Alpha Loren novel Chapter 149

I soon reached the battlefield. Stella was clearly close to winning. There were few King's men left alive most of which were fleeing into the trees. The medics had also been sent out to tend to injured Stella soldiers and many were checking the bodies of King's men ensuring they weren't still alive.

I scanned the area for Connor hopefully before any Stellas saw me and tried to drag me away. After tuning my ears, I heard him. An in pained groan coming from not too far away. My heart began to pump as I searched through the remaining soldiers, the bodies and into the forest.

I then spotted him right in the middle of the open field. With Leo. His head between his hands.

"LEO NO!" I shrieked from over a hundred metres away. My voice radiated across the battlefield turning the heads of anyone still alive.

But it was too late. A split second before, Leo had snapped his neck.

I dropped to my knees, trying to form a sob but no noise would come out. Fury was flashing across his eyes as he allowed my brother's limp body to drop to the floor. As if damning him to an eternity of suffering, he glared down at the corpse before the swirling blackness of his irises cleared and he stared down at the blood on his hands.

The blood of my dead brother at the hands of my mate.

I began choking on grief as the terminal sense of loss and absolute despair pulsed through my veins.

Leonardo turned his head to me. He stared for a few seconds, the vanquished expression exchanged to one of extreme guilt and regret. I got to my feet and raced across the mud, blood and bodies to reach my brother. But he was nothing but another body in an entire sea of them.

Sinking down beside him, I  lifted his head on to my knee as I rocked back and forth sobbing more than I ever had before.

A gentle hand found its way to my shoulder. Or at least it felt gentle. But it wasn't. It killed Connor.

"Leave me, Leonardo," I spat through my tears. "I can hardly bear to look at you."

He hesitated for a moment as I ran my fingers through my brother's thick brown hair and looked longingly into his beautiful honey coloured but lifeless eyes.

"Go," I growled with more venom than I could ever imagine.

The battlefield had grown silent, leaving only sound to be my mate's footprints slowly fading.

I stayed with Connor for hours, feeling his warmth slowly leave him and his soft features turn to corpselike-pale. I knew I should but I couldn't find it in me to let go. Not yet.

"Ella, it is getting dark. You can't stay out here all night," my best friends voice said from beside me.

"Did Leo put you up to this, Luca?" I asked maybe a little too angrily.

"Although it may not seem like it right now, he cares about you, Ella and therefore doesn't want you to catch your death out here in the snow," he said. "And neither do I."

I looked up from Connor and for the first time noticed the soft snowflakes falling down on us.

"I can't leave him," I whispered as the tears began to well again.

"Ella, he is gone," Luca replied quietly.

"It doesn't feel right to leave him like this, in this cold and amongst countless other dead bodies. He is still my brother and I will always care about him, whether he is alive or not," I replied choking on my tears again as I looked down to him again.

"I know," he said sympathetically.

"I loved him, Luca," I whispered before throwing my head down to Connor's chest and howling.

I felt the grief course through my body like poison before I just simply rested my head on him and sobbed into his bloody shirt. Luca sat beside my for a while until I began to violently shiver from the cold. 

"We have to go inside, Ells," he whispered softly, stroking his hair. "He wouldn't want you to die tonight too."

I shook my head.

"Just a little longer."

Luca then stood up and I felt his hands lift me to my feet.

"Let go," I ordered. "I can't leave him! I can't leave him!"

He didn't listen to me so instead I fought his grip to the point at which he was forced to wrap his arms around my waist and drag me from the floor.

"Connor!" I howled as I pounded against Luca's chest. 

"I will send men to collect him. We will have a funeral in the morning," he whispered in my ear as I grew weak and clung to him as I sobbed.

"No one will come. He is supposed to be our enemy," I sobbed.

"I will come. You will come. Your Dad is in the dungeons and if Leo has any decency, he will allow him to come too," he replied in a soothing voice.

I nodded before allowing Luca to carry me like a child back to the castle. I looked over his shoulder to try and catch a last glimpse of my dead brother but the now heavy snow was blocking my sight. Maybe it was better that way. At some point, I had to let go.