148- A Head for a Head
POV Lunara Grimwald:
The reality of what he would do hit me. My eyes widened, my lips parted, and despair washed over me—just like it did the pup’s mother, who sobbed on the floor.
I was dying. My blood streamed from the wound, weakening me more every second. I could no longer feel my arm, nor move my fingers.
Still, I tried to summon strength I didn’t even know I had to break free and help the pup.
“Don’t do this,” I begged—not for my life, but for the innocent baby’s. “Please don’t do this. I’ll go with you, I’ll follow you, we can run and find someone else for the ritual, someone innocent, but not a pup.”
He licked his lips. Lowered his gaze, tilting his head as he watched the crying baby in his arms, squirming in the blue blanket covering his tiny body, missing the warmth of his mother.
“Your promises are far too vague and mean nothing to me.”
“Please,” I insisted, tears overflowing, bathing my dirty face.
“No.” He rejected my plea, smiling like the deranged man he was, delighted to see me cry, thrilled to make me suffer.
He set a container on the table and pulled the blanket from the pup, exposing the small, slender body. The boy wailed, crying endlessly, squirming in Alessio’s arms. Alessio held him by the feet, as if he were a doll, as if he meant nothing.
The pup’s mother did nothing—she lay on the ground, pressing her hands together in prayer as she cried, begging him not to kill her child.
I would rip her head off the moment I was free. She wasn’t restrained—why wasn’t she fighting him for her son’s life? Why wasn’t she taking the silver knife he held? Why didn’t she simply do something, anything?
I tried to pull the arm that was pinned by the knife. My vision blurred and my stomach twisted. I pressed my lips together, teeth clenched, holding the nausea down.
“Stop being such a selfish psychopath, Alessio!” I shouted, pleading for the pup’s life. “He’s just a tiny baby, leave him alone!”
Alessio pretended to ponder.
“You’re absolutely right, I’m extremely selfish,” he agreed, pulling a blade from the makeshift cupboard in Alpha Giovanni’s kitchen. “My only interest is making you pay for running from me and for despising me. And deep down, I don’t even truly care about any of it. But yes, I will kill this pup, Lunara. Not only because of the ritual, but because you care about him.” He laughed.
I pressed my head back against the stone wall, trying to find any solution, any way to save the little one, but I found nothing. My free hand moved automatically to my abdomen—a futile attempt to protect the pup who had barely begun to grow inside me and was already going through all that.
I would die and take him with me, cutting short his brand-new life. I shook my head as more tears overflowed.
My pup.
I felt each beat of my heart echo like deafening drums in my ears. The pain of reality tore through every fiber of my being, like sharp claws sinking into my soul.
Each breath became a Herculean effort, as though the air refused to fill my lungs.
“Alessio,” I tried one last time.
Every passing second, the awareness that an innocent being—a life—was growing inside me and depending on my own existence gave me just enough strength to fight, even though that strength was fading quickly.
I couldn’t allow myself to weaken; couldn’t submit to the death drawing nearer. If I succumbed, I would take with me the purest ray of light that had ever shone within me.
He lifted the pup by the feet. I turned to the mother, trying to urge her to do something. She did nothing but watch, cry, and pray.
“Alessio!” I tried again.
The pup cried and squirmed. Alessio, smiling, held the sharp blade and drew it across the innocent pup’s neck, slicing through the thin, soft skin and opening the flesh. His blood gushed out, dripping over the table and into a container the alpha had placed there.
It took only seconds for him to stop crying, succumbing to death.
The mother screamed—a shrill, piercing sound that made my eardrums feel like they would burst. My body curled in a wave of pain and anguish. Pure despair and grief.
He filled the bowl with the small innocent’s blood, swayed it up and down, then tossed the body across the cave, making it hit the floor with a sharp thud, as if it were nothing but disposable trash. He dipped the tip of a finger into the container and brought it to his lips, sucking it.
“Hmm… Now I understand what they mean by ‘blood of the innocent’.” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “The taste is truly different.”
He approached me. I could barely move; I didn’t have the strength to speak.
My heart was shattered, broken into countless tiny pieces. He was the worst kind of monster, and even if I lived a thousand years in hell, I would never forget what he had done—all the atrocities.
He crouched in front of me and stared into my eyes, pursing his lips in a mocking pout.
“Feeling very sad about the pup? If you survive the ritual and I change my mind about killing you, we can make our own pups.”
I stayed silent, motionless, drained.
He looked at the pool of my blood spreading across the floor, examining it.
“It’s almost over, almost time for you to drink all that innocent blood and see how your body reacts.” He rubbed his index finger across his lips. “Just a little more and you’ll be a wolf free of a mating mark.”
An object rolled beside him, sliding into the cave.
Alessio straightened and looked down at the same time I did.
It wasn’t an object—or anything that could ever be considered normal or natural.
He gasped and staggered a step backward when his father’s severed head stopped at his feet.
A figure appeared at the cave entrance, his silhouette outlined by the faint light. My heart leapt in my chest when I recognized him. His broad body cast a shadow deep into the cave.
My chest tightened, and all the weight of the longing I had felt in the past days hit me, striking with force and impact.
Alessio dragged his gaze from his father’s head to the entrance, where the Alpha of Eldoria stood.
He stepped forward, revealing his face.
“I’ve just privatized peace,” he declared, his voice resonating with implacable authority. “Those who disturb the peace I fought so hard to build will find nothing but destruction in their wake. There is no more Twilight Pack, nor Eclipse Pack.”
Had I been fully conscious, I would have tried to absorb how disturbing his words were.
Alessio hissed, hatred and despair dripping from his voice.
“That was my pack!”
Edric smiled with superiority, his golden eyes glowing with a dark shine.
“At least you’re smart enough to use the correct verb tense: past. It was your pack, because there are no packs anymore.” His reply dripped with disdain.