Chapter 184 WHEN THE HUNTER BECOME HUNTED
Chapter 181
Rosa's POV
“What the hell have you just done?” I snapped, glaring at the photos in my hand.
My mouth fell open at the disaster unfolding before me. It felt like someone should wake me up from this nightmare, if I was truly sleeping.
“What have you done, Leo?”
“This is an abomination!”
I threw my hands over my head in regret.
“You struck an anointed king in this pack. Are you a stranger here, or are you just coming into this pack for the first time?”
I paused for a moment. Anger erupted inside me like a disturbed ocean.
“Do you know what you’ve done? The gods will not just punish you… they will wipe out everyone tied to this crime. Are you crazy? Didn’t you think before doing this?”
I watched as his face hardened like rock. No remorse. Nothing.
“Don’t tell me that,” Leo snapped instantly.
I flinched backward momentarily.
“So you want Brielle dead, but you don’t want Alpha Jax dead, right?” Leo replied.
“How is that possible? When he insisted on putting me in his car and said we should go together so I could show him where Brielle is hiding?”
“So how was I supposed to handle that? If I took Alpha Jax to the wrong place and he didn’t see Brielle, do you think he would kiss me and say I did a great job? The answer is no. He would blow my head off.”
“He even brought his gun. I sensed how his hand gripped it under his clothes during the journey. So if I didn’t act fast, the fate that befell him would have eventually befallen me.”
“What rubbish are you saying, Leo? I didn’t ask you to kill him,” I snapped.
“I instructed you to do everything to make sure Alpha Jax didn’t know where Brielle was recuperating. That’s all.”
“You could have done anything to Jax, you could kidnap him, you could beat him… but kill an anointed king of the gods…”
My voice cracked through the air like a whip.
He watched me, his jaw tightening.
“Even the chief priest, Alpha Vexhood, the most powerful chief priest around, would never dare it.”
“So what are you saying?” Leo rasped, staring me in the face. One of his eyes had turned reddish, and he kept looking at me with it.
Like someone waiting for another person to finish talking nonsense before reacting.
“That you are not giving me the bounty you promised?” His voice dropped low, every word laced with anger.
I turned back to him, throwing my hand into the air.
I burst into bitter laughter.
“With this madness you’ve done, Leo… with this cursed trouble you’ve brought upon my family…”
“What useless curse?” he countered.
“I am here for my gold. Hand it over now!”
He rasped, gritting his teeth.
“I am not giving you…” before I could finish,
He brought out a gun from under his cloak.
“Do you think I came here to joke?” Leo asked, pointing the gun at my forehead. The cold metal pressed against my skin.
I shook. Fear crawled up my spine.
“Why are you such an ingrate?” he snapped. “Something the chief prison warden could not do, I did without leaving a trace.”
“And yet you’re calling my hard work a bad job.”
“Do you know how many people I’ve put in danger because of this?”
He paused. “Anyway, I’m not here for that…”
“Where did you keep my gold?”
“I don’t have any gold here,” I managed to say. My eyes kept drifting to the gun. He had lowered it slightly, but his grip on it remained tight.
“It is far from here. I kept it in the king’s orchard farm.”
I paused and turned to him.
“If only you would take cash…”
“No… I don’t want cash. I want my gold!”
“And I want it now!”
He snapped, raising the gun again.
“I can’t dress like this and follow you outside. It might raise suspicion…”
“It won’t raise anything,” he replied quickly.
“I need my gold, young woman, and I need to get out of here.”
But deep inside, I knew I didn’t have any gold hidden anywhere.
I had thought the priests of Alpha Vexhood I met, and their assurance that the gods would strike Brielle, would be enough.
Secondly, I didn’t expect him to show up at this time. I would have found a way to convert the money I had into gold.
The weekly bounties given to the queen of the Stormfang pack after business transactions had not yet arrived.
And if I had to source money and convert it into gold for this pestering idiot, it would take time. But now, he was breathing down my neck.
I marched out of my quarters, Leo following me as if nothing had happened, his gun hidden, a small distance between us, like he was just helping me carry something from the orchard.
Two palace maids passed us with buckets and mops. They bowed in respect as they walked by.
My response was too flat. If they could read signs, they would have sensed something was wrong from my body language alone.
My slippers clicked against the floor as Leo followed me. We headed through the narrow path leading to the orchard farm.
I had told him I buried the gold bars at the far end of the farm, at the foot of an apple tree near the pack river.
I knew I was walking to my death. Because when we got there and Leo didn’t find his gold, it would be nothing but disaster.
He would put bullets into my forehead, and that would be the end. The desperation was obvious and alarming.
A few minutes later, we arrived at the spot.
“Here!” I pointed to a spot under an apple tree, at the edge of the river.“I buried them there.”
The spot didn’t give me away. It looked like something had truly been buried there.
I stepped back, my heart pounding wildly.
He ran towards the spot. Just like a dog had found where he buried that juiciest bone of his last meal.
Leo Bent low, scooping the soil out with his two bare hands.
He didn't look at me. Leo didn’t notice.
He was too focused. Too blinded.
Exactly how I needed him to be.
My fingers curled slightly. When I spotted a lying branch. Big enough to u
pset things.
His gun. Close to his left foot. Where he had stooped low.
I was waiting.
Just one more second…
And everything would change.