Chapter 1. Throes of Murder

☉NAIDA

I heard the drums first.

The sounds of celebration filtering in from the windows set off a splitting headache between my temples. Groaning, I peeled my eyes open, realizing that my entire body was aching. The room was dim, and it took a few blinks to get accustomed to the fact that meager rays of moonlight were the only source of light in here.

I tried to sit up and realized that I was holding something solid. My head felt so hazy, coupled with the headache, so I was too disoriented to even realize what it was. A metallic smell hung heavily around me like a shroud and it intensified with each passing second.

Then it finally clicked.

It was blood.

“W-what…?” I croaked, bringing my hands closer to my face. There was blood coating my skin, and a large, sharp knife wrapped within my fingers, caked with blood.

My heart pounded, as I looked around me, noticing that there was blood… everywhere. All over the floor, congealed, darkened pools of it… and to my horror, my eyes found the source of all the bleeding.

Alpha Cassian, my master, the man I had believed to be my mate, the only man I had ever wanted, was sprawled on the cold floor. His large, broad six-foot body seemed deflated and lifeless now, pale and shrunken. There was so much blood all over his neck and chest, that one couldn't even tell where his injuries were.

My entire body has gone rigid with shock, like there was a wall preventing what I was seeing from sinking in. I could only stare at the way the blood matted his dirty blond hair, and how his lifeless green eyes stared back at me in icy accusation.

The door suddenly flew open, “Alpha, pardon my interruption—”

The words died off as the guard was met with the gruesome, bloody sight. His face washed into a ghostly white, as he stared at Cassian's mutilated body, and slowly, slowly moved his eyes to me, and the bloody knife in my hand.

My eyes widened, “Wait, I—”

“You!” He snarled so loudly that the drums outside ceased. “You murderous pest! You murdered the Alpha!!”

“No!” The knife clattered to the floor as I panicked, scrambling backward when the guard charged at me, “I don't know what happened, I swear to the goddess, I don't— ah!”

His hand smacked my head to the side, with a force so hard that pain exploded across my entire skull. I gasped, feeling blood splurting down from my mouth and nostrils from the impact. It was a miracle that my neck didn't crack.

He grabbed me by my hair and threw me against the wall. The hard concrete knocked the breath out of my lungs, and I crumpled to the floor, mumbling incoherent pleas as tears leaked out of my eyes. His fists descended on me, with growls and the most foul curses spilling out of his frothing mouth.

I was probably screaming, I didn't know anymore. It felt like an out-of-body experience watching a crowd grow by the door full of terrified servants and shocked elders of the pack.

“Cassian!” there was a high-pitched scream, and Nysa burst into the room, nearly tripping over her expensive silk dress. “Oh no, no, no!!” She was screaming herself hoarse, kneeling in the pool of blood and grabbing his shoulders.

“My mate! Who did this to my mate!” She sobbed, abandoning all of her grace and sophistication. Her obsidian eyes slid to me, and they refilled with more hate than I had ever seen before, despite how badly she had treated me from the moment Cassian took me as his mistress.

“It was her!” The guard pushed me forward, and I hit my head against the floor. My blood was dripping down my chest now. “The Alpha had summoned her in here during the celebration, only for me to return to find him dead and her holding the knife that butchered him!”

Nysa let out a long wail of anguish, weeping into Cassian's bloody chest.

“I didn't..” my voice was a pathetic gargle, “I would never—”

My words were useless, because the crowd drowned me out with their angry, bloodthirsty cries. A good number of them burst into the room, but the guards held them back. They only parted to let Regulus, the Beta of the pack and Cassian's uncle, pass through.

He stared at the carnage, and then at me, his ageless face unmoving.

“Cassian had always been thinking with his cock and not his head, over this mere human.” He said flatly. “Look where it's led him.”

“She has to die!” Nysa screamed, meeting my eyes. “You’ll be tortured slowly, stabbed multiple times! Deep enough to draw blood, but not enough to grant you a quick end! I'll have your head for this and let the crows pick at you! You filth! You stole my mate and now you've killed him!”

The crowd roared in agreement.

I was trembling, shaking my head in horror. I didn't do it. I couldn't remember anything that had happened, except from when he had summoned me to his bedroom. It was the annual pack celebration of the moon goddess, and during full moons like these, Cassian's sex drive usually skyrocketed.

I had only gone to him to do my job as his mistress… only to wake up bloody, with him dead and bleeding on the floor.

“Throw her in the dungeons,” Regulus ordered coldly. “She will be executed tomorrow, by midnight.”

The guard grabbed my matted brown hair, dragging me out of the room. I heard Nysa screaming at the Beta for not letting her torture me to death, I felt my knees scraping against the floor, I felt the crowd grabbing and ripping my dress, hitting me as we moved along.

I had ruined their celebration by murdering their Alpha. They would never believe that I was innocent. Me, a slave, a mistress, a human. They already wanted me wiped off from the earth. This only sealed my fate.

I couldn’t even feel disgust or pain as they spat on me, throwing sharp objects that cut my skin and drew even more blood.

All I could see, was Cassian's handsome face, frozen permanently in death.