Claimed And Marked By Her Stepbrother Mates - Chapter 435

Chapter 435: 435-My Mate Is Ready To Die For Me
Helanie:

I was slowly waking up, feeling cold. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. The goosebumps were popping out of my skin.

“Lamar!!!” I screamed. “Gavin!!! Penn!” I called for my friends. “Salem!” I yelled as loud as I could, but nobody could hear me. Of course, they couldn’t.

I was far away, deep in the mountains.

And then, I started hearing the same cries I had heard the other night.

I understood what was happening now. Those crazy little creatures were coming out of their hiding spots, and the big monster was waiting to take shape again and swallow me.

“Ah!” I gasped, trying to catch my breath as I struggled again.

I moved my feet over and over, pushing my body forward, hoping my hands would somehow gain the strength to break free from the restraints, but nothing was working.

When I breathed, my nostrils felt almost blocked. With every breath I took or let out, I felt my skin freezing. I frantically tried to wake up, opening my eyes. But half of my body was already frozen from the cold, my legs feeling even worse.

It didn’t take long before I fully regained consciousness and realized I was out in the open, buried under the snow.

“No!” I muttered, shaking from both cold and fear. I tried to move, but my arms were tied to a tree in a way that my fingers couldn’t even touch each other.

“Hey! Help!” I screamed, breathing heavily through my open mouth. I was sure my skin was ice-cold, but that didn’t matter. The real horror was that I was tied up outside.

The creatures started jumping from the trees. One of them came straight toward me.

“Get away from me!” I yelled as it sniffed the ground, then crept closer to my foot. I angled my foot silently and then kicked it hard.

As it flew through the air, the others started attacking me.

“Arghhh!” I screamed, kicking a few away while some of them managed to bite my legs. Their bites were painful, like frostbite.

I felt one of them climb onto my body, all the way up to my chest. Its face was so close that I could see every little detail of its skin.

Then it hissed, opening its mouth wide to bite my neck. Its sharp teeth made me realize that if it bit me, I would die from blood loss.

“Arhhh!” I screamed before it could bite me, squeezing my eyes shut. But suddenly, I felt its weight lift off my chest.

Something shot past me like a flash of lightning and tackled the creature. Right before my eyes, the huge beast landed on the small thing and tore its limbs apart, making the others scream and rush toward him.

Right in front of me stood a hungry lycan, and my blood was freezing cold.

He was massive and terrifying in person. I had encountered him before, but that night, he looked even wilder.

“Maximus,” I uttered, noticing the lycan stop swinging his arms around and temporarily turn toward me. I knew from the brothers that when he was in his lycan form, he didn’t understand anything. He was barely Maximus at that time.

But the way he looked at me and groaned softly, I felt so comforted. And then, the moment he noticed the little creature coming toward me, he let out a howl, his face turning beastly once again, no longer looking innocent. He jumped at the creature, and just as he was about to rip its head off, he focused on me, as if he was worried about me watching him do that.

I turned my head away and heard him continue ripping its head off. I then watched him eat the creature, but it felt like there was no end to these things. They kept coming at me or at him.

And then—the big creature started to form in the air. The lycan turned around and howled again, his howl louder than anything I’d ever heard. As the big creature formed, it began throwing the icicle in my direction. My eyes widened, and I shut them, expecting a painful hit, but it never came.

Instead, I felt a warm touch. The cold breeze stopped hitting my skin directly. I opened my eyes to see Maximus with his arms spread out, wrapped around the tree, just covering my arms with his beastly arms and his body shielding mine. The lycan had shielded me, taking hit after hit.

He was howling in pain while the creatures attacked him, and the big one threw ice daggers at him.

“You will get hurt,” I muttered. I couldn’t believe I was talking to a lycan and was so worried for him.

But at that moment, he wasn’t just a lycan; he was my savior. I wondered how much he had to care about me to recognize me in his lycan state.

He didn’t let go, taking the pain like a mate—a mate I thought had lied about loving me. At that moment, I remembered what he had told me. He said he lied to his mother just so he could throw her off.

Was it the truth?

But then why did he choose Charlotte?

“Maximus!” I screamed when my thoughts were interrupted by a sharp ice spear piercing through his back and coming out of his stomach, making him quickly look up to make sure it didn’t touch me.

“No! Maximus, please, get off me!” I pleaded, but the lycan only closed his eyes, as if he was ready to go as far as to die for me.

Worry and love overwhelmed me, taking over every inch of my body. “Please, baby, let me go,” I begged, but he nuzzled his face into my neck, his big, giant shoulder covering my head and face from any harm coming my way.

Then I heard him scream in my ear when the creatures did too much damage to him.