Chapter 191: Centuries Ago
May’s POV
After the werewolves left, we started checking for damage. I had slipped to the back like a ghost the moment the first shots rang out. If I hadn’t, I would have died. I knew it, and my knees still hadn’t stopped shaking to prove it.
But I wasn’t as swift as Tony, my boss. He had vanished, and none of us had a trace of where he went or how he got there.
The wolves hadn’t come to play. They killed our men. Selene killed her own Draven. They couldn’t have been of the same fucking tribe, because how do you kill someone like that? If he was your kin, how do you look him in the eye and end him? At least her Lucas had died too. The rest of the seven were safe and preserved. I had wedged myself into a tight corner and stayed there until the smoke thinned and the war was over.
Then the noises stopped. Suddenly, the silence was worse. They had come, they had gone, and they had delivered their message in brutal fashion. Bodies lay everywhere, and the stink of blood and burnt flesh clung to the back of my throat.
The smoke had only partially cleared. I stood there, staring at the chaos. We were the ones who had set out to do this, and now it had been done to us, and tenfold.
"They want to reignite a war that ended centuries ago."
The voice came from within the smoke, and my heart jumped. I knew it was Tony. He was safe, thank God.
But he was the one who had wanted to reignite the war in the first place. Now they had retaliated, and he was saying they wanted to begin it? No. I swallowed that thought. Not today.
"Tony, is that you?" I asked, until he stepped out of the haze and I could see his face clearly.
It was truly him.
"How did you escape?" I asked.
"You’re not happy that I’m alive, are you?"
That wasn’t what I meant at all. He had been standing so close to the gunfire that he could easily have been shot dead.
"I have a bigger task and a heavy destiny, May," he said. "I can’t die like a fish. When I’m done killing the werewolves of Morvaine, I can die then."
I went to embrace him. It was the least I could do, and I realized I needed it more than he did.
"I’m so happy to have you back," I whispered into his shoulder.
Zeno and Salvatore stumbled out next, burnt and coated in ash. They looked like men who had crawled out of their own graves.
"What the hell happened to you guys?" I reached out to help Salvatore, but he pulled away.
"Don’t touch me," Zeno snapped.
Crazy as fuck, always acting like he knew better than everyone. I let him limp on his own.
Ciro emerged minutes later, looking as if he had walked straight out of a furnace.
"Where is Draven?" he asked.
Valentina came out at the same moment, asking the same question, her voice cracking on the last word. "Where is Draven?"
The room began to fill again. Voices rose over one another, grief and panic colliding, and Tony tried to calm them down.
"You guys have to listen. Calm down."
"Show us Draven and we’ll calm the fuck down," Ciro said.
Tony led them to a corner. I hadn’t even seen the body yet. Draven lay there, already dead, his eyes still wide open as though he were waiting for someone to explain what had happened. I knelt and closed them gently. It felt like the last decent thing anyone could do for him.
"Ahhhhh!"
Valentina’s cry tore through the room. She could not bear the sight of Draven shot, bled dry, and lifeless right before her eyes. "Draven! Who did this to you?" She collapsed over his shoulders, weeping so hard her whole body shook.
Salvatore was crying too, silently, tears cutting clean tracks through the ash on his face. Zeno joined him, his jaw trembling. Ciro just stood there, perhaps still trying to figure out how it had all happened.
"Our leader is dead," Zeno said hoarsely.
"He’s not the only one." I pointed to the other side of the room, where Lucas’s body lay apart from the rest.
They hadn’t seen him yet. I wondered how they would react.
They sighed, all of them at once, like air leaving a balloon. Ciro walked over and jabbed a finger at Lucas’s lifeless face.
"He’s the reason for all this pain. If he hadn’t left us that time, the Luna wouldn’t have had anyone to lead her down here."
"If I had a gun, I’d shoot Lucas over and over until his body went straight to the great beyond," Valentina said, her voice shaking with rage. "I hate you, Lucas." She spat on him.
I flinched, but I didn’t stop her. Grief needed somewhere to go.
"The deed has been done, guys," Tony said. "We just have to find a way to move on."
"Move on?" Zeno barked. "There’s no moving on from this shit. This is not what we were promised when we came into this place."
What was he saying? He wanted to give up? I had been here long enough to watch many people die, some of whom I wished I had died in place of. Yet I was still standing. I lived to fight now, and I fought for the cause. Maybe I needed to sit these guys down and school them a little.
Some of the surviving men came in to carry out the bodies. There were so many that they stumbled over them. The security men posted outside had been gunned down too, and no one had even noticed until now.
When they reached for Draven, Valentina threw herself in their path.
"Where do you think you’re taking him?"
"We’ll give him a befitting ceremony. Don’t worry," Tony said softly. "He was a well-fought soldier."
Valentina held his gaze for a long moment, then let go.
"We can’t let them get away with this," Tony continued. "If they were willing to kill all of you, they’ll do it again the moment they get the chance. We have to take this to the highest authority."
Ooooh. That was big, and it would be disastrous if it happened.
"What do you mean?" Zeno asked.
They didn’t understand, so Tony explained. He meant to take it to the president of Bernia. A security breach brought before him would be classified as a national threat, and the response would be swift and heavy, carried out on a national level.
"I agree," Ciro said. "Let’s do it. Out the wolves."
The others concurred, one after another, forgetting that they were wolves too. They were consumed by hurt, pain, and the hunger for revenge, and they couldn’t see past it.
It was going to get messier. I just wanted to keep surviving, the way I had been doing all this while. But as I looked at Draven’s covered body being carried away, I wondered how long survival alone would be enough.