Chapter 20: The Farce
Staring at the retreating silhouette of Beta Mason, her knuckles were white yet her face did not show any signs of misgivings. With a small smile on her face, like always, Anastasia greeted the surrounding pack members with a nod before she left the area.
Her footsteps were light and her expression was gentle. Any man, especially a werewolf, would have their protective instinct aroused upon seeing the gentle-looking Anastasia. Hence, she earned a considerable amount of admirers in the pack and even from the neighboring packs.
But the moment she entered her cabin, everything changed. Like a spell being broken, the once graceful and gentle look of Anastasia morphed into a completely opposite one. Her face distorted, showing her hideous self as she seethed inside her home.
“Damn that Beta family! Just so you wait, Ritchells! When I become the Luna, I will be the one who will announce that you are banished from the pack!”
Vases crashed down, shattered beyond repair. Her once clean room was now a mess from her frantic actions. The darkness of the room did not help in calming her. On the contrary, Anastasia was more agitated than ever!
The darkness was pulling her, whispering her words which fueled her anger.
She did not like this. She hated it when her plan would not proceed as she imagined.
“With the death of that stupid bitch, I am supposed to be their pillar of support! How is this giving me a chance to become their daughter? They don’t even give me a chance for fuck sake!”
Pulling the curtains down before thrashing them with her hands and stomping them with her feet, Anastasia failed to notice her crazed reflection in the window.
Anastasia liked everything to be in control. She did not know why, but for some reason, she felt that nothing went according to her plan. Tracking back to when her plans started to crumble, it all started when that dumb bitch Diana distanced herself from her!
“Even when you are already dead, I still can’t beat you, Diana!” Anastasia snarled as she knelt on the floor, eyes completely looking ahead but not seeing anything aside from the image of the smiling Diana she conjured in her mind.
The only consolation Anastasia received was the death of Diana. Confirming Diana’s death from her ‘friend’ indeed took the thorn lodged in her throat for quite some time now. What she regretted the most was the fact that she did not get to witness Diana’s desperation before her death. Had she been there, Anastasia would surely relish that scene for the rest of her life while making sure she took a perfect picture of such a scene.
A pity, really.
Now, Anastasia was about to proceed to her next plan which was to earn the good side of the Ritchell couple and later on become their new daughter with Diana gone. As Diana’s supposed best friend, the Ritchell couple would tend to remember their dead daughter in her - at least in her plan.
But what Beta Mason did earlier caught Anastasia off guard! Even the Beta female’s action of holing up inside her house without entertaining any guests was also something Anastasia did not expect – never in a million years!
Biting her nails, a habit she would unconsciously do when she was nervous or frustrated, Anastasia took her phone and called for the person who was the mastermind of all this – Axel Crescent.
- -
The sound of the door opening made Lorraine look behind her. Her eyes lit up, as always, when she met the gaze of her mate. Opening her arms, she let her husband give her a quick yet warm hug.
“How is it? Did they buy it?”
Beta Mason sat beside his wife and wiped his face in deep contemplation. He stared at her wife’s worried-laced face and he could not blame her... he could definitely not blame their daughter too.
It was yesterday at dawn when a knocking noise woke Beta Mason. As a beta, his senses were on full alert even when asleep. His instincts were also quite on point. All his big decisions in the majority of his life relied on his so-called instincts and not the statistics.
So when he was woken up by a crow that stared at him – at least that was what he thought – with a crumpled piece of paper in between its beaks, Beta Mason relied on his instincts once more.
And he was glad that he did. He was glad that he did not go back to sleep and did not ignore the damn weird crow because what transpired next left him and his wife flabbergasted.
The moment Beta Mason took the paper from the crow’s beak; the weird bird entered his room. Had it not been for the fact that he noticed a familiar writing on the crumpled piece of paper, he was sure that he would have shooed the crow away.
Opening the letter at that time, he was also glad that he was sitting while reading it.
It was his baby daughter. The one who sent the weird crow was his daughter, Diana, whom he was worried about day in and day out. The happiness brought by the letter initially was immediately replaced with anger just by reading the letter. Beta Mason wrote a reply right away and as per his daughter’s instruction, he gave the crumpled piece of letter to the crown.
“Honey?” Lorraine’s concern-filled voice brought back Beta Mason from his reverie. “What is wrong?”
Caressing her hand, he assured her. “Don’t worry. I have taken notice of everyone’s reaction, even the alpha and his family. For now, there is nothing wrong yet. But to make sure about everything, we must follow Diana’s suggestion. I must make myself so busy and aggrieved while you will not get out and play the part of a mother who is wasting away.”
Beta Mason drew a deep breath before he continued, a hundred percent sure that his next words would blow his wife’s top. After all, their daughter was his gentle wife’s reverse scale. “To make sure we are acting well, we must imagine that the news we spread and confirmed is indeed real. We must imagine that our baby daughter is dead and was killed by that pack.”