Chapter 13: Pandora's Box

“Have you heard?” A voice of a woman resonated inside the comfort room for girls.

“Heard what?” Another woman’s voice answered.

“If you want to tell something, you better spit it out right away!” A newly entered woman spat from the background, clearly, she was only using the mirror and not the cubicle.

“A representative of the Werewolf Committee will be coming here and he is someone from the Crescent Pack!”

The sound of the toilet flushing followed.

“Crescent pack? Isn’t that the pack where our next luna is from?”

“What luna? I never heard my father about any luna and isn’t she hated by the alpha to the point that Alpha Dylan did not bring her here to our pack?”

“Back to the topic, what is a representative from ‘the’ Werewolf Committee doing here anyway?” The woman's voice from the mirror piped in.

“I don’t know? Might be another scheme to bring us down in a form of an inspection like ‘that’ year.”

The sound of the running water ensued followed by the nearing footsteps.

As always, Diana lowered her head, effectively hiding her face from the group of four young ladies who were all clad in their sports attire. Like any other day, being an omega was an advantage for her. She could go around cleaning toilets anywhere public in the pack and still remained unknown.

As soon as the group vanished from her line of sight, Diana picked up the sign board and lifted her face. Her gaze was now fixated on the direction where the flock went—the sound of bones cracking, people screaming for mercy, and labored breaths resonated from that direction which was quite normal for a training ground of the most ruthless alpha in the continent.

‘My hunch is right. Alpha Dylan Cain did not let his people know that his supposed second-chance mate is already in the pack.’ Shaking her head, Diana entered the comfort room for girls and placed the sign board in front of the door before closing the door.

The moment Diana was left alone, she immediately took the bending ladder from the utility cabinet and used it to open the small ventilation window on the room’s ceiling.

‘This is the last stop. I tried all the comfort rooms accessible by the public and the comfort room in the training ground is my last stop.’ Diana hesitated for a good minute. Her hand hovered over the opened ventilation window.

Unclenching and clenching her fists, Diana drew a deep breath before finally trying to find that thing.

“!!!” Her eyes widened. Diana’s feet almost slipped from the ladder when her fingertips touched a cold edge of a box. Without second thoughts, she took whatever was inside the vent.

“This is it… the reason why the Werewolf Committee is in turmoil right and the reason why there is a blood debt between me and Alpha Dylan Cain,” whispered Diana in a shaky breath.

A small box that was yet to be covered by any speck of dust and cobweb landed on Diana’s palms this lifetime.

Staring at the little pandora’s box in her palms, Diana’s eyes gleamed with malediction before a wave of grief wafted within them.

‘Finally, my child. The box is now in my hands. Finally, the game of blood and fools will begin. It is us versus our wretched fate this time. And in this round, we will win.’

THE SOUND OF THE FLAMES CRACKLING AGAINST THE spring breeze was mixed in with the sound of wolves patrolling near the borders. Amid the growing darkness around her, Diana’s gaze did not linger on the burning wooden box from the fire pit she created.

Along with the dead leaves she had just cleaned up, Diana personally witnessed each parchment inside the wooden box reduced to a mere pile of ashes. And now, she was watching how the last remnant of the so-called pandora’s box was burning to a pile of waste before her.

After reading the parchments and revealing the secret messages inside them, Diana saw no reason for her to keep them. By now, there would be two people who knew about the contents of such a box—the traitor and her.

‘Soon, I will find you whoever you are. I realized it too late in my last life. In fact, I only realized it while dying, Axel and Anastasia are your mere pawns. Whoever you are, I will find you and when I do, no place on earth can help you hide.’

Satisfaction gleamed beneath her gaze as soon as she saw the box set aflame. “This time, I will protect you, Dad, Mom. This time, I will not fail.”

Turning around from the flames she created, Diana remembered the hopelessness she felt in her last life as she watched the annihilation of her family.

FLASHBACK…

“Axel, you know my mother and father. They will not do that! You know that!” Diana barged into the meeting room, completely ignoring a dozen pairs of eyes pinned on her. She raced to her husband with a tear-stricken face.

“Diana?” Axel looked at the woman who was stopping Diana from the moment they entered the room. “Why did you bring her here?”

Shaking her head, she stood before Anastasia. “Anastasia is not at fault here. I am the one who insisted, Axel.” With trembling hands, she held her mate’s big hands tightly as if she was getting her strength from him.

“Leave us,” said Axel in a deep voice.

On cue, the men in the office along with Anastasia left the meeting room. The moment the door closed, Axel pulled his hand from Diana and held her by the arms, shaking her from her sobbing state. “What was that? I was in a middle of an important meeting! You can’t be rude in front of my officers. How can they respect you as the mother of the pack?”

Diana pulled herself away from him. Eyes were bloodshot from all the crying she had and her hair was disheveled from all the tugging she did. There was a huge pair of bags under her eyes after staying up all night, wracking her brain on how to save her family from the jaws of death.

