57|A Sign

57|A Sign
~Declan~

“Seth and the others will be here soon,” I said, shoving my phone back into my jeans pocket.

When I promised to help Seth with this case, I expected hunters would be our worst enemies. I thought hunters killed those girls, but the bodies drained of blood and bite marks on their necks were something hunters don’t do. The blood bags inside the fridge answered the bodies drained of blood, but what about the bite marks? Are there really vampires in this era?

Growing up, we were taught that vampires were already extinct. Their lifestyle of drinking blood wasn’t easy to hide from humans. They were hunted down a century ago, and no one has ever had an encounter with one since.

“Why do you think they need the girls’ blood?” I stood beside Serena. She had been glued to this spot for some time now. I wondered what was on her mind. This was a huge development in this case. Shouldn’t she be happy?

“It’s what he does,” she grumbled. Her tone was gloomy and detached.

“Alister?” I still don’t know Alister Kaine, but from how Serena and Spade conversed in their mindlink earlier, I know Serena knows him not just by name.

“Yes,” she answered. “He’s a scientist, and he has been studying our kind for a long time.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear this, but I am surprised that Serena knows about what he does. “How do you know him?” I looked down at her when she didn’t reply, and I was surprised to see how distant her eyes were. “Serena?”

She didn’t bother gazing up at me as she replied. “You wanna know who Alister Kaine is, and how I know someone like him?”

“Yes.”

Her hands were balled into a fist, her jaw clenching. “After you sentenced me to exile, I was supposed to find John in Hollow Forest, but that didn’t happen. Alister Kaine’s men found me before I could even catch my breath.”

A lump suddenly appeared in my throat as she looked up at me. “Still want me to continue? Still wanna ask me why even the mate bond can’t heal my anger towards you?”

The sadness and pain that spiralled through our bond made me rethink wanting to know what really happened to her. But if I want to understand what she went through, this was necessary. She took my silence as a positive response.

“They were kidnapping young werewolves around the Hollow Forest at that time. Alister Kaine was just exploring the possibilities of expanding his research here from Russia. I didn’t have my wolf back then, so I was wondering why they thought I was a shifter. They used a detector on me, and it was positive that I was a werewolf.”

Serena’s hand kept clenching and unclenching as she took a walk back into her past.

“They locked me in a cell, then they would drag me out to do experiments on me. He particularly hated that I won’t shift even with all the medicines they injected into me. It lasted for a month, Declan. It was the longest thirty days of my life.” She let out a soft, bitter laugh. “I thought being exiled was the worst thing that could happen to me.”

“If I had known you were alive…” I murmured. “But Lia told me you were already dead.”

“Your words don’t mean a thing to me,” she stated firmly. “A month later, he found out I was pregnant. It turns out, the baby inside me was the one who’s positive as a shifter.”

“Wha… what?” I felt a heavy blow in my gut. Serena’s revelation brought back all the memories of five years ago when I lost her. When Lia told me Serena was dead, and gave me our wedding ring. Then I saw a figure of Serena. Her belly was round and big, blood streaming from her eyes down her cheeks as she held on to our baby. “Pregnant? With our baby?” 

“Yes,” she whispered. “I wish I weren’t pregnant. I had a wish for a lot of things back then.”

I was still reeling over the fact that I had a baby with Serena.

“Where… where is our child?”

Seren huffed. “Are you seriously asking me that?” she hissed. “What do you think a scientist like Alister Kaine would do to a pregnant human with a shifter baby in her womb?”

I know what Aliter Kaine looked like, and when I find him, he will regret ever showing his face to me.

“Alister Kain did a lot of experiments on me that he hadn’t done with other prisoners. He was excited to have me.”

My insides were a bunch of tension wires, and the more I listened to Serena, the tighter the wires got. I was ready to explode in anger and hatred on the spot.

“Every time he would do experiments on me, he made sure that the baby inside me was okay. After two months, he dialed down on the experiments and actually allowed me to be at peace, until two weeks before my delivery, he did the most excruciating experiment on me. He forced my child out of my womb.”

“I don’t wanna hear about it anymore, Serena,” I said. My palms were already bleeding from my fingernails. I had been clenching my hands too tightly as my chest tightened just thinking of what Serena had gone through.

“No, Declan,” she said through gritted teeth. “I take this as a sign. You asked me what I wanted to do when I pulled you out from the oblivion, and maybe this was it. You should know the pain that I suffered because of you.”

“That’s not fair,” was all I could say. “I didn’t know you were alive. If I did, none of this would’ve happened!”

“If you didn’t kill my parents, none of this would’ve happened. If your pack didn’t knock on Embercrest, I wouldn’t be here!” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I wouldn’t have lost my child.”

“It’s my child too, Serena. You deprived me of the chance to take care of you and our pup.” I didn’t mean to hold her accountable for everything that happened, because nothing could amount to what Serena suffered, but this just crushes my soul. I would have gone through heaven and hell to find her, let alone knowing she was carrying our pup.

“I’m going to find Alister Kaine and make him pay for what he’s done to you,” I said.

“You can’t handle him,” Serena murmured.

“You don’t know what a father would do to avenge his pup.” I headed for the door, but as soon as I reached for the knob, the floor opened, and the quick pull of darkness swallowed me. My hands reached up to hold on to anything, but I fell into a pool of liquid, and before I realized it, I lost consciousness.