DAVIDE’S POV: Mackenzie giggles as she explains what kind of a wedding dress she wanna wear for our wedding tomorrow. Her cheeks are flushed, her smile is stretched from ear to ear and her blue eyes are brimmed with excitement and delight. “I want a form-fitting, ivory dress with long illusion-lace sleeves,” she says. “Oh! I have many dresses like those in my shop. How I wish you can be there directly so you can choose the best one,” the designer replies, also with an excited and delighted grin. Mackenzie’s smile withdraws a bit when she glances at me. Needless to ask why, I can sense that she wanna do what the designer has just said. I smile at her, a brittle one. It’s not easy for the both of us to continue hiding in a place where there’s almost no one to talk to and almost the same things to see. So I understand that she wanna get out of here from time to time. But I also hope that she understands why I can’t give her what she wants just yet. I turn to the designer and s
I tuck four pistols in my holsters that are hung around my waist, then I dangle a rifle across my chest and aim it in front of me. Each muscle of mine is tensed up. They’re heated up, producing sweat to smear my skin. My sight is laser focus towards the stairs that lead to the door - the only way in and way out of this basement. Every step I take closer to that stairs makes my heart more ill at ease. But even if my heart bursts in anxiety, I have no other choice but to keep prowling, waiting for my enemies, who were once my associates, to make the fatal move. I stop and stay low beside the stairs. For a good amount of time, there’s nothing so far but the same ceaseless explosions of bullets from somewhere outside my mansion. I’m glad that my mansion’s walls and glasses are bullet-proof, which will make my enemies not only lose patience and precious time, but lose hundreds if not thousands of bullets. By the time they’re here, I’ll have the advantage. I glance at Mackenzie, who’s s
ALESSANDRO’S POV: An ear-splitting boom reverberates when the grenade that one of my men threw explodes. The impact of the explosion hurts my eyes and deafens my ears a little for a short while. Billowing around are coarse, pungent dusts and bright orange, flickering embers and flames. The dust and the smoke make it hard to see and to breathe that my men and I have to move away from the basement’s entrance until the effect of the explosion subdues. I turn to Sebastian, who’s coughing hard as if he’s about to die. Then I anxiously ask, “You’re sure that that basement is large enough that a small grenade won’t be able to fully destroy it, right?” He nods his head with closed eyes and dangled tongue. If that basement is large enough, I hope that Davide and my subject manage to hide somewhere where the explosion won’t reach them. I may be a cruel man, but I’m still a father. And the experiment will be smoother if we get the subject alive. My heart ripples in anxiety as my men and
Pregnant! Pregnant! Pregnant! That one word bothers me so much to the point that sleeping becomes oddly impossible to do. My chest is recklessly pounding while my head is savagely undulating. Fury! Dismay! Regret! These three always unwanted sensations are antagonistically working together to devastate me in every possible way. I’m furious at Davide for possibly impregnating a monster and possibly giving me a future grandchild who’ll also be a monster! I’m dismayed that he doesn’t even consider his actions and decisions - I expect him to be smarter than that! And I’m regretting for allowing them to be too close and inseparable - I thought that their closeness would fetter Mackenzie securely to us, but it backfired! I breathe in and breathe out heavily to pacify the ludicrous distress that’s bolting in me. I then close my eyes, pinch the bridge of my nose with my fingers and dig my elbow on my desk while waiting for Primo to accept my video call request. It takes me about two at
Before my father finds out what I found out, I quickly call on for a secret meeting. Carrying his laptop with me, I invite several Betas of our pack, who are more loyal to me than to him. Then we head towards Mackenzie’s home - the best place to conduct the meeting. Frank and Elaine direct us to the wooden sofas in their living area while they settle themselves on the chairs that they pull out close to us from their dining table. Both their faces and postures discharge apprehension. I haven’t spoken a single word yet, but it’s obvious that they already have a hunch of the reason why I come into their house without prior notice, and they’re right about it - it’s because of their daughter, my mate, Mackenzie. I pull out father’s laptop from the bag I’m carrying and lay it on the wooden center table in front of us. Then I tap my fingertips on the laptop and say, “Everything I wanna say to you is in here - this is where father’s secrets are stored in.” Everyone glances at each other
Growls incessantly clear out of me. But no matter how feral they are, they can’t reduce the searing anger that’s foaming up within me. Father stays calm though. If he thinks he can intimidate me with his indignant stoicness like always, well he’s wrong. The anger in me is much stronger than any kind of intimidation he’s hurling my way. To prove that I really am unbothered by his apathy, I clutch the gates and violently shake them. The ones who are with father start to shift into their lycan forms. They position themselves in a stance of readiness to fight. Despite the bloodshed that’s awaiting me, I keep shaking the gates with the desperate desire to get in. Frank and Elaine also shapeshift into lycans and help me in shaking the gates. It doesn’t take a minute when we successfully destroy the gates. When the gates collapse to the ground, all hell breaks loose. Thudding of bodies and growling of anger fill the scene. Everyone who’s transformed either attacks or retaliates.My first a
DAVIDE’S POV: Mackenzie. She’s the first one I can think of and the only one I wanna see. Where is she? And where am I? I weakly fold my eyelids open. Through their narrow slits, there’s a white suspended ceiling. I angle my eyes to my sides, there’s a mechanical ventilator. By seeing this, I realize that the lower half of my face is covered by a ventilator mask. I then weakly raise my arm. It’s coiled with gauzes while the back of my hand is injected with drips that are attached to another apparatus beside the bed I’m lying on. When I lay my arm down, I notice a plaque hanging on the wall opposite to me. It has a familiar institution’s name called Saint Luke’s Medical Hospital. How long have I been here? I’m sensing that I’m in a horrible state for being stuck here, for wearing a ventilator mask and for being injected with drips. However, I don’t feel any pain. In fact, I feel numb. What the hell has happened? I close my eyes to enable my memory to take me back to the last f
In less than two days after waking up, I regain some of the strength I need to walk without anyone’s assistance. My skin is still covered with gauzes though, but the burnt doesn’t look as terrible as I anticipated it would be. Nothing else has happened aside from me battling my impatience for Vivienne’s confirmation about his men’s arrival and my anxiety of what’s currently happening to Mackenzie and our unborn child. As I’m staring outside the window and clutching my phone inside my pocket, knocks come to the door. Everytime it happens, I’m wishing that it’s Mackenzie who’ll enter. But as always, it’s somebody I’m not interested to see or to talk to - it’s dad, this time. For the first time since I woke up, we finally meet again. No, actually, for the first time since I eloped with Mackenzie, we finally see each other again coz I didn’t see his face when he ambushed us. I only heard his disagreeable voice. “How are you, my son?” he asks with his arms raised sideways while he saun