Chapter 79 Eternal Sacrifice
THIRD POV
They needed to find the special wolf before the next full moon, which would be in three weeks’ time.
If they didn’t at least know where she was by then, they would all be doomed. The window of opportunity was wide open for them; they just had to use it properly and wisely.
The Grandmaster had called a meeting that night to inform them that they all had to sacrifice something significant for them to successfully locate where the wolf was hiding.
They didn’t actually have to sacrifice anything new or different. Since they joined the brotherhood, they had been giving up something they loved or having to do something they didn’t want to do repeatedly.
It was all in his bid to live longer. He hadn’t been told beforehand that the Grandmaster had to make sacrifices over and over again to keep his position of power.
If he couldn’t make them, then he would be killed without hesitation, but he couldn’t allow that to happen. He knew his father had killed his mother to keep his position.
How could he not know? He had been there that terrible night. He had been the one to bring the knife to his father.
He didn’t want to kill his mother at all. He didn’t know that was his father’s plan, so when he had been asked to bring a knife to the bedroom that night, being a naive teenager, he didn’t think too much about it.
Not in his wildest dreams did he think that was what his father wanted to do with it.
By the time he got to the room, he met his mother tied to the bed and gagged with cloth. He stared at the horrifying sight before him, shaking as he looked around and found his father completely naked, dancing around a pentagram drawn on the floor.
The five-edged star had been drawn on the ground with white chalk and some strange objects lay at specific locations around it.
His hand shook violently as he put the pieces together, slowly realizing what he had just walked into. He started to take steps back in pure fear as his mother noticed his presence, telling him desperately with her eyes to run, but he was too scared, too frozen in place to do so.
Before he could make it to the door to escape, his father had seen him and his hand was stretched out for the knife.
He trembled where he stood, not knowing who to listen to at that moment.
Listen to his mother and run away.
Listen to his father and watch her die.
His mother had raised him lovingly and shown him what love really was. She was there for him on the bad days when his father got too crazy and almost killed him in fits of rage.
But as he looked at her now, it seemed like she too had accepted her death as inevitable. He was his father’s son after all. What had she been expecting?
He had a destiny to fulfill and he had been trained for it since childhood, so she should have known better.
He decided to go along with what he knew and had been taught. As he walked closer to his father, placing the knife in his outstretched hands and looking him directly in the eye, he expected accolades and a pat on the back for being obedient.
“The evil and greed that is within you is more than I thought. You will betray those who trust you with their lives and it will be your doom.”
Those were the words he’d gotten from his father instead. A man he had adored and idolized his entire life.
Then he’d watched in horror as his mother got stabbed over and over in the chest until her cries quieted down and she stopped moving entirely.
He’d shielded his eyes away from everything, not wanting to see or hear what was going on, and when he finally opened his eyes again, he was met with a bloody mess on the bed, the white bed sheets now completely crimson red.
His mother’s eyes had stopped on him and she still stared at him, the emptiness very evident in them and her mouth hanging lazily open with the last tear that had dropped down her face stopping by her nose.
He knew he couldn’t take it back, what he had done that night. Now, he had to be responsible for his actions. Everything he did from now on was up to him.
Just like his father had said in that curse, he would kill those close to him. It might have been a curse but it had come true time and time again. Now he had to use what he had to get what he wanted.
His father had been the Grandmaster and that ritual had been performed for him to live longer, but it was rejected by the ancient powers.
Solely on the basis of his presence there that night.
According to the ancient rules, the ritual was to be performed in the complete secrecy of your room alone. So his mother had died for absolutely nothing and his father… Well, his father now hated him with every fiber of his being for not giving him the privilege of living longer.
Yes, he became the Grandmaster eventually, but still he wanted to live long enough to enjoy that power. Even until his death bed and his very last breath, his father hated him and cursed him, telling him that he would never be as good as him. It wasn’t even his fault he was there that night.
He hadn’t gotten married, for fear of being told that he was going to have to give up his wife as a sacrifice. When he found his mate all those years back, he rejected her cruelly and made her hate him, not being able to tell her the truth about his actions and his past.
She begged and pleaded and asked for an explanation but he couldn’t provide one. He should have told her everything but he didn’t want to lose her all the same, so all he did was have illegitimate children with various women.
They may never be able to take over from him officially but that was fine with him. He couldn’t bear losing any of the people he loved to this cursed cult.
He didn’t have the heartless nature that people thought he did. They didn’t seem to mind making another sacrifice whenever needed.
These men were just like his father had been. Heartless and wicked to the core. He could still see his mother clearly in his dreams every night begging for forgiveness that he could not give her.
That night changed him forever. He wanted to be just like his father but he just couldn’t bring himself to be that cruel.