CHAPTER 3: CLASH OF DESTINIES

Third Person POV

“You call yourself the heir to the throne, yet you hide like a coward! Show yourself and fight me like a man!!” The beast thumped his chest, the lycan king’s and queen’s blood on his hands.

The taunt went unheard and the evil rival to the throne had second thoughts about following the lycan prince out of the royal quarters and into the forest.

However, it was too late for him, for the betrayer found himself stabbed in the back.

Ironical, wasn’t it?  

The traitorous wolf had gotten a taste of his own medicine, but at the cost of killing his king and queen!

“Sebastian Longstone, you coward! Stabbing me in the back!!” The lycan prince’s elder brother screamed as he lunged towards the 30-year-old lycan.

“Pot calling the kettle black, eh, brother dear?” The rightful heir and crown prince coldly replied, sidestepping effortlessly and kicking the traitor’s ass with the back of his foot smoothly. 

“Oh, peaches,” Theodore snidely called out Sebastian’s name, catching his balance in the nick of time before he embarrassed himself in the mud and drove the knife further into his back. This was not how his plan was supposed to go.

Naked rage and a seething hunger for vengeance rushed through his veins as he reached for the knife stabbed in his back. He curled his long bony fingers around it, without pulling it out, to support himself.

He didn’t want to die due to blood loss yet. He was going to fight for his right.

“You poor, dumb weakling thought that they died merely from a stab wound in their backs? Huh,” he snorted. “I poisoned them just like I poisoned our mother years ago and blamed the whole incident on you. Yet you are still here! It is a pity our mother miraculously recovered and father didn’t banish you!!” He spoke through clenched teeth and two sharp claws clashed mid-air with each other’s, generating sparks.

“What can I say? People like me and I don’t go around trying to murder people who loved me and sheltered an orphan like me. I am more－what is the word your jealous ass told your parents? Oh yes, lovable,” Sebastian smirked and managed to claw the enemy’s torso easily as lava hot-rage blinded the enemy’s senses.

The burn of the claw wound made the elder brother hiss. His lycan couldn’t heal it due to the silver knife stabbed in his back. 

“There’s that ego again. I enjoyed its short vacation but I would like to kill the source permanently now,” Theodore darkly thundered.

“Mhmm, won’t expect anything else from you. You seem to be a master at killing your own people,” Sebastian taunted.

“You should have rotted in that orphanage!” Theodore furiously growled.

“And you should have burnt in the fire of your own jealousy, but no worries, you can still boil in the great fires of hell now,” the younger adopted brother calmly replied.

“You never deserved my parents’ attention. You are straight up cursed. You have no parents nor do you have a mate! The Moon Goddess does not even want you to ruin a girl’s life. You are that despicable,” Theodore spat.

Sebastian’s face fell momentarily at the harsh truth, but he recovered, his eyes turning colder by the second. He might not have found his soulmate like other werewolves and lycans at the age of 18 as he was going just over the edge of 30 years old, but he had not lost hope yet. He had sworn to wait for his mate while the Moon Goddess tested his patience.

Didn’t the wise say that the fruits of patience were the sweetest?

‘That is mighty coming from you – a parent-killer,’ Sebastian’s lycan, Titan, snickered.

“You brat! Say hello to mom and dad when I send you to hell,” Theodore screamed, and the lycans lunged towards each other as egos were bruised on both sides.   

Two pairs of eyes angrily shone in a blinding-bright, golden glow before the two lycan brothers leapt in the air to go for the kill. It was 'do or die' now and only one man would land alive.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sebastian’s POV

“Why Moon Goddess, why? Why did you take my family away? That too twice!” I screamed, looking at the full moon which shone in all its white glory, mocking down at me as I lit the pyre of my power-crazy brother near the river bank.

I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself. I had to give my brother a proper farewell even if he made my life miserable. I couldn’t droop to his level and let the wild animals eat his corpse, no matter how much I wanted them to tear it apart.

As I prayed, a gentle palm touched my shoulder and lightly squeezed it.

Sigh! My Beta.

“Sebastian, how can you send off this monster with such respect and pray for his crazy soul?” Zane irately asked.

“Stop insulting the dead.”

“I am not insulting him, I am merely describing him,” Zane rolled his eyes.

“Stop doing that. He was the son of the mighty lycans who provided me everything when I had nothing. I owe them this much,” I replied.

‘Bitch please, that man’s birth certificate was an apology letter from the condom factory,’ Titan replied through the shared mindlink with the Beta. ‘He killed his parents. We were a better son to them than him, their own blood.’

“Listen to Titan. He is right,” Zane snickered as he crossed his arms.

No wonder Titan and Zane were the best of friends. They were peas of the same pod.

“Your Highness,” a deep, worried voice resounded behind them before I could give a scathing reply to my lycan and beta.

My stomach almost dropped for a moment before I steeled my nerves for what was about to come.

“Did they－?”

The old doctor sadly shook his head and wordlessly conveyed that he couldn’t save them. Them－the lycan king and queen, Theodore’s parents and my adoptive ones.

My fists clenched and I looked back at the shining moon. In the dark, cloudless night sky, she smiled down at me, waiting for me to lose my sanity along with my family.

“She took away my family again.”

The centenarian (100 years old) doctor sighed and raised his trembling, old hands to open the young lycan prince-turned-king’s clenched palms and sandwiched them between his wrinkly, warm ones.

“She is not out there to take revenge on you, son,” the wise old doctor gently said. “It was all destined. You can not fight fate, nor can she.”

‘But it seems like it,’ Titan chimed. ‘Feels like Karma has raised her middle fingers at us,’ he added. 

‘This crude, savage lycan, sigh!’ I resignedly thought as I shook my head and looked at the doctor with apologetic eyes.

The old man in white robes chuckled through his flowing white beard and replied, “She has your best interests in her heart, son. Everything happens for a reason. Remember that,” he softly added, with a gentle pat on the back of my hand.

Suddenly, Zane gasped but I was already diving into the river and saving the source of the most tantalizing smell.

'MATE! MATE! SAVE OUR MATE!!' Titan shouted as I gathered the willowy, ice-cold figure in my arms and swam back to the river bank in record time.

The doctor peered down at the lovely woman in my arms and snorted.

"Hmm, the Moon Goddess might have taken away your family, but she seems to have given you another one. That too with kids!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *