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Chapter 24
Chapter 24
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The rain starts as a light drizzle, but within seconds, it’s pounding against the balcony like a hundred tiny hammers.
I can barely see through the downpour, but my eyes remain locked on the whip below, the leather coiled like a venomous snake.
Why is the headmaid’s whip… on the ground? Seh treasures that a lot considering it’s her source of superiority among the
lower ranks.
Beside me, Kallias is eerily quiet. His earlier aggression towards me has been replaced with a strange stillness, as though he’s working through a thousand emotions and coming up blank by what he’s seeing.
His lips are still smeared with blood from my slap, and if I wasn’t so on edge, I’d take satisfaction in it.
The silence stretches, broken only by the rhythmic drum of rain. And then-
A scream.
A gut–wrenching scream.
It cuts through the storm–a blade, high–pitched and desperate. My head snaps toward the direction of the sound, my heart lurching into my throat. What the fuck was that?
Kallias stiffens beside me, his face paling.
“Shit,” I mutter, already moving toward the door. Kallias follows behind me, his steps hesitant at first, but soon we’re both sprinting back inside.
The party is in chaos. Omegas are clinging to one another, whispering frantically, while the guests–high–ranking Alphas, Betas, and their delegates–are frozen mid–drink, their eyes wide and fixed on something just beyond the open front doors of the packhouse.
I follow their stares, searching through the crowd, while my pulse raced a hundred beats per minute. The sound of thunder booms overhead, rattling the windows, as I reach the edge of the railing, gripping it tightly, my knuckles begin to turn white.
A woman stands at the entrance adorned with the same flowers I brought from the market, her elegant gown is soaked and clinging to her trembling frame. She’s screaming, pointing outside wearing her face with a mask of terror.
“What the hell is going on?” Kallias demands to the crowd, his voice sharp and commanding.
No one answers. Not even being the Alpha’s son. They’re too busy staring at whoever’s outside. Or what…
I rush to the railing, my hands gripping the polished wood as I peer out into the storm. The rain is relentless, sheets of water pouring down, but even through the downpour, I see her.
Someone or something–is crawling toward the packhouse.
Oh my God.
At first, it doesn’t register. The figure is barely recognizable, a tattered silhouette against the muddy ground. But as the f drags itself closer, the flickering porch lights illuminate her face, and my stomach lurches. My heart claws its way out of ribs and through my chest at the gore image I’m seeing right now.
The head maid.
Or what’s left of her.
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Her body is a mess of blood and torn flesh, her once pristine uniform is now unrecognizable–tattered and ripped. One of her hands is gone–completely gone–leaving a bloody, jagged stump that gushes with every agonizing inch she crawls forward.
“Help me!” she screams, her voice raw and ragged. “Please! Someone help me!”
The crowd gasps, recoiling as if her pain is contagious.
This is straight our of hell… As if someone dragged up a soul from the torturing chambers.
“Jesus Christ…“I murmur under my breath, my eyes wide with horror.
She drags herself closer, her remaining fingers and dirty nails clawing at the muddy ground, leaving streaks of red in her wake. My legs feel like they’re locked in place, rooted to the floor as I watch her crawl toward the porch, her face twisted in sheer agony.
“What the fuck happened to her?” someone mutters behind me, their voice trembling
No one answers.
I can’t breathe. My chest feels tight, my heart hammering so loud it drowns out the storm. The head maid finally reaches the edge of the porch, her broken body illuminated by the harsh yellow light.
And then the forest moves.
At first, I think it’s just the shadows shifting, the trees bending under the heavy of the storm.
But no. Something’s there.
A wolf.
Not just any wolf. This one is massive, its silhouette hulking and monstrous as it emerges from the tree line.
No, it’s no wolf. It’s a blood thirsty beast.
The rain slicks its dark fur, making it gleam under the dim light. It’s too big, too imposing to be anything but terrifying. The head maid sees it too as she slowly turns to see what we’re too busy looking at to help her. “N–no…” Her eyes widen in pure terror, her mouth opening in a choked sob.
“Help me!” she screams again, turning to us in haste, scrambling to pull herself onto the porch. “He’s the Al—”
She doesn’t get to finish.
The wolf lunges, its jaws snapping around her leg with a sickening crunch of her bone. “Ah!” Her scream is unlike anything I’ve ever heard–raw, guttural, and filled with the kind of that makes your blood run cold.
I stumble back, my hands flying to my mouth as the wolf drags her, by its mouth and sharp teeth dug into the head maid’s body, off the porch of help and back into the storm–where her end would be.
The beast is telling everyone in the room its not finished yet.
“No!” someone yells, but no one moves. We’re all frozeń, paralyzed by the sheer brutality unfolding in front of us The wolf disappears into the darkness, taking the head maid with it leaving mud trails in her wake. Her screams echo through the forest, mingling with the sound of tearing flesh and the wet squelch of blood.
