202- When the Beast Crossed the Line
POV Aldren Valmorin:
The toxicity test came back positive, and my paranoia increased minute by minute.
The only place in my house still awaiting the installation of cameras was the hallway outside my bedroom. I decided that my bedroom and the sublevel, including my library, would not have that technology.
I could not get it out of my head that I would be producing evidence against myself, and that the risk of someone other than me gaining access to the footage was far too great.
I could hardly believe how far I had gone.
Only Nerin, Victor, and Serpentino knew about the installation, so it would be easy to trace the leak of any information, should it happen.
In the internal areas of the laboratory, the installation of hidden cameras was carried out before disinfection and during a planned general training session, with no one around.
I was not willing to bargain for more names with Kehin, so I transferred him during the night to the prison of Noctheria. The false trial was mine. I had raised the snakes myself, and I would be the one to kill them.
The elders wished to bring the monthly meeting forward, but aside from having neither the time nor the desire to deal with matters under my authority with them and the other alphas, I understood that leaving the village at that moment could be a fatal mistake.
I devoted myself, alone, to setting the trap to slit the throats of all the traitors at once. When everything was over, the council meeting would be for informational purposes only, not a request for advice or help.
One misstep, and I found myself in possession of a sick prisoner who could have died if I had not arrived in time. Lunara would never believe that it had not been me who killed her poisoned sister.
Elowen’s death would forever be my fault.
The situation with the prisoner exhausted me. I would send her along with Kehin to the prison of Noctheria if I received any indication that she was, in fact, a malicious spy.
The queen of Eldoria was furious. I received a call from Edric, claiming that his mate was desperate and had confirmed that she had arranged to meet her sister in the forest before the intruder was found, and that this was why she had been wandering through my territory.
All the evidence pointed me toward the hypothesis that Elowen was a poor, innocent wretch, but after having been betrayed by Kehin, I would not allow myself to trust even my own shadow.
It did not matter that I looked at her and felt pity. It did not matter that my beast disagreed with me about keeping her imprisoned. It did not matter.
I had erred. I could not err again. Be deceived again.
Unexpectedly, a mixture of snarls and shrill screams filled my ears, vibrating toward my bedroom.
Fuck.
Elowen and Teneris.
Nerin and Victor started to run, but I ordered them to stay.
I would be the one to resolve the fight between those two. I doubted that the instigator was the prisoner, and that enraged me. Why the hell couldn’t Teneris just do what I had ordered? I had not left her as the cub’s babysitter for her to cause trouble.
I ran through the corridors driven by a teeth-grinding fury. When I reached the bedroom door, chaos unfolded before my eyes.
Elowen and Teneris were entangled in a savage fight inside the cage.
Blood on their faces and bodies, hair everywhere. Teneris, older, with her claws and fangs transformed, an absurd physical advantage over Elowen’s human form, who, even weakened, fought to survive.
No.
The injustice of that senseless battle further inflamed my rage, which I unleashed upon them.
I let out a guttural roar and fear-inducing pheromones.
Each one fell to a side.
I leaped to the bars, and when my eyes took in Elowen’s condition, something akin to what I felt when I lost part of my people in an ambush seized me.
Bruises and welts all over her exposed skin. Deep scratches spurting blood from her arms and face.
Elowen was injured enough to meet death. Teneris was going to kill her.
The most primitive of forces, once dormant, threatened to break free.
And that time, there was nothing I could do to fight it. My beast was taking control.
With my heart pounding in a savage rhythm, every fiber of my body tensed, like cords ready to snap. Claws and fangs were released at the speed of a snarl.
My vision was stained blood-red, putting an end to my reason.
The thin line between man and beast disappeared, leaving me with only the certainty that there would be no return.
My primitive beast took full control.
What unfolded inside the steel bars was nothing but raw destruction.
Skin torn; muscles pierced; blood gushing; bones breaking;
and a final tear sliding from Teneris’s sad eyes,
as she slipped from her semi-transformed form back into her human one.
“Aldren, don’t…” she wailed, choking on her own blood, before my beast drove its claws into her face, striking both her eyes, rupturing her eyeballs like two grapes being crushed.
More blood, now mixed with ocular fluids that looked like a whitish gel, ran down the pale skin of her face, to the sound of her final breath. My hands twisted her neck until it snapped.
I did not think.
Without control, there was no reason.
And for what I had just done, there was no turning back.
No miraculous medicine regenerated a dismembered and completely destroyed body.
For the man, and not for the beast, there would remain a series of regrets.
I dropped the mortal remains to the floor and, frantic, searched for Elowen in the cage splattered and bathed in red.
She was in a state of shock, pressing herself between the bars. She was afraid of me. The beast let out a shrill roar, knocking everything around us over, before managing to retract its claws.
I needed to get her out of there, but my beast feared, along with me, hurting her even more.
The skin at her temples was dotted with small puncture wounds, and her neck was almost closed with scratches so deep that strips of her skin hung loose, as if flowing together with the blood.
“You’re g-going to k-kill me…” Her chin trembled so violently that her bloodstained teeth clattered.
My beast was deeply offended by her plea.
“I just cruelly murdered someone I trusted because she hurt you, and you still think I could kill you?” With a cold, guttural timbre, my beast’s words vibrated in the air like a swarm of enraged insects.
The beast, even offended, did not wait for her answer or reaction. It simply lifted her from the blood-soaked floor.
It walked with her in its arms, like someone carrying a helpless cub, snarling at anyone who tried to approach, until it reached the library in the sublevel.