The Biker Alpha Who Became My Second Chance Mate Chapter 123

Athena

I look down at Tristan, and his eyes are starting to lose focus. The golden color is fading back to his normal brown, but there's something distant about them now.

Something that's already leaving.

"Now," Sarah says, her voice thick with tears. "You have to try now, before it's too late."

I move closer to the mattress, and Orion and Derek shift to give me room without letting go of Tristan completely. My hands are shaking so hard I can barely control them.

The gloves, I still have the stupid protective gloves on.

With trembling fingers, I start to peel them off. The latex clings to my sweaty skin and makes soft snapping sounds as I pull it away.

My hands look small and pale without the gloves, and I can see the faint lines of power running under my skin like blue lightning.

"I don't know how to do this," I whisper, and my voice breaks on the words.

"Yes, you do," Sarah says firmly. "You've always known, you just have to trust yourself."

My bare hands hover over Tristan's chest, just inches from the wound that's still bleeding and killing him.

The air between my palms and his skin feels charged, like the moment before lightning strikes.

His breathing is so slow now that I have to watch his chest carefully to see it rise and fall. And the falls are lasting longer than the rises, longer each time.

"Hurry," Derek says quietly, but there's urgency in his voice that makes my heart race.

The moment my hands touch Tristan's chest, the power explodes through me like a dam bursting.

It's nothing like the gentle flow I was expecting, nothing like the controlled healing I imagined in my head.

This is violent and consuming and completely beyond my control.

More than I'd felt when it drained life from Daxon or Seraphine.

It starts in my chest, a burning sensation that spreads through my arms and down into my hands.

But instead of flowing out into Tristan like I want it to, it turns inward, pulling something from deep inside me and dragging it toward the surface.

The burning gets worse, spreading through my entire body like liquid fire. My bones feel like they're vibrating, and my skin tingles with electricity that makes every nerve ending scream.

I can feel my heart racing, pounding so hard it feels like it might burst out of my chest.

My vision goes black around the edges, and I can feel myself falling even though I'm still kneeling beside the mattress. The power is taking over, wrapping around my consciousness like thick smoke, and I'm losing myself in it.

Everything that makes me who I am, my thoughts and memories and personality, it's all being pushed aside to make room for this thing that's been hiding inside me for years.

"Athena," I hear Derek's voice from somewhere far away, but it sounds muffled and distant like he's speaking from underwater. "What's happening?"

I try to answer him, but my mouth won't work. My tongue feels thick and heavy, and my jaw is clenched so tight I can't pry it open.

The power is consuming everything, every thought and feeling and sensation, until there's nothing left but the overwhelming need to take.

To drain.

To kill.

And it's focused entirely on Tristan.

I can feel it reaching into him through my hands, finding the places where his life force is strongest and latching onto them like a parasite.

His already weak heartbeat falters under the assault, and his breathing, which was already shallow, becomes almost nonexistent.

The life force flowing from him into me is warm and bright and precious, and it makes the power inside me grow stronger. Hungrier. More desperate for more.

"No," I try to scream, but no sound comes out. This isn't what I want, this isn't what I'm trying to do. I'm supposed to be saving him, not killing him faster.

But the power doesn't care what I want. It's been starved for so long, trapped and suppressed and feared, and now it's finally free. It's going to take everything it can get.

Through the haze of the power's control, I can hear voices around me. Panicked voices getting louder and more desperate by the second.

"His pulse is getting weaker," Derek says, and there's terror in his voice that I've never heard before. Derek who's always so calm and collected, who always knows what to do, sounds like he's about to fall apart.

"What's happening to her?" Sarah asks, and I can hear her crying. "Her hands are glowing."

I didn't know my hands were glowing, but now that she's mentioned it, I can feel the heat radiating from them. It's not a good heat, not the warmth of healing. It's the heat of something being burned away.

"No, no, no," Orion is saying, and his voice is getting more panicked with each repetition.

"Athena, you have to stop," he shouts, but his voice sounds like it's coming from miles away instead of just a few feet. "You're killing him."

But I can't stop. The power has me completely, and it's using my hands as conduits to drain every last bit of life from the person I love most in the world.

I can feel Tristan's life force flowing into me, and each second that passes makes him weaker while making the thing inside me stronger. It's feeding off him, growing fat and satisfied while he dies beneath my hands.

The worst part is that I can feel how good it feels to the power. How satisfied and content it is to finally be doing what it was designed to do. This is what it's wanted all along, and now it has the perfect opportunity.

"His breathing is stopping,"Derek says, and his voice cracks completely.

