19

ALINA

I slid to the floor, resting my back against the locked door. I wasn’t even trying to get out. My body was still shaking from what I had just seen.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Alexander kill. I didn’t know why this one rattled me more. He had murdered my entire camp right in front of me, and yet, I hadn’t been this shaken.

Maybe it was because, back then, I knew he was going to kill me too. There was a finality to it I had already accepted. But he didn’t. Now I was alive and stuck in his house, under his rule, and completely trapped. There was no way out.

Sobs tore out of my chest, shaking my entire frame. Every time I closed my eyes, the image of the young wolf collapsing played again and again. Like a loop I couldn’t shut off.

He was probably only around my age or just a few years older. I doubted he was even twenty three. And now, just like that, he is gone. What if he had a family? What if he had hopes? Dreams? A future?

Now he was nothing but a lifeless body, reduced to blood and silence.

And his blood was on me.

I scrambled to my feet too fast. My knees locked and I tripped, crashing to the ground. My elbow slammed against the marble floor, but I barely registered the pain. I pushed myself back up and staggered toward the bathroom, stripping my clothes off as I went. Or more like tearing them off with frantic fingers.

I didn’t wait for the water to warm. I just jumped under it. It was ice cold, sharp as knives, but I didn’t care. I needed that kind of cold. Maybe it would help force my brain to make sense of what just happened.

I scrubbed at my skin like I could erase what he did. Especially the arm he grabbed with his blood-stained hand. I didn’t stop. Over and over, harder and harder, until my entire body was red and raw. My teeth clattered from the chill when I finally stepped out. I wrapped a towel around my chest and just stood there, staring at nothing, not even sure what to do with my soaked hair.

Water dripped onto the tiles as I walked out, leaving a trail behind me. But I just kept moving forward, too numb to care.

“Whoa.”

I shrieked and jumped back, my whole body jolting in fear at the sound of the voice that came from the direction of my bed.

I gripped the towel tighter with both hands, heart pounding, and turned to see the last person I expected. Alexander’s brother. At least he had the decency to look slightly sheepish.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, though the amused glint in his eyes made it hard to believe. He was already smiling.

I wanted to ask how he got in. I heard Alexander lock the door. That little metallic click had sounded like a death sentence to me. The thought of anyone entering this space, especially him, without warning made me feel exposed all over again.

I guessed I would have to ask him later how he also got in the other night.

“Where’s my dickhead brother?” he asked, staring at me like he expected something.

I just stood there, not sure what to say. He peered behind me with raised brows and a mischievous smirk. “Was he in there with you?”

I was quick to shake my head. He could run his mouth all he wanted. Let him think whatever he wanted about me, but I wouldn’t stand there and let him make that kind of assumption.

Still, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t know how easily he was provoked. Maybe he was like Alexander who didn’t want to hear a woman’s voice unless he asked for it.

“Go and get dressed before you get sick,” he added, pressing his lips into a flat line. “I hear you wolves get sick easily.”

My eyes widened when he said that. The word wolves stuck in my ears like a threat.

Did that mean he knew? That he figured out what I really was?

No. That couldn’t be.

“And apparently, Lycans that spend too much time with them start acting like them. Adapting to their lifestyle,” he said, his voice sour with disgust. Like even saying the word werewolf tasted bad on his tongue.

“Go on. I don’t have all day, or until Alexander comes back.”

So he knew where his brother was. Then why ask?

Was he trying to trip me up? Trap me in a lie? Maybe test how much I knew?

I couldn’t think anymore. My head felt like it was splitting open. The ache behind my eyes throbbed hard enough to make me dizzy.

I went to the closet and threw on a hoodie I found. It was big and warm and covered most of me. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants too. When I walked back into the room, he eyed me from head to toe with a disinterested glance and said nothing.

I didn’t know where to sit, not with him on the bed. So I stayed standing by the door, unsure of what he expected.

“Tell me,” he said casually, “were you born in that pack?”

He said it like it was nothing. Like he wasn’t asking about the only home I had ever known. The home his brother destroyed.

“It is not a pack,” I blurted before I could stop myself. “It is a camp.”

I thought I had lost my voice after everything. After the screaming and crying and fear but apparently, there was still something left in me. A small spark.

Claude smiled, as if he was pleased I’d talked back.

“Yeah, camp, pack, whatever. You get the gist.”

“No,” I said softly, but clearly. “A pack is a home. With wolves. All tied together by a bond their wolves share. A camp… a camp is different. It can have both werewolves and Lycans. Most of us come from destroyed packs. There’s no bond. Just survivors.”

I didn’t say the rest, but he got the message.

Alexander and Claude had spent years tearing the world apart. Families ripped open. Homes burned. The lucky ones escaped, but even they weren’t welcomed anywhere. Other packs turned their backs on us. They believed anyone who survived a slaughter carried misfortune.

So the camps were born. A place for the shunned. The broken. The ones who had nowhere else to go.

There were many scattered across the continent. And some people were saying that maybe, just maybe, they were becoming something stronger than packs.

I wondered if Alexander knew that.

I almost laughed. Of course he did. And he hated it.

He wanted to kill every werewolf left on this earth. That was the goal. And he was succeeding. Slowly, surely.

Most of us were already gone. Those that weren’t, were hiding. Waiting for the day he would find them. And end them.

The Wolf Slayer. That wasn’t just some name they gave him.

It was who he was.

And after tonight, I understood something I hadn’t wanted to accept until now.

There was only ever going to be one ending for me.

Death.