6.

Lucian’s P.O.V.

I lift my feet slowly to carry me up the steps to the front door, my muscles tight with exhaustion. The sound of the blood that drenched me hitting the floor with every step is a periodic reminder of what I’d lost. I didn’t really lose anything though, did I? Can’t lose something you never had.

I close the door behind me and lock it. The house was dark, the space still with a deafening silence I wanted to break, to stop the torment. I make my way through the halls and up the stairs to my room, content with dealing with my inevitable lecture tomorrow.

I had entertained the thought of erasing any evidence of the massacre which laid beyond the border. I could go back and bury them, then the only proof left would be me.

But I didn’t have to think for long to know that it didn’t make much sense to wash away the proof.

I couldn’t wash away myself; the stain on me would never fade.

“Lucian,” Dad calls from the office, and I sigh.

“I don’t want to talk right now,” I manage, continuing my journey to my room.

“Lucian, we need to talk,” comes another voice, heavier and much angrier, Mom.

I keep walking despite the sound of their steps chasing me, their calls getting louder as they get closer. I leave the door open for them, knowing they wouldn’t leave me alone, and stumble into my room. It didn’t really feel like my room; all my eyes showed me were things Sienna gave me, things she’d left behind during her visits, and the pictures she’d hung up without my permission. The only thing that stood out as mine was Blaze, his eyes wide as he stared up at me with my shorts in his mouth.

“Lucian, where were you…” Dad’s words fade slowly when they enter my room and see me. The hairs stood again but I ignored it. The storm had gone and passed; there was nothing else to fear.

So I turn around to face them, lifting my chin to deflect the horror in their eyes as they looked at me. I let them take me in.

My hair was still wet with blood. I’d pushed it back, yet the cold liquid still ran down my neck and the edges of my face. My clothes were covered in more dirt than blood, a weird mixture of the two that stuck to me like a second skin. Dry blood covered my arms like an elastic glove, moving all the way to my elbows, exposing the way I’d dug inside some of the bodies with my hands.

They had their usual look plastered on their faces: horror, anger, and disappointment were their founding features. I was used to it at this stage in my life, so I just stood there and waited for the inevitable.

“What did you do?” Dad asks, breaking the silence first, his voice strained with discontent.

“I don’t think it’s very hard to guess,” I reply and look down when I feel Blaze at my foot, rubbing there as if showing his support.

“Don’t joke about this,” Dad snaps, and I let my eyes drift to his, blue like mine and filled with almost as much agony as my own. “You are soaked in blood! What the hell did you do?”

“I killed some things,” I reply, looking at them with heavy eyes that glanced between them. “Can we do this tomorrow? I’m tired.”

“Tomorrow?” Dad huffs, sounding defeated. He chuckles, but not with joy.

Then he holds me in his gaze, and so does his mate.

They don’t say anything for a moment, just stand and stare as if they’d only just laid eyes upon the monster that slept in their house. I ignore the way the look in their eyes digs at my chest and fold my arms, barricading myself behind them as I wait.

Then they look at one another, a moment of understanding passing between them as Dad nods and Mom’s lips flatline as a frown deepens there. I tighten my hold on myself, eyebrows meeting with suspicion as my chest tightens beneath my skin.

“Lucian, we need to talk to you and it can’t wait until tomorrow,” Mom says. She runs a hand through her hair while her eyes dart around my body. “It can’t wait any longer.”

I dig my nails into my arm to hide the blood dried there, but I can’t hide much else as they watch me.

“Lucian, this can’t go on,” Dad starts, his voice softer than before as his hand gestures to me weakly. “The killing, the violence, this anger in you that you seem to have no control over. It can’t go on.”

“Should I just turn the switch off?” I ask sarcastically, anger spewing at his words. “Because it’s that easy to just turn off everything that I am.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Lucian, there’s no way you think this is okay,” Mom pipes in, her hands open at her sides as if offering a hug. But she wasn’t. “This is not normal behavior, even for wolves… this is not normal.”

