Chapter 100: Evil Witch
The woman attacks them first, shifting midair into a reasonably large brown wolf with red spots.
Both men shift and pounce on her, but it isn’t as easy as they thought. The articles in the archives weren’t exaggerating about Theresa’s strength. They have to fight tooth and nail, but eventually, both wolves manage to subdue her.
Then, Caius drives a large silver knife into her chest to finish the job.
Her bleeding, battered wolf form lies in the middle of the hut. Her limbs look wrong, and her eyes are still open.
Dorian gapes at his father’s silver knife, still buried in the wolf’s chest. "Why did you kill her? Didn’t he say he needed her alive to make the weapon?!"
Caius, completely unbothered, pulls the knife from her chest, wiping the blood on her fur.
"She’s not a special wolf. She’s just a witch."
"Huh?!"
Caius scowls. "Look at the symbols on the walls! Those are all black magic encryptions. That explains why she was so strong--she’s not special, just a crook."
Dorian looks around, for the first time realizing the room is completely laced with dark magic. Goosebumps instantly kiss his skin.
"You don’t understand how strong the wolf we’re looking for is, do you? An ordinary silver knife cannot kill them." He kicks the body. "That’s why we need to make sure we find them fast!"
Dorian nods. He knows exactly what’s going to happen when they find that special wolf. They will be tortured for days, made to bleed out slowly, while the collected blood will be used to create a weapon strong enough to wipe out an entire village.
His father had somehow gotten entangled with some humans who wanted to take over a few werewolf territories.
He promised to help them find what they were looking for, only if they helped him overthrow his brother, make him Alpha of Moon-Crest, and get rid of the entire Blackwood family. And that’s why they had come back here, because the trail led them too Moon-Crest.
Dorian doesn’t agree with his father’s judgment because he remembers how hard it was for him after his mother died here in Moon-Crest.
Caius blames his brother for his mate’s death. His mother and Luna Selene had gone into labor almost at the same time, but his mother had some serious complications during his birth. Of course, because Alpha Darius was head Alpha, they prioritized his mate over Dorian’s mother, and she died shortly after his birth.
Since then, there’s always been some form of animosity between them, and Caius took his infant son and left Moon-Crest.
Meanwhile, unlike conventional mates, his mother was an Alpha herself, and his father had loved her so much that he let her give him a reciprocal mating mark.
After her death, the mark burned for days on end. He could barely breathe, eat, or perform the most mundane tasks for almost an entire year.
He heard from neighbors how his father fought for his life endlessly until he slowly recovered. They stayed in that pack for sixteen years, and his father made sure to plant that hatred for the Blackwood family in him from an early age. That’s why, when they had come back to Moon-Crest three years ago, he had acted like that with Anna without remorse.
He didn’t care about Anna. He just believed in taking whatever Adrian had, just like his mother had taken the treatment that should’ve gone to his mother. It didn’t help that the other cubs constantly compared them to each other.
After that incident, there was another big rift between both fathers. And eventually, his father staged their return to the pack they had stayed in all those years.
But coming back here this time around, he just...doesn’t feel the same hatred he felt all those years ago. It’s been nineteen years now. He wishes his father would just let it go as he has.
Too caught up in thought, he doesn’t see his father pull out a child who had been hiding under a wooden desk.
Not until the child whimpers in fear does Dorian’s head snap up.
The young boy should not be more than eight years old. There is tears running down his cheeks, and he refuses to look at the dead wolf lying in the middle of the room.
Shit. He had probably watched his father tear the old woman apart in real time.
He is shaking in fear, especially when he sees Caius pull out his claws again.
"What are you doing?!" Dorian questions with a frown, immediately moving between them.
"Move."
"You don’t need to kill him! They already saw us, they know who we are!" Dorian growls in frustration.
This is getting out of hand now. Killing an innocent child is something he cannot stomach.
"You think I care if they think we killed her?!" Caius’s voice turns cold. "This child heard everything we said here. He’ll tell someone about the special wolf we’re looking for!"
Even still...
"Dad, please."
"Look at you acting all soft!" Caius sneers as he steps closer. "Tell me, how do you intend to become Alpha one day if you can’t even make the necessary decisions?"
His hot, angry breath fans down Dorian’s neck as he leans in. "How do you intend to beat Adrian if you’re so fucking weak?!"
Okay, that’s a low blow.
He hates being compared to Adrian, and his father knows it.
Dorian bares his teeth in frustration, refusing to let the words eat at his conscience. He tries to think of something, anything to calm his temper.
Unsurprisingly, Nyra’s face pops into his head, as it has been doing since the day he saw those beautiful, bright, amber eyes. He imagines her here, smiling at him, telling him how good it is that he’s trying to protect the child.
His face hardens as he shakes his head. "I’m not letting you hurt him. There are other ways, Dad!"
Caius stares at him, his gaze full of contempt and disappointment. Then he lunges.
His father slams him into the wall, claws tearing into his skin. He tries to fight back, but his father is stronger and far more experienced.
"How dare you try to stop me!" His father growls in anger, diging his claws into his neck, then dragging it down to his chest, leaving a deep three-linned claw marks from his neck down to his chest. The wound is so deep that there’s blood seeping onto the muddy ground.
Dorian gasps in pain, clutching his neck, struggling to breathe. His father shows no guilt in his dark eyes. "Don’t you ever forget who you owe your life to."
Then he turns to the child, still frozen in place, picking him off the ground by the neck. While Dorian is struggling to breathe, he digs his claws into the small boy’s chest and rips his heart out, dropping the body to the floor like waste.