Mated to the Alpha and His Beta (Lanie Stanton) novel Chapter 443

Chapter 443
Xander

All of us had found spaces to sleep in the tiny cabins belowdecks. We had all wanted to be together, but there was no bed big enough for the four of us. Also, Stella had told us that she’d seen us sleeping in our own beds, and so we had agreed.

Exhaustion claimed me right away, but my sleep was fitful. I tossed and turned until finally, I sat straight up in bed and grazed the ceiling with my head. For a second, I didn’t know where I was.

I wasn’t tossing and turning. The yacht was. Without any windows in the cabin, the room was pitch black, but I felt the boat rolling from side to side. I put out a hand to feel for the wall, suddenly afraid I was not in a boat, on the sea, but in space, floating without protection. Maybe dreaming. Maybe transported to some far off place I’d never heard of.

The second my fingers brushed the wall, I felt solid, anchored, and myself again. I shook off the fears trying to consume me and fumbled for the light switch. The lights wouldn’t turn on, even though I flicked it several times.

My wolf took over.

He didn’t take my body, just my vision and instincts so I could make my way to the door and the hallway beyond. It was dark there, too, but a faint strip of emergency lighting led me to the stairs so I could get up on deck. Zane and Mason were right behind me. Lanie had beat us there. I couldn’t see Stella.

“She’s up there!” Lanie pointed. She had to shout over the sound of the lashing winds pushing waves up and over the deck.

The sky was light overhead, but not from the sun or the moon. An eerie green glow crackled with electricity and showed off rolling clouds of billowing fog.

“That is not normal,” Zane thought-shouted to me.

The fog made a wall. It was hard to see if it was solid, as in if the yacht would crash into it or go through it, but it was definitely not moving the way fog was supposed to. The wall stretched from the roiling ocean all the way up to the skies and beyond.

As we all gathered on the foredeck in front of the wheelhouse, I turned to look up into the windows for any sight of the captain. His silhouette lit up in another flash of lightning. He looked scared out of his mind. His eyes were wide. His mouth, gaping open in a scream I couldn’t hear over the rush and roar of the storm.