She’s being torn, and killed as we watched with or own two eyes in fear or helping. “Argh! No!” The sound of her skin being ripped, her bones crushed. It’s an agonizing minute of pure, unadulterated, and torturing slow death.
Chapter 24
And then her last howl seeped through everyone as I feel a bond inside of me breaking, h member of the Young fuck separating.
She’s dead.
I feel sick. The metallic taste of bile rises in my throat as I clutch the railing, my kraukles turning white hoovad me, the pack is deathly silent, their eyes glued to the forest as if expecting her to reappear
She doesn’t.
The only thing that returns is the quiet.
And it’s deafening.
The sound of boots clattering against the floor jolts me out of my stupor. The pack warriors arrive, armed and alert and useless, they’re too late.
I stare into the distant forest where she’s being killed.
Far too late indeed.
The warriors still flood the clearing, their weapons drawn but ultimately useless. They’re minutes away from coming
The head maid’s agonized screams have long since dissolved into the haunting quiet of the woods, leaving nothing but the sound of rain and whispers of dread among the crowd.
.
“What happened now?”
2
“She’s–she’s gone…
I don’t realize I’m moving until I’m pressing against the nearest window, craning my neck to see past the rivulets of rain streaming down the glass. My breath fogs up the pane as my eyes dart wildly, searching for something–anything–that makes sense of what I just witnessed–of what horror that was.
And then I see it.
The wolf. The beast.
Its hulking frame lurks just beyond the tree line, shrouded in shadows and rain, but it’s the eyes that snare me.
Red. Glowing.
They pierce through the darkness, locking onto mine–a predator sizing up its prey. My heart stutters, my fingers gripping the windowsill so hard my knuckles ache. Fuck.
Crimson eyes.
Crimson fucking eyes.
I’ve seen those before.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head as I force myself to look away. The thought claws at the edge of my mind, dark and insistent, but I shove it down, burying it under layers of denial. It’s not possible.
It’s not him.
It can’t be him.
But the memory rises unbidden in my head–the way Enoch’s eyes bled red that day when I was attacked as I was doing my
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laundry at the back of the pack house, the raw, savage power that radiated off him when he tore that rope apart. The sheer force of his strength, his rage.
No.
I grit my teeth, trying to force the image away. He’s too innocent. Too lost with his own amnesia. Enoch doesn’t have blood on his hands.
Does he?
“Taryn!”
Kallias’s voice snaps me out of my spiral. I whirl around just in time to see him striding toward me, his jaw tight, his eyes blazing with determination.
“Step aside,” he orders, already yanking off his jacket.
“What-”
Before I can even finish, Kallias bolts past me and leaps through the open window. His body shifts midair, bones cracking and reforming with a sickening fluidity as his wolf takes over. His fur glistens under the rain, a deep brown streak that vanishes into the forest without a second glance.
The crowd erupts into panicked murmurs, the air thick with fear. I don’t blame them.
Delegates and pack members scatter, some rushing toward the stairs, others clutching their children as they retreat to their
- rooms. The once–elegant Mating Ball has dissolved into chaos, the scent of terror and blood hanging heavy in the air.
My feet move on autopilot, running through the fleeing crowd as I head toward the servants‘ quarters. My room.
The hallways are eerily quiet, the muffled echoes of distant screams and footsteps was the only sound accompanying me. I reach my door, my heart hammering against my ribcage as I fumble for the knob.
And then I see it.
Blood.
A dark, wet streak smears the edge of the doorframe, dripping down in sluggish rivulets. My stomach twists, a cold dread curling in my chest as I hesitate.
Don’t open it, Taryn. Just walk away.
But I can’t.
My fingers tremble as I turn the knob, pushing the door open inch by agonizing inch. The faint creak of the hinges sends shivers down my spine, but nothing prepares me for what I see.
Enoch.
He’s standing at the tiny counter in the corner, his broad back to me, shirtless and damp from the rain. The muscles in his shoulders ripple with every precise movement as he works on something I can’t see.
“Enoch?” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the pounding of my heart.
He turns, and my breath catches.
There’s blood. So much blood.
It drips from his fingers, staining the knife in his hand and pooling on the counter beneath him. But it’s not just blood—it’s
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the two fed of freshly skatedral
Hwy,” he says simply, his lips cargo a sulle that doesn’t wear) ús eyes, “I knewed”
$ic words hang in to both wavy and ominous thy poze flickers to the rabbi, ins lideless body sprawled out on the comer, and fawa bwk to koh
Something well niche
The room texts too small–the air too thick, and the way he’s looking at one–it’s on the soft, bewildered Enoch I’ve come so kowow. There’s something darker lurking beat the surface, something primal and unrelenting
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but at stays lodged there, waysiding,
Tooch.71 udecations step forward, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to steady it. “Are you okay?”
fis orale fakers, his gaze dropping to the knife in his hand. For a moment, 1 think he’s going to answer, but then he lifts his eyes back to mine, and all 1 we is the flash of red
No one will burnt Taryn anymore!
