother is my worst nightmare and she was with June... she was hurting my June. The mere sight of them together sucked the life out of me and I stumbled, my body rattling with pain as I remember every hit, every cut, every burn, every horrible thing she has ever done to me... that she will do to June. I was so scared.

Konstantin notices this and takes me by the shoulder. "She can't hurt you anymore. I won't let her."

Of course he knew.

And the pity... the sympathy in his eyes, the protectiveness in them.

I nodded, replaceing comfort in his words.

June's golden fur was soaked with her own blood, bite marks and claw marks and silver burns marked her body and she kept getting thrown around, beaten until she was flat on the ground but continued to stand back up ready for more. She never gave my mother the satisfaction of begging, of crying, of anything. June just stood and was ready for more, which I know angered my mother.

She liked her prey weak and begging for life. She liked her victims to be on their knees and tearful, looking up at her as she looked down on them. There is nothing more she loves than breaking people up until there's nothing left.

But June, she fought against that, coming out strong every single time. She took hit after hit after hit but she never stopped getting back up.

And I can see the frustration in my mother's eyes, the deep anger she felt.

For June is just some lowly one.

How wasn't she breaking like all the rest? She has had a lifetime to perfect that.

My mother broke her own son, broke him beyond repair. How come this one, this girl she left in the woods, wasn't breaking like him?

She expected June to fall just like all the rest and I am ashamed to say that I even thought she would fall just like all of us did. Except June isn't like everyone and she was starting to win. She was starting to fight back.

I watched as she overpowered my mother, how she waited patiently for the right timing- for the right moment before striking and delivering a deadly blow. My chest heaved at the sight, seeing the horror on my mother's face, and then June finally noticed us, running towards her and trying to fight through the city pack guards that pushed us back.

Her eyes were on Larissa, inspecting her best friend, checking on her, but even as Larissa tried to smile, tried to hide what had happened to her with the city Alpha, she couldn't. Because it was impossible. Because how could she just hide something like that? Especially when she looked exactly like Konstantin, broken and used and battered. I could only imagine what my uncle had done to her and with the look on June's face she was also imagining it. Her face slackened.

But this is what my mother has been waiting for... a weakness, an opening. While June is distracted by the sight of Larissa, my mother comes for her, all while her neck was bleeding, intent on bringing June with her in death because I know that she knows she's dy ing but she wasn't going without taking someone with her.

And she wanted June.

A shout leaves my lips. "June!"

And then everyone was shouting for her, a crowd of us pushing and shoving to get to our Luna as my mother hovered over her, grinning widely. I prayed June would stand back up just like all the other times but she was dazed... her head hitting a large boulder and leaving a puddle of blood where she lay.

Beside me, Konstantin had shifted, clawing his way through, but we were far and there were so many keeping us back. We were never going to make it. We were going to lose June.

Just when all hope is lost, just when I thought I was truly going to d i e, for I could never live with myself if I saw June killed, a lanky wolf nearly beaten to an inch of his life is leaping through the crowd, running at full speed towards June and my mother. It took me a second to realize who it was. He was smaller than all of us and malnourished with his mangy fur and his skin scaly like a stray...

June's father.

My father's brother. My uncle.

Of course, he would come to protect her. Of course, the kindest and most noble man in the world would rather d i e- would rather lose everything, including his life, than lose his daughter.

He knew he was going to die.

He knew upon racing through the crowd that this was it for him.

Because he was no match. Because my mother was worse than the devil and she was going to kill him.

He knew it but he still did it, tackling the monster to the ground and protecting his daughter, who wasn't even his to begin with. They weren't related. He didn't even know where she came from, had no idea he was harboring an Alpha's daughter... the heir to the city pack everyone hated.

But he didn't care.

June was his daughter and no one would ever question that.

His love for her would never allow anything else.

I see the moment my mother realizes June's true weakness. The one thing she could take that would truly break June... more so than taking her life, and that was killing her father.

June, with much effort, stands up, her body unable to keep her wolf from the pain that her body has taken and turning back into her human form, the gash on her head bleeding and leaving a trail of blood behind her. She reaches for her father, her eyes wide, her lips parted in a gasp, but she was too late.

We were all too late.

My mother was quick. She always was.

Her claws were digging through the neck of June's father.

A piercing scream shushes the battlefield with the city pack and nameless pack alike stopping at the sound. The war stops, the world stops.

Everything had stopped.

The Gods did not give her a second of numbness, a second to catch her breath, not even a merciful second to process everything. No. The pain was instantaneous and she fell to the ground. The sound that came from her is indescribable, tearing through the sounds of war and destruction and it truly shocks everyone.

It didn't help that there was so much blood staining the ground. All she could see was red and I didn't know what to do, staring at her as she choked and shook and cried.

Our connection was cut but the intensity of her pain made it seem like it was still there.

June was drowning in despair, inconsolable as she crawled towards the two bodies on the floor. My mother's face was frozen in a wicked smile... life having left her with the last thing she heard being June's cries. June wretches the woman's body off her father and she holds him, her tears falling like nothing I've ever seen before.

She tries to cover his neck, applying pressure, and I hear her begging... mumbling for him to heal, for him to come back, but he had nearly been decapitated, only pieces of skin and flesh keeping his head attached to his body.

When I start to walk towards her, the crowd parts, letting me go.

'Ajax,' I replace myself whispering brokenly.

The man on the other end nearly freezes at the sound of me. When he spoke his voice was animalistic... monster like. 'What happened?'

'Come.' Was all I could say as I sank to my knees beside June. 'Come quick!'

When I'm near, June doesn't look up at me, but I do see him... my uncle, and as I take her in my arms, embracing the one person I've ever truly loved, my own pain creeps up in me, the realization rushing to me.

It appears I was the one given a second to breathe, a second to process, because when I fell, I was crying with her too.

This man was my family.

The only one I had.

And he was the best I have ever known.

I had known him for less than a week but I knew he already cared... he already loved. He spoke to me quietly, gently and with interest. Patient and always caring... he was the only one apart from June and Ajax that paid me any care in that way. He tried to get to know me, comfort me and laugh with me.

We bonded. The short time with him was already worth an entire lifetime of love for me.

In those days, he showed me what it was like to have a family.

But like everything in all our lives, the city pack takes and takes. Leaving nothing.

He is a good man.

The best of us.

And as much as it hurt, I understood because he made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us.

It could have been June.

It could have been her lifeless body. And no one would ever recover from her death.

Until his very last breath... he did it for his daughter.

He did it for us.

It didn't take long for him to arrive. He came like a shadow, a storm cloud darkening the entire place. He was dragging a lifeless body behind him- the city Alpha's mangled body which he threw in front of the remaining city pack, but if he was going to say something, demand everyone's surrender, he didn't.

He replaces June immediately.

He didn't have to look.

His eyes always found her.

And the sight of her seems to do something to him as he rushes towards his mate and in front of everyone, he goes on his knees- a sight that surprises all.

I pull back, releasing June to him and he takes her.

Ajax seized her by the chin. He did not say anything, seeing her face and seeing the man she was holding. He just takes her into his arms and quietly holds her as she cries.

"I'm sorry," He whispered so quietly it was mere air.

The whole world seemed to watch them.

The monster that they all thought of was tenderly caring for his mate all while he was on his knees.

He was drenched in blood, crusted with bruises and looked very much like a monster, but the way he held his mate showed a different side of him that many did not know, that not many have seen.

Ajax didn't care for any of the attention, his full focus on his mate.

And as I watched, I was reminded of why June chose him over me and I knew she made the right decision. They needed each other. They were made for each other.

Despite the tears that fell from my eyes, I found myself smiling.