Chapter 35 Foe
Auren's pov
Eron stumbles forward like his legs forget how to hold him.
One second he is standing, the next he is clutching his stomach, blood pouring through his fingers like dark red ribbons.
“Eron!” Seris screams.
Beta Brandson yanks me out of the way as he falls forward, crashing into the chair I had been sitting on. The wood snaps under his weight and his body hits the floor with a wet, ugly sound. He lets out something between a groan and a choke and then… nothing.
Just blood.
It spreads across the marble floor in a slow, creeping pool, touching the edge of my boot.
My heart feels like it stops beating.
Seris drops to her knees beside him, grabbing his face, shaking him. “No. No no no. Eron, look at me. Look at me!” Her fingers come away red.
She lifts her head slowly, her eyes wild, her face twisted with grief and fury.
“You killed him!” she shrieks at Dravik. “You killed my fiancé!”
Dravik cleans his knife on his pants legs, not even flinching a little bit at what he just did or at Seris’s outburst.
“He called her a whore,” he says calmly. “And he forced a blood tie on her. He deserved worse.”
“You fucking psycho!” She screams.
For a second I almost feel sorry for her. The pain on her face seems real……Raw. Then I remember the years of cruelty I suffered at her hands, her laughter, the way she watched me suffer like it was entertainment and my pity dies.
I stare at Eron’s body. His eyes are open, staring at nothing and I wait for something to hit me.
Guilt…..Relief……Grief……Anything?
But nothing came.
I hated him for what he did to me, but I never wanted him dead. I don’t understand the hatred in his eyes when he looked at me just now or when he started hating me and I don’t understand when we became enemies. We used to be friends, he used to sneak me food when I was locked in my room in the attic.
Now he is just a body on the floor.
The door slams open and my uncle’s beta, Beta Greyson, thundered in. “Sorry Alpha, I smelled blood and…,” his eyes drop to Eron’s body and his face immediately goes dark.
Rage ripples through him like a storm. “What the hell did you do?”
He lunges for Dravik but Brandon steps in front of him and blocks the blow. Fists fly and the sound of bone on bone echoes through the office. Greyson roars and slams Brandon in the jaw, sending him skidding back.
“You killed my fucking nephew!” Greyson bellows. “I will tear your heart out!”
“Enough!” my uncle shouts, stepping between them. “We will do this another day, we have to go.”
“But Alpha—”
“It is done, Greyson,” he snaps. “Take Seris and go. Now.”
Greyson’s burning eyes turned to me. For years he was the only one who ever felt sorry or tried to be kind to me.
“You know,” he says coldly, “I did feel bad for you once. I thought you were just unlucky. Now I see you deserve everything your uncle ever did to you.”
My mouth drops open and before I can react, Dravik steps in front of me.
“Why not say that again to someone your own size, big man,” he says quietly.
Greyson sneers. “Oh I will. Another day.”
He hauls Seris to her feet. She is still crying, still clutching Eron’s bloody hand and as he drags her toward the door she twists back toward Dravik.
“You better watch your back, Alpha Dravik!”
Dravik folds his arms, chuckling, “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe not me,” she sneers. “but when you see what is coming, you will wish I was the least of your problems. You’re going to get everything that is coming to you. You and your little bitch, I promise you!" She screams just as Greyson carries her through the door.
Her scream echoes down the hall as they disappear.
“What is she talking about?” Dravik turns to my uncle. “What’s coming?”
My uncle turns slowly to Dravik. His face is cold and deadly in a way I know too well. “I have offered you nothing but my hospitality every time you come to my pack,” he says, “and in return you kill one of my own under my roof.”
“Technically,” Dravik replies, “he wasn’t one of yours…..yet.”
Something flickers in my uncle’s eyes and his green eyes turn darker. Is that the wolf thing Dravik told me about?
“You said once, that I should consider you my enemy,” Magnus says. “Now I do. Our contract is over.”
He takes one step towards the door.
“Wait," Dravik’s voice slices through the room.
Magnus pauses but does not turn.
“I have just one question,” Dravik says. “Do you know who Lyra Brucke is?”
For the first time since he entered the room, he hesitates, then slowly looks back. "I have no idea."
He turns and rushes out, the door slamming behind him.
“Follow them,” Dravik orders Brandon. “Now.”
Brandon nods and runs after them.
I look down at Eron again, his lifeless face just staring away. This happened because of me.
I killed him and now they hate me even more.
“Are you hurt? Were you hurt when he rejected you?” Alpha Dravik speaks gently to me using his finger to turn my face away from Eron and towards him
I shake my head. “No. But I think it hurt him. He said it differently this time and waited for me to say it back unlike last time.”
“Yeah, I thought that might have been the case.”
I turn back to his dead body remembering our friendship. Eron smiling when he snuck me bread, Eron whispering jokes to make me laugh and the same Eron standing there today with hate in his eyes.
What turned him so badly against me, did Seris poison his mind?
“I killed them,” I suddenly blurted out. “My parents…….I saw it. I saw their blood on me.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
I tell him everything I saw in my flashback and he just watches me, not interrupting as I try hard to remember every detail.
“When you woke up on the ground,” he asks, “did you see the two people that were standing there?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“I still don’t believe you killed them, I still think it’s a set up” he says quietly. “Why would Linda send you into the woods that particular night? Your parents were Alpha and Beta. They would not be wandering alone without guards. Something is wrong.”
His words make terrible sense.
“But the blood was on me,” I whisper. “How do you explain that?”
Before he can answer, Brandon bursts back in. “They’re gone,” he pants. “All of them. The pack is empty.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I followed them like you said but they entered the woods and I lost their scent. They just like…..vanished, like they were never there.”
“What?” Dravik roars. “wolves don't just vanish, where the hell do they go?
Brandon shrugs, "I assumed they have a safe place, like maybe a bunker or something.”
“Fuck! Set up a search to find them and tell Garrick to order the rest of our men to return back home. I’m taking Auren home with me.”
He grabs my hand, leading me out of the room, he turns back. “Brandon…..find them.”
He nods, then turns and runs off towards the back as Dravik leads me quickly outside into the limousine.
As we pull away from Silverveil, I stare out the window at the place that destroyed me. I feel Dravik’s eyes on me but I refuse to look towards him. I know has questions he needs answers to, but I don’t have the answers he is looking for. I know nothing about my pack and it also turns out I know nothing about wolves.
“You don’t have to see them again if you don’t want to,” he says softly. “The contract is over.”
But if the contract is over… doesn't that mean I belong back to them?
I lean back and close my eyes as the images of my parents' dead faces come back……and Erons’.