Chapter 358: Chapter 358 Reagan
Maxwell didn’t hold back. The moment he was convinced that the cloaked figure was Greg, he lunged forward with full intent to kill. His body partially shifted, claws elongating, coarse fur spreading along his arms, and his canines sharpening as his golden eyes began to glow with feral light. His face twisted in fury, every muscle tense with hatred that burned hotter than fire.
"You will die by my hands..." Maxwell growled, his voice a chilling blend of man and beast. The sound carried the depth of his wolf’s rage, low, guttural, and terrifying, like something that had crawled up from the pits of hell itself.
The cloaked man froze mid-step, startled by the raw killing intent aimed at him. He didn’t react immediately when Maxwell attacked; instead, his eyes narrowed beneath the hood as if trying to understand.
He could feel the searing hatred directed his way, yet confusion flickered within him; he was certain he had never met this man before, never done anything that should earn such murderous wrath.
The cloaked man still didn’t speak. He merely stared at Maxwell for a few tense moments before smoothly evading every strike Maxwell unleashed. Around them, the battle raged, warriors of the Golden Hue Pack clashed fiercely with the rogues that had come alongside the cloaked stranger. Alpha Hue soon joined the fray, not to drive the rogues away but to eradicate them completely.
To Alpha Hue, sparing such creatures was the same as inviting disaster to return another day. Rogues like these no longer had the minds of men; they were beasts wearing human skin, consumed entirely by the madness of their wolves.
Too long in the wild had stripped them of sanity and reason. Just as a man who lived among beasts would forget the ways of men, these rogues had abandoned their humanity, no longer capable of speech or compassion, only bloodlust and instinct.
Even the old human tale of Tarzan couldn’t compare, for at least that wild man learned to love and protect. These rogues, however, had no such light left in them. They were nothing but monsters that needed to be put down.
To stop them from spreading death elsewhere, Alpha Hue wanted no mercy, "Kill them all!" his roar thundered across the battlefield. Maxwell barely registered it; the mate bond with Addison amplified his fury until it consumed him.
His breath came harsh and ragged, his chest heaving, and a flush of red rimmed his vision. All he could see was the cloaked figure. Everything else fell away into a haze of hatred and the single, violent intent to end whoever stood before him.
The more Maxwell thought about it, the more his body throbbed with phantom pain, his muscles aching as if reliving that day when he’d found Addison barely clinging to life.
"You..." The word caught in his throat, swallowed by the rising storm inside him. His mind pulsed with a single word—kill... kill... kill...—a dark mantra echoing through his thoughts.
His wolf clawed violently within, desperate to break free, to rend and destroy, to drown its anguish and fury in blood. If he didn’t release it soon, Maxwell knew they would both be consumed—mind, body, and soul—by the madness boiling inside him.
The mate bond pulsed through him, in his veins, his bones, his very soul, and because the one hurt was his mate, the memory dragged him toward madness. Even though it was in the past, the image was enough to set him ablaze. He attacked and attacked, vision bleeding red, every strike driven by a single, brutal purpose: to kill the man before him.
He clawed, kicked, and even snapped his jaws when the man got close enough, but the cloaked figure moved like a loach, slippery and unpredictable, as if he could read Maxwell’s every move.
Each attack missed by a hair’s breadth, every strike met only with empty air. Maxwell suddenly swung upward in a fierce, vertical slash meant to catch him off guard, yet the man twisted away effortlessly, reacting as though he had eyes all over his body.
A vein pulsed on Maxwell’s forehead, threatening to burst as his teeth ground together.
"Grrr..." he growled, patience slipping away with every failed strike.
At last, Maxwell surrendered to his wolf. He shifted fully, letting his wolf, Reagan, take command. "I’ll gut him, rip him open until even his mother won’t know him," Reagan snarled in Maxwell’s mind. Maxwell vaulted into the air and completed the change.