"Get away from her Derek" Orion shouts. "Athena, I need you to listen to me." He says gently now.

"He's dead," Derek says cutting whatever Orion was about saying, and the words hit the room. "Athena, he's dead."

Dead. The word cuts through the power's control for just a moment, hitting me like a slap to the face.

I'd killed him.

I'd killed Tristan, instead of saving him.

"I'm going to try to make you shift, I need you to listen to my command" Orion says, and I can hear the pain in his voice, through the command.

No. No. I shook my head.

I can save him, I'd save him.

"No," I manage to say, and my voice is hoarse and desperate and barely recognizable. "No, he's not dead. I can save him."

"Ath?" I heard Orion voice, full of surprise. Surprise that I could talk, the last time I couldn't.

I close my eyes tighter and push back against the thing that's controlling me.

"I can save him," I repeat, louder this time, putting every ounce of determination I have into the words. "He's not dead."

"Athena," Sarah's voice is gentle but firm, and I can feel her kneeling beside me. "You have to let go. You have to stop before you drain yourself too."

"Okay. I trust you" I hear Orion say and it's everything I need.

I won't let go. Never. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, I can hear Tristan's voice too, full of love and trust and absolute faith in me.

"I trust you, Ath. I trust you with my life."

They trusted me, and I'm not going to let that trust be for nothing. I'm not going to let him die because I couldn't control this thing inside me.

The power is still flowing through me, still trying to take more even though there might not be anything left to take.

But underneath its hunger, underneath its desperate need to consume, I can sense something else.

Fear.

The power is afraid, and that's why it's lashing out. That's why it's trying to take instead of give.

I remember what Derek said about the power only hurting people when it feels cornered or threatened.

Right now, it feels both of those things, surrounded by people who are terrified of it, trapped in a situation where it doesn't know what else to do.

But maybe I can change that.

"Listen to me," I say, but I'm not talking to the people in the room. I'm talking to the power itself, trying to reach it through the chaos in my mind.

"You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to take. I'm not going to hurt you."

The power pauses for just a moment, like it's listening to me, but then it surges forward again with renewed hunger.

"She's talking to herself," I hear Serah say. "The power is making her lose her mind."

But I'm not losing my mind. I'm trying to save it, and Tristan's life along with it.

I need to go deeper. I need to find the source of this thing and talk to it directly.

Closing my eyes even tighter, I let myself fall into the darkness that the power has created in my mind. I stop fighting against it and let it pull me down into whatever place it comes from.

The physical world around me disappears completely. I can no longer hear the voices of my family, can no longer feel the mattress beneath my knees or the air moving through the room.

I'm falling through layers of darkness, each one deeper and colder than the last, until I find myself standing in a place that's not really a place at all.

It's dark here, darker than anything I've ever experienced, but somehow I can still see.

It's like the darkness itself is a living thing, pressing against me from all sides, trying to smother me.

I'm in what looks like a vast empty space, with no walls or ceiling or floor that I can make out.

Just endless black stretching in every direction, going on forever and ever with no end in sight.

The silence is complete and oppressive, like being buried alive. No sound, no movement, no sign of life anywhere.

And then I hear it.

Crying.

Soft, heartbroken sobbing that echoes through the darkness like it's coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

It's the sound of someone who has given up hope, who has been crying for so long they've forgotten what it feels like not to cry.

I start walking toward the sound, my footsteps making no noise on whatever surface I'm walking on.

As I get closer, the crying gets louder, more desperate, more filled with pain and loneliness.

Finally, I can see a small figure huddled on what might be the ground. It's a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, with long dark hair that covers most of her face.

She's wearing a simple white dress that looks like it was once beautiful but is now torn and dirty.

Her small shoulders shake with each sob, and she has her arms wrapped around her knees like she's trying to hold herself together.

"Hello," I say softly, not wanting to startle her.

The crying stops immediately, as if someone has just turned off a switch. The little girl looks up at me with eyes that are far too old for her young face.

They're my eyes, I realize with a shock. The same green color, the same shape, but filled with pain and loneliness and despair that makes my heart ache.

"Who are you?" she asks, and her voice is small and scared and fragile.

"I'm Athena," I say, moving closer slowly and carefully. "What's your name?"

"I don't have a name," she says, and fresh tears start flowing down her cheeks. "Nobody ever gave me one. Nobody ever wanted me around long enough to give me a name."

I sit down next to her, being careful not to move too fast or do anything that might scare her more than she already is.

"How long have you been here?" I ask gently.

"Always," she whispers, and her voice breaks on the word. "Since the beginning. Since the first time they were scared of me."