“Disrespect?” Diana scoffed, tears continuously flowing down her face. “You held a meeting when my parents are being tortured in the dungeons! That treatment is only for criminals! My parents are innocent! I know them because I was raised by them! I love them and you are telling me to watch them die? How dare you!”

Gone was the usually meek luna who always nodded at every word of her husband, replaced by an enraged daughter who was fighting for her parents’ lives.

“They committed a crime, Baby.” Axel changed his demeanor. He slowly pulled the hysterical Diana into his arms as he sat on the table. “And the pieces of evidence were checked by the Werewolf Committee. The Pandora’s Box found in your father’s possession held all the top secret documents of all the packs. By now, every pack around us is doubting the Crescent Pack. Even the Werewolf Committee is keeping a distance from us.”

Dread slowly ate the last bastion of hope inside Diana. She gripped her husband’s hands, nerves shaking and voice trembling as she asked one more time for help. In her world, there was only Axel who could help her save her parents from the throes of death. “So… you won’t be able to help them? I won’t be able to do anything for them?”

Silence.

Silence answered Diana.

Stepping back from her mate, whom she always saw as a hero, she pounded her chest with her fist. “Then you must punish me with them… I am evil and I take the blame for our blood is the same. The blood that runs in my parents’ veins is in me too! If you deem them criminals, then I, as their daughter, am a criminal too.”

Slap!

Diana slumped to the floor after receiving Axel’s slap, the first time he had laid a hand on her ever since they got married years ago. Holding her hurting cheek, she looked up at him with blurry eyes.

Axel swiped all the documents on the table he was sitting on a few moments ago, sending them all in Diana’s direction.

“Listen and listen well Diana Crescent.” Axel’s alpha command slammed Diana’s body. He hovered over her slumped form on the floor and poked her temples repeatedly. “If we don’t issue a punishment, the Werewolf Committee will do it for us. The best we can do for your family is to end their lives in the land they were born in rather than sending them to the Werewolf Committee where no graves will be offered to them after hanging their rotting bodies in their gates! Do you understand me?”

Diana’s attention was pulled by the document that landed on her lap. Particular words caught her attention, igniting a cold fury inside her. With trembling hands, she read the contents of the paper.

-How to divide the lands and wealth of the Ritchell Family-

Diana long knew that the one supplying a hefty amount of donation to the alpha’s treasury was her family ever since she was married to Axel in hopes to be treated well in the pack house.

Throwing the paper on her mate’s chest as she stood, she screamed. “This is the best we can do? Really? Looks like you and all those bastards are pretty busy and excited about dividing the land and wealth of my family! Ha! Good for you then!”

For the second time, Axel lost his temper and raised his hand toward her. This time, Diana offered her left cheek—the untainted one—as if she expected it already. Rage and disappointment laced her blazing eyes.

“Do it! Slap me!”

Diana’s action snapped Axel. “I will forgive you for this silly outburst with respect to your father. But know this, Diana.” Axel stepped forward, closing the distance between them. His breath fanned over her face when he gritted his words. “Our pack is facing the greatest threat of all time because of your family. May it be true or not, Alpha Dylan Cain of the Blood Claws Pack surrounded our territory with his patrols from time to time ever since the incident of the Pandora’s Box erupted.”

Tucking Diana’s loose hair behind her ear, he continued even after feeling her tensed shoulders upon the mention of the ruthless alpha. “You are now a luna before a daughter and a mate. Always remember that. I don’t care if you forget everything, but never forget your position and responsibility to the pack.”

Axel turned around and slammed the door shut, leaving a sobbing Diana alone.

When the morning came, she woke up with the buzzing pack mates who were all avoiding her gaze. It was too late for Diana to realize that her mate, who was supposed to be her protector chose to be an alpha first.

The moment she was fast asleep with the sleeping drug they mixed in her drink, they executed her mother and father in front of Alpha Dylan Cain to satisfy the ruthless alpha of the continent.

With a heavy heart and shaky knees, Anastasia helped her amid the downpour of a rainstorm that whipped that afternoon.

The moment she stood in front of a nameless mound, Diana pushed herself away from Anastasia as she hugged the mound and cried her heart out.

Tears and rain mixed on her face.

Screams of agony and cries of the lightning bolts intertwined.

END OF FLASHBACK…

That was the story of the blood debt between her and Alpha Dylan Cain. Though Diana never blamed him after learning the conspiracies, she could not help but lament how he was able to witness the last moments of her parent’s death in her first lifetime while she was sleeping soundly in the safety of the room.

“The representative from the Werewolf Committee is here!”

“Really? Let’s go!”

Diana’s train of thought and feet stopped. Her gaze followed the direction where the teens went.

A knowing smile erupted from Diana’s lips as he murmured. “You are late this time, my beloved Axel.”