I let my eyes drop to Blaze, looking at something that loved me despite being what I was. I keep my eyes on the stupid bunny and don’t argue, knowing it’d only fall on deaf ears and have no effect on the direction of this conversation.

“This isn’t normal behavior for an Alpha,” she finishes, and my heart stops at the words.

My gaze on Blaze doesn’t falter as I swallow what she could possibly be suggesting. My grip on my arms loosens without permission and they unfold, hanging limply at my sides while my lungs strain for air. My heart is thumping desperately to escape the nails clawing at the organ.

I lift my eyes to meet hers. I find the softness there but ignore it. I stare at her before my eyes drift to Dad. His eyes were wet, too, his lips wobbling as he stood beside his mate.

“…You wouldn’t,” I croak, my voice stiff as it amplified my disbelief. I look at the wall which stood between the last thing I had left. “You wouldn’t do that to me…” I grind out through my teeth with surety, my fingers shaking, but I didn’t have the strength to hide it.

“You are not ready,” Dad says, confirming my suspicions.

The force of it pushes me back a few steps. I catch myself before I can fall, fall back to the floor and lay in a ball, trying to hide from it all as I’d been doing earlier.

The memory of Sienna and what I’d seen toppled over to mix with this, and there are tears in my eyes before I can stop them.

“No!” I exclaim with defiance. “Y-You can’t take this, too!”

“Lucian,” Dad starts, but I carry on.

“I’m going to be eighteen and I’m going to be Alpha,” I argue, trying with unmasked desperation to convince them as well as myself. “I’m going to be Alpha a-and…”

…Finally make you proud.

The words stick on my tongue, unable to come out from the corner they laid dormant in. I bite my tongue and shake my head, unable to do anything else.

“You’re not ready,” Dad repeats like a mantra made to taunt me. His eyes are full of pity and anguish I didn’t want.

“B-Because of this!” I spit as I lift my arms up, shoving the bloody limbs where they couldn’t ignore them. “Because I slipped up once!”

They don’t answer, but they don’t look away either, the pair’s eyes wet as if they were the ones who were being torn apart.

My heaving chest slows at a gentle pace when I see the way Dad grabs his mate’s hand, holding onto it tightly as their fingers curl to support one another. He looks away, guilt the primary emotion to be found in his eyes, almost as prominent as his mate’s, who was still looking at me.

“…No… that’s not it at all, is it,” I say, correcting myself as I look Dominic straight in his eyes. My jaw ticks as I stare at him with nothing but pure rage that I don’t bother hiding. “You were going to do this all along, weren’t you?” I accuse, feeling my eyes glow at the truth in my words.

“You weren’t ever going to let me be Alpha, were you?”

“You’re not ready right no…”

“So what the hell was this past year?!” I yell, my rage spilling out with full force as I clench my hands beside me. “What the hell was everything you made me do?! Was it just for fun? T-To watch me try to be something you knew I could never be!”

“Luci…”

“I did everything you said to do!” I scream as I step forward, a growl pushing behind my words as I glare at them.

The pain seizes up larger than before, the deep cut of betrayal spreading to infect every inch of me. It cuts deeper, sinks further, drowns me continuously, and all I want to do is scream for it to stop. Yet they just continue to stand there with their hands clasped and their eyes wet, a wall between me and what I was meant to be.

“I did everything! Everything you wanted!” I yell again, my body trembling from the force of it. “I listened! I did!” I protest against a silent crowd.

“We know,” Mom replies after another moment, her dark eyes still refusing to drop despite the way they shone with tears. “We know, Lucian. We know you tried… but you aren’t ready to be Alpha.”

My body sags at her words, the betrayal pairing up with misery to keep me in an eternal spin of sorrow. I thought they didn’t doubt me; that’s what they told me, after all, when we started all this bullshit. They said they knew I was a good Alpha, Jace said so too. They said I just needed to convince the pack, the elders… everyone but them. But they were the ones who were taking it away from me.

