☽☽☽MIKAEL'S POV☾☾☾ It takes a stretch longer than I'd prefer to wind down the road into the bold expanse of the estate. I swish up to the house, breaking the door into splinters by refusing to slow down. A clean sweep up to the first floor and basement confirms that she did not return to the abandoned residence for our stay. Her smell does not linger, and only faint traces of the Crestengalt heir can be found. The remnants of the shredded door swing back and forth, yet attached on its hinges. It creaks and shudders as I tear down the exit. My thundering feet send earth flinging and dead grass soaring in the air. The wind hurls scents of a battle down South of the estate. Rage motivates my ascent on the mixed terrain, but fear for her safety is all the fuel that strikes my essence. "By Selena..." I brush to an abrupt stop as the unbelievable view unfolds before me. Ruins and piles of rubbish from obliterated trees and level land infiltrate my peripheral view. The next hint that sp
☽☽☽MIKAEL'S POV☾☾☾ A scowl overtakes my cast as I set eyes on the fair-headed man bent over a walking stick, not from age but for a ruse. "Missed the train home, Whelan?" The bitterness yet stored within seeps into my tone. "Whelan?" The old, heavy voice rumbles like a clap of thunder rolling down the beak of a mountain. Long ago, in a distant land bound by time, I'd been a lad afraid of its owner. "I imagined I was once Seanathair to you, Mikael. Ain't it so, Cillian?" Cillian pulls further out from the woods—left untouched and spared from Saskia's dismantling—at the query. I do not give the coward a chance to voice his opinion. "You mean nothing to me. I don't remember a grandfather. Nay, I recall a sadistic fiend who gloated in sacrificing others for his evil causes—his family included." As patronising as the word might ever entail, Whelan corrects, "Family means naught without loyalty. I attack not those under my wings. You must've understood that by now, Alpha of Guttenbrie
☽☽☽MIKAEL'S POV☾☾☾ "What the...fucking...hell was that?" I scramble to rise, but my efforts are thwarted by a force field smashing my length to the ground. It all clicks in at once: magic. The weight on my spine, crushing my neck and torso to the ground, is of a mammoth's mass in thousands of tonnes. I snarl as the invisible load intensifies at my joints, breaking my bones. Whatever witch is responsible must be incredibly skillful. It's a hellish experience that might have had a more inexperienced version of myself centuries ago whimpering in pain. I've long learnt to endure worse. Warning bells wail in my head. It's evident Cillian and Whelan planned this from the genesis of our interaction. I'd been too blinded by my fury to see through their plan. Cillian hammers on this point with his utterance, "you were an idiot not to suspect the cause of our visit, Mikael." My hateful gaze pans upward, but it does not land on Cillian. Instead, Absalon's distasteful countenance is caught
☾☾☾ SASKIA'S POV ☽☽☽ Wade is a damned liar. I should have known better than to trust him to tell me the truth about how he felt. Even more annoying is that he clearly fooled me with his charms. While I often harped on the fact that werewolves could make themselves more attractive to others through their supernatural magnetism, I'd forgotten the fact that, in specific, they could conceal defects about themselves. In my state of despair, I'd become easily subject to his prowess. He'd gotten the chance to disguise the true extent of his injuries. If I say I'm not entirely beyond pissed off, then I'd be telling a lie—something those I cherish as friends and family seem adept at doing when I'm involved. "You don't need to do this." Wade coughs, a shadow of himself, having drained up to half the quota of blood in his body. I eye him in irritation. Is there any time he doesn't annoy me like it's a hobby of his? "I'll do what I want, Wade. Kindly shut the fuck up while I do." I want to
☾☾☾ SASKIA'S POV ☽☽☽ Wade's hand is fisted by his side when I return to scrutinising him. "I w-wish I realised...earlier that this was how... you'd been feeling. I was too occupied...and engaged by my self-imposed job of being...the happy-go-lucky guy. I never noticed...that you were burdened...by how we all treated you. I'm sorry, Saskia." He lingers between his words, trying to catch his breath and possibly summon the strength to speak. My heart clenches in my chest. I wish I could take away his pain and make it nonexistent. He doesn't deserve what Absalon did to him. I guess the thought that's been keeping me restless is the odds that his injuries aren't from Absalon's antics, as he claims, but from the destruction I caused with my powers. I can't yet envision forgiving myself for what I've done so far; if I was the one who truly hurt Wade, I know I'd truly never be able to grant myself forgiveness. It wouldn't matter how many years might pass; I'd continue to hate myself for
☾☾☾ SASKIA'S POV ☽☽☽ "Ignore what I said." "Okay." I can't. I swallow hard, glueing my sight to the road. Wade loves me? Perhaps he means as a friend. But we were talking about Mikael as a baseline. The Alpha wouldn't love me as a friend as I'm his wife. Moreover, that wouldn't be a kind of love worth being broached in chatter by another wolf. Things genuinely just got incredibly weirder. And awkwarder. My head feels like there's been a crater blasted into it. The indented hollowness is the equivalent of a cavity, and I find myself scrambling to fill my head with reflections other than that which refuses to dissipate: Wade loves me. I love him too, I realise. I love him as one who's been by my side for ages, one whom I've relied on in the thickest of battles, one who's never shied away from being a firm shoulder I could cry on. I love him for being an incredible person, but I have never dwelt on what kind of love it is. It's always been common sense that we care for each other l
☾☾☾ SASKIA'S POV ☽☽☽ You're such a fool, Saskia. The berating arrives only after the fibres of my undies have suffered the deluge of an Olympic-sized pool. It's embarrassing. My body still throbs for Mikael even after learning about his misdeeds. Even directly beside the man who's made himself vulnerable by disclosing a secret he's kept for years to me about his emotions, I'm thirsting for and craving the attention of a man who's bent on using me without a care for how much I'll hurt as a result of his evil deceitfulness. It's so ludicrous. I missed him before I knew what he'd done. And now that I know the crimes he's committed, I miss him maybe even more. Frankly, I just want him to come home so we can have an earnest discussion. I want to hear the truth from the horse's mouth. If I could help it, I'd pick up my phone and call him to hurry up and head back to the pack. I won't, of course. First, I have no inkling of my phone's whereabouts. Second, I wouldn't dream of hindering
☾☾☾ SASKIA'S POV ☽☽☽ Kaleb Sacramone makes no sense. No sense at all. Mikael's not dead. The man I talked to mere hours ago was everything but dead. Guttenbrieg's Lieutenant General often sucked at making coherent sense, but this is simply ridiculous. How dare he fake Mikael's death only to get under my skin? I might have slapped him if I didn't think he was insane. The werewolf needs a psychiatric intervention coupled with enough mental evaluations. His days in the dungeon must have turned him unhinged, a deranged creature. I make a mental reminder to request an appointment for him immediately after this is over. "Who is dead?" I parrot, pausing for him to assert that this is all a joke and rescind those hideous words. "Mikael isn't dead." Kaleb laughs in my face. Outright does so. I contemplate pulling out my daggers and holding them to his neck, drawing blood for his insolence. I fist my hands to keep from heeding any rash decisions. "Do you have hearing problems, Saskia? I b