Breach
Breach
Back in Ciel's room... Alyssa was lost in her thoughts, wondering in her point of view...
What have I done?
Michael's gone, barely. His bloodied corpse isn't even dry in my memory, and here I am, kissing his son!
Is this what Michael sacrificed his life for? Would he be happy to see me doing this? And more importantly, what am I doing?
Even though my wolf had clawed at me, desperate and wild as it urged me to do it, the truth is... I had truly wanted to do it in the heart of my hearts.
I’d wanted it!
That... was the cruelest of all.
I curled, grasping my head in my palms in an attempt to calm the hotness that lingered. I stared blankly at the floor, my heart banging loudly in my head as my mind spun itself into knots.
Michael’s last look, his sacrifice, haunted me. To betray him so, it just didn't feel right.
And Jan’s presence. Her seeing me Kiss Ciel wasn't as heavy as Ciel's reaction to it all. If anything, she'd spread rumors of me cheating with Ciel around. I could deny that, but what I couldn't deny was Ciel.
He hadn’t yelled, hadn’t condemned me. And that almost hurt more.
He’d just looked… stunned and more, lost. Like he didn’t know what to do with me anymore.
What was I even thinking?
He'd just told me his traumatic experience of his mother cheating on his father, how that had ruined him all his life. And what did I do next?
I just made him relive it.
I'm so stupid. He probably hates me now!
Seconds blend into minutes. The room only grew thick and stale by the passing minute. The silence as I spun in my thoughts was impressive.
I pressed my face into my palms muffling the sound of my broken breaths. My wolf stirred inside me, restless, pacing, as though it wanted to claw her way out.
' He should have kissed us back. He should have claimed us.' It raved, but I knew this was only how I truly felt.
“Shut up,” I muttered to no one in particular, it was an attempt to alleviate the guilt in my chest that continued to burn hotter with every passing second.
At some point, the sound of knuckles rapping against my door jolted me upright.
I sat up quickly, wiping at my face, trying to compose myself though my heart still thundered in my chest.
I didn't want Ciel to see me in this state if he was coming back to talk about it.
To my surprise, he didn't come in. I frowned at this, wondering what could be going on.
But then I realized, why would Ciel knock on the door to his own room. Could it be because he knew I was in?
" Yes, who's there?" I managed to voice out.
The next minute, the door creaked open, and contrary to what I expected, it wasn't Ciel.
A tall man with broad shoulders and a face too stern for his age stepped in– he's a pack member I've seen around a couple of times. His dark thin eyes swept over me once, cool and dismissive, and I instantly realized the contempt in them.
“The elders want you down in the main hall,” he said curtly.
My stomach lurched. “The elders?” My voice sounded too thin, too fragile.
He smirked faintly, the expression mocking. “Don’t keep them waiting.”
And just like that, he turned and left, leaving the door yawning wide open behind him.
I sat frozen for a moment, dread coiling tight in my chest. Why would the elders summon me? Was it Jan? Had she already run to them?
I pondered as I pictured her voice dripping with poison as she painted me the villain?
Or... had Ciel himself told them?
My heart almost stopped at this thought. I gasped for air, fear gripping me in a hitch.
No. No, he wouldn’t. He was many things, but he wasn’t a man who aired private weakness to the wolves waiting to devour it.
I tried to convince myself, but I knew it could very much be a possibility.
With this in mind, I knew I could only speculate sitting here. If I wanted to find out, I needed to go see what's going on for myself.
I forced myself to my feet, though my legs trembled beneath me. Each step into the hall felt like wading deeper into quicksand. Every closed door I passed felt like it hid whispers, voices pressed to wood, waiting for me to fall so they could feast.
The packhouse was too quiet. Shadows clung to the corners, the light dim as though even the walls mourned Michael. The air carried a tension so sharp it prickled against my skin. Not to speak of the fear of what was to come that subsumed my whole being.
My escort– the tall broad man who'd come up to Ciel's room to call me– waited at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded. His distinct thin eyes were on me with that same faint contempt just as everyone else in the hall as I stood at the crown of the stairs. He didn’t speak, didn’t need to, all of them. The message was clear enough.
I'm already judged!
I shuddered, my first goal being to see if Ciel really was behind this.
I moved down the stairs, every step heavier than the last.
My thoughts raced in frantic circles. Was this about the kiss? About Michael? About the suspicion that Jerome or Icarus had betrayed us? Every possibility only made my pulse pound faster.
But deep down, one truth settled cold in my stomach: whatever the reason, nothing good ever came from being summoned by the elders.
And with Michael gone, the pack fractured, and whispers thick in the air, I couldn’t shake the fear that this summoning wasn’t just about me.
It was about control.
And I was walking straight into their hands.
...
Ciel and the betas rendezvoused with two other betas before they slipped out of the packhouse.
While the rest of the pack remained holed up in their rooms, shrouded in grief, fear, and suspicion, they sought to find out the situation of things.
The air at noon was brittle and tense, the silence suffocating, as though the whole house held its breath.
Outside, the town was quite alive like any other morning. Stalls opened, neighbors exchanged greetings, children laughed. But Ciel saw through the facade. Hunters were everywhere, hiding in plain sight.
A man leaned against a lamppost with a newspaper, though his eyes flicked too sharply, scanning every passerby. A woman walked a dog slowly, walking into stores and leaving with nothing in hand, only her gaze trained on the crowd instead of the atmosphere she pretended to be enjoying. So were others who paraded in secret, they carried themselves with the practiced stillness of trained experts, their scents faintly tainted by iron and smoke.
Ciel tugged his hat lower, shoulders squared. He'd dressed ordinary specifically for this occasion.
He wasn't in his usual combat style, he had on a simple shirt and a three-quarter pant, and a hat to match with. Now, he was just another face among the many people in town.
His men had fanned out, splitting into pairs. One staged a scuffle at the corner, voices raised over spilled food. Another deliberately knocked over a bum, causing a distraction with usual encounters in every day life of people.
The hunters’ attention wavered. And in those precious seconds, Ciel slipped deeper into the veins of the town.
The mayor’s mansion loomed at the far end of the road, an edifice of stone and arrogance, its iron-barred fence crowned with barbed wire and it's gaze tightly manned. To ordinary citizens, it was untouchable. But to Ciel, it was a fortress he had to breach.
He circled wide from the opposite sidewalk, eyes raking the perimeter. Guards stood at rigid intervals, weapons tucked discreetly at their sides. But near the garden wall on the other side of the gate, one man lingered with his back turned, a cigarette glowing faintly between his fingers.
Ciel moved.
With a surge of speed too sharp for normal eyes, he vaulted the fence and landed soundlessly among the hedges. The guard didn’t even turn before Ciel struck, quick and precise.
The man crumpled and Ciel quickly dragged him behind the thickly trimmed greenery. Ciel stripped the suit he had on from his body, sliding into the disguise with uneasy haste as the fence was open and he could b easily spotted if he made the wrong move.
After he was done donning the guise of the guard, he thumbed the guard’s walkie-talkie, voice low and clipped. “Intruder near main gate. Civilian disguise. Moving fast.”
Static crackled, followed by a sharp command: “All units, converge at main gate. Go!”
Within moments, guards peeled away from their posts, rushing toward the false alarm. The mansion’s main entrance defenses thinned.
Ciel after observing this moved in the guise of a bodyguard and slipped past the others into the entrance hall.
...