9. CRONOS'S END

JULIA

I woke up coughing and choking from the smoke of a now burning car. My skin rubbed against the rough and rocky ground and as I looked around, there was no one else except for Amir who was heavily injured beside me.

I immediately crawled towards him. He was groaning, clutching his bloody chest and almost fainting. I tried to talk to him and call his name but when he looked up to me, his eyes flash with a bright glow and soon disappeared.

“You—You have to run, miss,” he said, coughing up blood.

“What happened? Where is Zeke?” I asked him as I slowly helped him sit upright and lean his back against the vehicle.

Amir shook his head and lifted his shaky hand and pointed toward the opening of the forest. I bit my lip and looked around. We were stranded on the side of the road and it looked too isolated for someone to pass by. There was no one else to ask for help.

“Tell me what happened. Who did this?” I asked him again. He tried to speak but he had difficulty in doing so.

“Cro—Cronus,” he spurted out. “He knew we were coming and—and attacked. My men—my men and the Black one.”

The man was bleeding too much. He had long, deep and claw-like wounds on his bare chest. I immediately took off the coat and placed it above his wound.

“We need to make it stop bleeding.” My hands were shaking and a wave of dizziness washed over me as I looked at the wound. I immediately looked away and calmed myself down.

“You need to run away now. We’re now sure if the black one will survive.” Amir insisted on taking off the coat off of him but I pushed it down making him wince. I immediately apologized.

“I can’t leave you here,” I insisted, I won’t leave an injured person behind, and I will not leave Zeke. “We will wait until Zeke returns.”

There was slight hesitation in his face but he didn’t push any further. It seems like he realized that it was better to conserve his strength rather than arguing with me.

“You don’t know what he is, do you?” he asked when he noticed how worried I was staring into the forest. A part of me wanted to run towards it and find him.

“It doesn’t matter what he is.” It doesn’t matter. He saved me.

“I don’t think you understand how dangerous he is,” he continued. “Being with him is a double edged sword.”

My eyes still didn’t leave the woods in hopes of seeing his silhouette or any sort of movement.

“You need to run while you still have the chance to, miss. He is not someone who can love and feel. That man is a monster.”

I turned to him. “That monster took your hand when you asked him for help.”

Amir laughed bitterly, his eyes sparked as if he knew something I didn’t.

“It’s not that he wanted to help. He also needed something from me that’s why he chose to accept the offer.”

“Then why did you ask him for help in the first place? If you knew he was dangerous?” I answered. His expression shifted and his eyes lowered down to his hands.

“Sometimes, you need a monster to defeat a monster.”

Before I could even answer him, something rustled in the bushes of the forest. Both of our heads turned and even with Amir’s injured body, he brought himself in front of me as if he was shielding me.

“When I say run, you run,” he said in a low voice, almost like a snarl.

The rustling became louder and louder and my heart was beating against my ribcage. My body was tense and I could almost hear the ringing in my ears. It better be Zeke, I was hoping it was Zeke.

I almost jumped when something was thrown out in front of us. Something like a circular object that landed in a thump and rolled its way towards us both. Before I could process anything, I realized that I was staring at its eyes wide open.

I gasped. It was a man’s head. A MAN’S HEAD!

His eyes looked as if they were set in stone, like it was his last expression the moment he got decapitated. All of the hair from my body rose as I tore away my eyes from his.

“I guess your pack is mine now,” a familiar voice spoke from the forest.

“Zeke,” I whispered and stood up with all the strength I had in my knees after seeing that.Even if I stumbled I still managed to run towards him as he walked out of the forest.

Relief washed over me when I saw him alive. I could finally breathe. He was covered in blood while wearing his torn up robe. His head was a mess and half of his face down was covered in blood as if he had a feast.

He stared at me as if I was an unfamiliar person. His eyes glowed in a bright golden color and his expression was different. He was colder, harsher, and a whole different person. I unconsciously stepped back.

“Back away, Miss. That’s not him.” Amir said with panic in his voice. “Where are my men?”

His eyes never left me. He looked at me as if I was a plaything, an object that amuses him.

“Alpha—Amir!” someone called from behind him. Two men limped towards us, the other one had his arm over his shoulder and looked heavily injured.

“Your men were useless ragdolls,” Zeke said. Once again, his eyes bore into mine. I blinked, still feeling the unfamiliar aura from him. “But at least you were able to keep her alive—and uninjured, I hope.”

“You saved my men,” Amir said with disbelief in his voice. It’s like he didn’t believe that his men were actually alive. Even if they looked like a mess and broken, they were still alive.

“I thought you were dead,” I finally spoke, my voice hoarse. I was able to speak after being frozen for some time. Even if he felt like a different person, even if he just beheaded someone, I was still relieved that he was alive.

But I didn’t know what to expect after that.