Chapter 277 Are You Fucking Crazy
The deafening, monstrous echo of Fennigan's world-ending roar slowly bled out into the sterile, freezing air, leaving behind only the frantic, terrifying blare of the fetal heart monitor.
"Now," Damon asked coldly, slowly raising a single, perfectly arched brow. The dead Alpha's face was a mask of utter, sociopathic calm, completely untouched by the sheer, apocalyptic grief radiating from his sons. "Do you feel better since you finally got that out of your system?"
The dead Alpha let out a long, dramatically exasperated sigh. He spoke to the lethal, blood-soaked Alpha King standing before him as if Fennigan were nothing more than a petulant toddler throwing an inconvenient tantrum in the middle of a grocery store.
"Just let me do what I have to do, Fenn," Damon reasoned, his smoky voice dropping into a tone of twisted, casual diplomacy. "Let me finish the extraction. It's truly not that complicated. Once I have the magic I need, I'll simply drop the needle, walk away, and you can do whatever you want with your little, broken family. We all get to move on."
Jax’s glowing golden eyes burned with pure, unadulterated, blinding hatred. The towering Beta's chest heaved with rapid, shallow breaths, his heavy tactical sidearm visibly shaking in his massive hands. It wasn't shaking from fear—it was shaking from the agonizing, bone-breaking physical effort required not to immediately pull the trigger.
"Are you fucking crazy?" the Beta snarled, the words tearing out of his throat like thick, deadly gravel.
Damon actually laughed. It was a dry, hollow, deeply chilling sound that echoed terrifyingly over the relentless, screaming alarm of the dying unborn pup.
"If I was crazy, boys, I wouldn't have had the absolute, intoxicating brilliance to send my clone to get the little ones that night," Damon replied. His dark eyes widened, shining with a sick, narcissistic pride as he finally revealed the flawless architecture of his master plan. "I knew that synthetic puppet would be of incredibly good use. He walked right out into the crossfire, a perfect visual decoy. I was standing just inside the heavy blast doors of that secondary bunker, completely hidden in the dark, just waiting for him to carry Caspian and Briar right into my waiting arms."
Damon's jaw tightened slightly, a fleeting flash of genuine annoyance cutting sharply through his arrogant facade.
"I will admit, I hadn't expected your loyal sniper to act so impulsively," Damon sneered, treating Toby's heroic, desperate rescue of the twins as nothing more than an irritating logistical hiccup. "That elite guard breaking his cover to snatch the twins away before my puppet could step safely back into the shadows... that was an annoying miscalculation on my part. But Toby putting a high-caliber bullet straight through the clone's chest right in front of you? It was the absolute perfect theatrical exit. You all bought it without a single second of hesitation."
Damon leaned intimately closer to Leela's pale, unconscious face, his eyes gleaming with a sick, obsessive reverence as he looked down at the Mother of the elementals.
"In the absolute chaos of the gunfire, I easily slipped deeper into the subterranean tunnels while you boys were trying to figure out what to do with me," Damon revealed, his voice dropping into a dark, triumphant purr. "And my loyal little lab workers down here in the dark? The ones who helped me build the cages? They were beautifully devoted. They all bit down on their cyanide pills exactly as instructed the exact second they heard the gunfire topside. They died instantly, ensuring absolutely none of my secrets ever made it to the High Council. It was absolutely, flawlessly perfect. I was completely, officially off the board."
Damon’s gloved hand moved, his thumb gently, terrifyingly stroking Leela's cold, pale cheek. The gesture was so profoundly sickening, so intimately violating, that it made Fennigan physically gag, his Lycan stomach aggressively violently rebelling against the sight.
"I was perfectly content just biding my time," Damon whispered, his voice vibrating with a hushed, religious awe. "I was waiting patiently in the shadows, entirely prepared to spend months planning the perfect moment to slip into the packhouse and snatch one of the twins to continue my life's work. But then... the Goddess truly smiled upon me. Leela walked right at me. She bypassed every guard, every lock, and walked right to me in the dark."
Damon closed his dark eyes, tilting his head back slightly as he savored the twisted, euphoric memory, entirely deaf to the frantic, dying heartbeat of his grandson blaring continuously from the medical monitor.
"It was another purely magical moment," Damon breathed, slowly opening his eyes to stare directly into Fennigan's completely shattered, bleeding soul. "Sends absolute chills right down my spine."
The fetal heart monitor suddenly spiked—one last, erratic, violent attempt at life—before flatlining with a single, devastating monotone. Damon didn't even flinch. Instead, his thumb lingered on Leela's cheekbone, pressing just a little too hard, denting her fragile skin like clay.
"I think I've got what I need," he mused, casually flicking the needle's plunger with his fingertip, watching the thick, swirling essence inside slosh like poisoned wine. His other hand hovered above Leela's abdomen, fingers twitching like a spider testing silk. "Now, I don't want to kill the little one. But I will."
The monitor stuttered back to life, a weak, irregular pulse threading through the silence like a fraying lifeline. Damon tilted his head, listening to the erratic beeps with the detached curiosity of a scientist noting an unexpected variable. "Ah," he murmured, as if the dying pup had just told him a mildly amusing joke.
His fingers twitched—not retreating from the needle, but adjusting its angle with the precision of a safecracker feeling for the final tumbler. "See? Cooperative," he said, flashing Fennigan a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. "I could walk out right now. You’d never find me. And in a few years, when you’ve stopped checking every shadow, I’d send you a postcard from wherever I’ve rebuilt."
Fennigan’s claws punched through his own palms, black blood welling between his fingers. The scent of it—thick with grief and fury—should have choked the room. Damon inhaled deeply instead, savoring it like a vintage. "But that’s the tragedy, isn’t it?" he mused. "You’d never stop looking. You’d tear the world apart. And I’d let you." His thumb pressed harder against Leela’s cheekbone, the skin blanching white under his touch. "Because it’s fun."
Jax’s gun didn’t waver. The muzzle was a black hole aimed at Damon’s temple, but the Beta’s finger trembled on the trigger—not from hesitation, but from the seismic effort it took not to fire prematurely. Damon noticed. He always did. "Oh, Jax," he sighed, almost fond. "Still waiting for permission? Still needing someone to tell you it’s okay?" His grin widened, revealing teeth filed to sharp points. "Pull it. See what happens."