Chapter 2

Fear gripped them both at once.

“Ah! Ethan, help!” Mary screamed, her voice sharp with panic.

“W-what are you doing?! Let us go! Let us go! Do you know who I am? I am the Alpha of the Bloodthorn Pack!” Ethan roared, his face pale with fury and fear.

But the men only chuckled, completely unbothered, lazily twirling the swords above their hands as if they were toys.

Desperate, Ethan instinctively turned toward me.

“Eleanor! Eleanor! Save us! Do something!”

He screamed my name again and again.

But I didn’t react.

I remained on the ground, lost in a daze, as if his voice could no longer reach me at all.

For the first time, I didn’t risk my life to do whatever I could to save him.

“Four minutes left,”

the masked man hummed lazily while the others laughed in amusement.

Ethan’s eyes widened in horror as realization struck him, if he didn’t speak, he and Mary would truly lose an arm. He turned sharply toward the masked man, stammering frantically.

“I- I will speak! I will speak!”

His eyes trembled as he shook his head, trying to think.

“W-what Eleanor doesn’t know…” He paused, swallowing hard before continuing, “She doesn’t know that Mary is pregnant right now!”

He yelled it out, desperation lacing his voice. Mary shakily nodded along, crying even harder as the sword glistened ominously above her hand.

Yet… I didn’t lift my head.

I didn’t react.

I felt nothing.

Silence stretched after his confession. For a moment, the men did nothing—then suddenly, they burst out laughing, their voices echoing through the air.

“Wrong!”

The masked man laughed along with them, raising three fingers casually.

“Three minutes left.”

Ethan and Mary’s faces turned deathly pale. They glanced at each other, clearly uncomfortable with what they were about to say, but with no other choice left, Ethan sucked in a deep breath and spoke again, this time refusing to look at me.

“W-we…” he stuttered, lifting his gaze toward the masked man. “Today… we wanted to kill her. That was why we tried to lure her out of the packhouse… so we could do it. Because if she died, then Mary… Mary would become Luna.”

As soon as he finished speaking, silence once again fell over the abandoned building. Everyone instinctively turned to see how I would react.

But once again… I didn’t.

My heart hurt so much it ached, a dull, crushing pain spreading through my chest, yet I still didn’t react.

They wanted to kill me so they could be together.

My husband… and my twin sister.

“Damn, you’re even more ruthless than us,” the masked man muttered, shaking his head in mock disbelief. But he only chuckled and added,

“But wrong answer again! You have one minute left!”

Ethan and Mary let out shaky gasps at his words, turning to look at each other as the men around them laughed at their expressions.

I didn’t know what they wanted.

I didn’t know why they were doing this.

I didn’t know what they wanted Ethan to say but whatever it was, it didn’t matter.

I was going to die anyway.

I had lost hope.

I had lost the strength to live.

All I wanted now… was to finally die.

“You know what we want to know, Alpha Ethan,”

the masked man drawled, his voice dripping with mockery. “So tell us, and you two can walk away with your limbs. Let your wife know what you did.”

His words lingered heavily in the air.

Ethan and Mary both swallowed hard, clearly understanding what he meant and the next second, Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clenching tightly at his sides. When he opened them again, there was a forced determination in them.

I could feel his gaze turn toward me.

Then he spoke.

Those words.

The words that made something inside me finally snap.

The words I had never, not even in my worst nightmares, imagined he would say…

“Our son… our son’s death wasn’t your fault…”

His voice trailed off, trembling, before he forced himself to finish.

“It was Mary who pushed him down the stairs… by accident.”

The moment those words reached my ears, I finally reacted.

My eyes widened violently, my heart dropping straight into my stomach as I jerked my head up to look at Ethan then at Mary, who lowered her head and cried even harder.

His confession echoed endlessly in my mind, over and over again, drowning out every other sound.

And just as I struggled to even comprehend what I had heard—

The masked man clapped his hands brightly.

“Ding dong! You are correct!”