CHAPTER 12: SELLING THE ILLUSION

MAKENA

My eyes popped open, and I jolted upright in bed, temporarily disoriented. I overslept, and Snow's desperate voice echoed in my head.

"No, no, no. Please, no-" I scrambled for my bedside clock, knocking it off in the process, then jumped to my feet and picked it up, sighing with relief when I saw the time: 11:05 PM. I was late but not too late. It wasn’t morning yet, and I could still keep my promise to Val.

I quickly pulled out a black outfit and mind-linked Erika while changing to finally explain why I had her take the key.

Val believed he was a danger to others and didn't belong among people, so I was concerned that he would refuse to move into the apartment. I needed to talk to him first before telling Erika to come meet us at the forest's edge.

She responded immediately, and I filled her in on the details. Thankfully, she didn't complicate matters and agreed to stand by. I needed her to pick us up after I finished convincing Val.

After I finished getting dressed, I checked to make sure the hallway was clear and dashed into the gardens, heading for the wall. As usual, I made it without incident. With the rain pouring down and lightning tearing across the sky, no one was outside.

I flinched every time it hit, but I pressed on. The moment I reached the trees, I shifted into my wolf form. Snow took over immediately, racing through the forest with a sense of urgency. I would have preferred to shift while still in my room to save time, but sneaking out in wolf form would have been too risky. We would have been caught for sure.

We arrived at the building after what seemed like an eternity, but what we saw made my heart stop. Val lay on the ground, unconscious. He must have had another of those attacks.

I shifted back immediately, unconcerned that I was naked, and rushed to his side. Kneeling beside him, I pulled his head onto my lap while shedding a few tears.

Why was he going through this? Wasn’t it enough that he lived alone, abandoned in the forest? Did he really have to suffer like this?

Gently massaging his scalp, I began humming a soft tune to keep myself from falling apart. I needed to be strong for him. After a few minutes, perhaps longer, he moved. "Hey," I said quietly, and our gazes met. He responded groggily, a smile lighting up his face at the sight of me.

"You got one of those headaches again?" I asked, more of a statement than a question, and he confirmed.

"You came," he said, reaching for my face and cupping my cheek, and emotion welled up inside me again at the thought of how I almost didn't, if my plan had failed.

"I did... I promised I would, didn’t I?"

"You did," he said softly, and we stared at each other in silence for a moment, losing ourselves in each other's eyes while my heartbeat quickened with each passing second before I leaned down and kissed him. He kissed me back with the same raw emotion that swelled inside of us.

But just then, a lightning bolt struck the sky, breaking the spell. We drew apart, his eyes returning to their natural color while I cleared my throat and took a deep breath, knowing it was time to move to the tricky part.

I needed to get him out of this place as quickly as possible. Plus, I couldn't keep Erika awake all night waiting for my signal.

"Val," I said softly, reaching for his hand. "I need you to come with me. I have arranged a place for you to stay-" I began, but did not finish as he interjected, pulling his hand back and getting to his feet.

"I can't leave this place."

"Yes, you can. This isn’t a life, Val," I said, rising to stand beside him before placing my hand gently on his back as he turned away from me. "I know you are afraid of hurting others, but you won't."

"How do you know that? How can you guarantee it?"

"Val, I-"

"No! I’m not going anywhere. I can’t be around people. I can't." His voice rose in panic, and I pulled him into a hug, feeling the tears well in my eyes.

"You're not a monster," I whispered, tightening my arms around him. "You're not a monster, Val."

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AKIRA

The car rolled to a stop in front of the expansive estate I called home, and my driver looked back at me as he waited for a signal, but I remained motionless. I just sat there, slumped in the back seat, watching the drizzle smear across the window like blurred ink.

It had been a long, chaotic day. But the chaos was nothing new to me. It came with the business; hell, it was the business. So despite our best efforts to put out the sparks before they turned into an inferno, there were some we couldn't control, such as those caused by Val Di Corvo's death.

His death tore through our world like lightning through dry wood. His father, Van di Corvo, the Capo dei Capi, was the unchallenged godfather of our world. Val was his heir, months away from being crowned and taking his father's seat at the Round Table as our new capo, when someone decided to end his life and fuck us all.

His vehicle was bombed in a clear assassination, and Van demanded answers for his heir's death, which we could not provide. Val had been traveling to meet with the Martinez, the second richest Cartel.

Even though he was on his way to Martinez, the bombing occurred on no-man's land, a stretch of unoccupied land just before entering Martinez's territory.

The Martinezes swore they had nothing to do with it, but Van and his remaining son, Mel, didn't care. They terrorized everyone and were bloodthirsty.

I admired whoever set that bastard ablaze. It took guts to pursue someone like Val... guts, or a death wish. For years, I tried to open their eyes and tell them that allowing the Lycans to rule us was a mistake--that their bloodline did not entitle them to sit above the rest of us. But nobody listened. They were from the West, and their rule should have ended there.

But my father and the other wolf leaders were content to bow to those freaks, making excuses for how they maintained order.

“The Lycans keep the balance. Without them, the factions will collapse into greed and war.” My father always said.

What they never talked about was the truth that the Lycans were the greediest of all. They had their claws in everything: shipping, weapons, land, and black-market pharmaceuticals. They owned the docks, the rails, and even most of the air routes to our territories.

But no one was allowed to own anything in their territories. That was the real balance they maintained: them on top, everyone else crawling beneath them.

We were wolves... alphas, and we were not supposed to bow to anyone, especially those two-legged freaks. If we had to be led so badly, couldn't we choose our own leader, one of us?

With a bitter laugh, I finally opened the door and stepped outside into the cold. The storm had finally passed, thank goddess. Moving inside, my mind began to shift gears, pushing politics to the back of my mind. There were more pressing issues at hand.

My mother and I had attended the opening of the Festa di Sangue e Luna earlier. It was our annual celebration, a centuries-old tradition held when the Blood Moon rose over the Southern territories.

The night honored our ancestors, who had survived the Burning Era and built the foundations of the underground empire we now ruled.

Rituals, performances, and offerings took place around midnight. I never cared much for the ceremony, but I respected its meaning.

However, I only got through the first speech before my phone rang. Our cargo ship had sunk less than an hour from the docks. I had to leave my mother to meet Father at the coast.

The ship was carrying a shipment of silver-dipped weapons and experimental suppressants, which we had obtained from Eastern European contacts and intended to arm our elite hunters and manage rogue transformations.

It was a major investment, one I had negotiated myself. Now half of it was probably at the bottom of the ocean.

I spent the next few hours coordinating salvage operations and personally supervising divers and recovery teams. Before I left the festival, I had given the order for my men to go get Makena. So I could finish what they had failed at.

I was still undecided about the method I would use. Obviously, making her father watch was out of the question, as I needed to be more discreet since she would be returning in a coffin from my home. I had three poisons prepared and ready. Poison, on the other hand, was not my style, and I was annoyed that I had been forced down that path.

As soon as I stepped inside the house, one of the housekeepers appeared to help me remove my coat, and I let him. It was dinnertime, and I heard my parents' voices coming from the dining hall, so I went over.

The thought of seeing Makena made my chest tighten... calculation, maybe. But I quickly recovered; I couldn't afford to slip.

I would play the part, I would be the devoted fiancé, the man in love. I might even mark her if she did not irritate too much, to sell the illusion. Show the world how much I "cherished" her. That way, no one would suspect me when her body turned up dead on her family's doorstep.

They'd point fingers elsewhere while I played the part of a broken lover clinging to a ghost.