When he landed, he was a massive silver grey wolf, majestic and cold as moonlight. A white breath fogged from his jaws as he howled, a long, raw cry that rolled across the forest.
The Golden Hue Pack warriors answered in a chorus; Alpha Hue’s deep bellow joined theirs. The pack’s unified howl marked their presence and sent a ripple through the attackers. The rogues faltered, instincts screaming caution at the sight of a truly powerful alpha among their foes.
Only a handful pressed forward, the ones whose scent was suspiciously altered, those who had tried to mask themselves with a fake rogue odor and hide among the real attackers. For a heartbeat, the battle paused under the weight of Maxwell’s howl and strong presence.
The fake rogues kept charging like mindless soldiers on a suicide mission, flooding the Golden Hue Pack’s defenses without hesitation. Their relentless assault puzzled Alpha Hue and his warriors, who were unaware of what had transpired in the Midnight River Pack.
They didn’t know that a hidden faction was manipulating the rogues, using them as a smokescreen while blending their own people among the chaos, and controlling the real rogues through an ancient artifact.
For a brief moment, the rogues hesitated, torn between their primal instinct to survive and the compelling voice that echoed in their minds through the blood-red stones embedded in their ear studs. But in the end, the artifact’s control proved stronger; they could not resist the order to attack.
Fortunately, Alpha Hue’s warriors had already rooted out the impostors disguised among the rogues. And when Maxwell’s Alpha aura flared across the battlefield, the surge of dominance reignited their fighting spirit.
Energy coursed through the pack like wildfire, renewed, fierce, and eager to strike back with equal ferocity.
As a result, the fake rogues met a gruesome end. Alpha Hue’s warriors moved in perfect coordination, attacking in groups of three. They overwhelmed each target, biting down on limbs and pulling in opposite directions until flesh tore apart under the strain. The air was filled with the fake rogues’ agonized screams.
A few of the impostors tried to speak, perhaps to confess their mission just to lessen the pain they were experiencing, but the curse bound to their bodies activated the moment they attempted to talk.
Their words turned into choked cries as the curse devoured them from within. Even as death claimed them, they could still feel their bodies being ripped apart, their limbs hurled into nearby bushes or caught on tree branches from the sheer force of the struggle.
By the time the real rogues regained their senses and lunged to continue the fight, the battlefield had already turned into a nightmare. Blood drenched the earth, intestines hung from branches, and the forest reeked of death and iron.
The entire battlefield was drenched in blood, as if a crimson rain had swept through the forest. Maxwell, still locked in combat with the cloaked man, was now barely recognizable beneath his once-silver grey fur, now stained dark red.
He tore through anything that dared to cross his path, fighting like a beast possessed. Fortunately, none of the Golden Hue Pack warriors strayed too close, or they might have met the same fate.
With blood-soaked fur and eyes burning like molten gold, he looked every bit like a hound from hell, his breath escaping in heavy streams of hot vapor that curled in the cold air.
"Reagan, you can’t kill our people..." Maxwell warned, using the last shred of his sanity to keep his wolf in check; he couldn’t afford to lose control like Zion did in the past.
"I know, I’m not stupid," Reagan growled in reply, its voice rumbling through their shared mind as it lunged at the cloaked man.
Since the battle began, the cloaked man had done little more than dodge and deliver the occasional counterattack, but Maxwell’s relentless pursuit finally paid off. Step by step, he forced the man back until his retreat ended against a massive tree.
Only then did the realization dawn on the cloaked figure, he had run out of room to escape.
Only then did the cloaked man finally fight back for real. He lifted his leg and delivered a sharp side kick, immediately following it with a flying roundhouse aimed straight at Maxwell’s throat.
But Maxwell was faster; he dug his front paws deep into the ground, halting his advance just in time before lunging forward to bite the man’s ankle. With a violent twist of his neck, he flung the cloaked man like a rag doll and hurled him into a massive tree.