Claimed by My Bully Alpha Chapter 303

Caleb’s P.O.V

I turned slowly, my heart still pounding in my chest, the blood in my ears roaring louder than the chaos that had just died down around us. The air was thick with the metallic tang of death and the cloying scent of burnt fur. The ground beneath my feet squelched with blood—black blood.

I could feel it drying on my skin, caking against the sides of my neck, crusted over my forearms. And it wasn’t just me. Every single soldier behind me… my brothers in arms, my father—Alpha Camden himself—we were all drenched in it. Thick splashes of obsidian blood painted our bodies, our fur, our faces. I blinked hard, my eyes struggling to make sense of the scene. This wasn’t normal. This was anything but normal.

I took a slow, shaky breath, clenching my fists so tightly that my knuckles turned white beneath the filth. “What… the hell is this?” I finally managed, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, hoarse and edged with disbelief. My gaze swept across the stretch of land, landing on the fallen bodies of the rogues—no, not rogues. Not just rogues. I’d fought rogues before, and I’d never seen anything like this.

“Dad,” I turned toward him, walking forward with careful steps as if any sudden movement might shatter this illusion, “what’s going on here?” My voice dropped, thick with suspicion, confusion, and an ache in my chest that I couldn’t name. “Since when does turning rogue change their anatomy? Their blood’s not supposed to be black.”

Alpha Camden stood tall, though I could see the tension in his shoulders. He had just turned back to his human form as well, his form slick with the same tar-like substance. He looked at me, eyes hard and calculating, but even he didn’t have an answer ready for once. That told me everything. “It doesn’t,” he said finally, his voice low, gravelly, like something was caught in his throat.

“Becoming a rogue doesn’t alter the body like this. Not the blood. Not the scent. Not the… whatever this is.” He scanned the field as he spoke, his eyes narrowing as he took in the eerie stillness that had settled in the wake of our victory. His lips pressed into a thin line as his jaw clenched. “This is strange. This is new.”

The others shifted uncomfortably behind him, some of them beginning to whisper to each other, glancing around like the forest might suddenly come alive with more of those… things. One of the younger wolves, Alric, looked pale, nearly gray, and was trembling as he wiped the goo off

his face, only to gag at the sight of it. None of us had ever seen black blood spill from a wolf’s veins before. That kind of corruption… it reeked of something far beyond nature.

“Get me one of the pack healers,” Alpha Camden ordered, his voice sharp and cutting through the rising unease like a blade. “Now. I want them to examine these bodies, figure out what—”

But he didn't get to finish.

Because at that exact moment, I heard it. A faint, almost imperceptible hiss. Like steam escaping from a crack in a kettle. At first, I thought it was just my ears ringing from the battle, but then I saw it.

One of the dead rogues, the one closest to me, started to smoke. Not burn—smoke. Thick wisps of gray, almost bluish vapor began to rise from its fur, and I staggered back instinctively, watching in horror as its skin began to shrivel and curl, peeling back like parchment caught in flame. The fur disintegrated in tufts, vanishing into nothing. Flesh sloughed off the bones in sickening clumps, melting into the soil beneath it like candle wax left too long in the heat.

“What the…” I whispered, unable to look away.

All around us, the same thing started happening. Every single body. One after another, as if reacting to an unseen command, the corpses began to rot at an unnatural speed. Their eyes imploded, bones cracking as tendons snapped and muscles caved in on themselves. In a matter of seconds, where there had once been snarling, feral creatures, there were only heaps of bones—some barely intact, others already beginning to crumble into ash.

The smoke that rose from them didn’t dissipate. It lingered. Hung in the air like a veil. It swirled slowly, unnaturally, like it had a mind of its own, weaving between us, brushing against our skin with a chill that didn’t belong in the springtime woods.

I turned back to my father, whose face had gone utterly still, the muscles frozen like a man staring at something he couldn’t yet accept was real. “This isn’t natural,” I said quietly, the words dry in my mouth. “This isn’t rogue behavior. This is something else entirely.”

Alpha Camden didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were locked on the smoking bones, his nostrils flaring slightly, like he was trying to catch a scent that kept evading him. Finally, he looked at me, and for the first time in years, I saw fear flicker in the depths of his eyes.

“No,” he said slowly. “No, this is not natural. This is magic.”

And just like that, everyone stilled around us.

The air was so still, I could hear the sound of my own breath, ragged and uneven. No one moved. No one even dared to blink. We all stood there, locked in place like statues, our eyes trained on the brittle bones that had just been unearthed. Something about them felt… wrong.

Not just the way they were scattered or how old and discolored they looked, but the energy—if you could call it that—clinging to them. It was dark. Heavy. Suffocating. I felt it the moment the last layer of soil had been brushed away. A slow, creeping dread slithered its way up my spine, curling around my throat and tightening like a vice.

Alpha Camden’s voice shattered the silence, sharp and commanding. “Everyone, back away from the bones. Now!”