“So you tell me now?” I voice angrily, my eyes glancing up to look at my parents.

My parents. The only ones in this world who weren’t supposed to hurt me.

“You tell me now… three days before my fucking coronation!” I shout, my feet keeping me moving as my fingers unclenched and clenched beside me.

“There wasn’t a good ti…”

“Don’t,” I snap, cutting Dad off before he could finish. I’d heard it already today and couldn’t hear it again.

“Lucian, you have to understand that we have to think about what’s best for the pack,” he continues, swallowing over his tears. “An Alpha with zero regard for life is the complete opposite.”

Zero regard for life.

I still at that. Fingers dangling aimlessly at the accusation, the lie. Because I did. I cared about them, cared about this family and this pack. All I ever wanted to do was protect them and the pack; it was what I was born to do. I loved that it was in my blood to do the thing I wanted to most in this world.

Protect them.

But that wasn’t how they saw it. To them, I didn’t care about any of their lives. To them, I was the Demon, and demons didn’t care about others. They were incapable of it; it was in their nature to have zero regard for life… even for the lives they wanted to protect the most.

“We will continue to run the pack until you’re capable of doing it for yourself,” Dad continues speedily, mistaking my silence for acceptance. “In the meantime, you need to focus on you, Lucian. On fixing the part of you that is so angry all the time, and we’ll be there every step of the way. We’ll help you.”

I needed help. Apparently, I needed help from the people who lied to me for a year, watching me chase my tail knowing damn well what would happen at the end. I needed their help to become someone better, to replace Lucian with something that didn’t disappoint them so much.

“We just want to help you, Lucian,” Mom adds, her head lowering slightly in an effort to meet my eyes, but they were stuck to the floor.

I feel the tears streaming down my face but don’t wipe them away, all the fight in me gone. I was tired. I was so fucking tired of all of this. Goddess, I just wanted this all to stop, the pain and the hatred, the anxiety and the misery. I just wanted it to stop.

“Lucian,” she calls, the worry in her tone evident.

I wouldn’t be Alpha. The thing I wanted most, fought the most for, worked the hardest for… stripped from my hands when it was right in front of me. The thing I needed more than they could ever know, denied when I almost had it.

Another thing lost before I truly had it.

“Lucian,” Dad whispers, his eyes full of torment when I raise mine to meet his.

I could only imagine what I looked like right now. I never cried, yet here I was, unable to stop the tears or the way my hands shook with sadness instead of anger.

“All I ever wanted was to be Alpha,” I confess as I let my hands fall beside me. “You told me that Alphas were strong and protected the ones they loved. I wanted to be that for everyone. I just wanted to protect you.”

Their lips part at the words, yet they don’t reply. The genuine surprise at my words, my intentions, hurting even more. Confirming that they really didn’t see me; they just saw the Demon.

“I don’t want your help,” I reply as I shake my head slowly, a sob choking its way through my body, every inch of me wanting nothing more than to escape this pain. “I don’t want your help.”

I swallow before making my way on shaky legs to my closet. I open it and grab a duffel bag from the floor, stuffing it full of all the clothes my hands can reach.

“What are you doing?” Dad asks solemnly, his words coming out shakily.

I don’t answer as my tears wet my clothes while the bag slowly fills up. My hands are a blur to me as I focus on this one task. If I could just do this one thing, I could block out the agony for a moment.

“Lucian, stop,” Dad says, coming toward me. He lifts my hand from the bag, twisting my body from its position on the ground to face him.

He freezes as if seeing a ghost when he looks at me. I look up at him, feeling like a child again, sitting below him while he told me I did a good job or reached down to pull me into his arms.

But he wasn’t, and it dawns on me that I have to think about the last time he hugged me. I couldn’t remember.

“Did Jace know?” I ask, my voice soft and almost lost through the sobs. “About this? Did h-he know all along, too?”

His skin pales in a moment, his fingers loosening around my wrist as more guilt floods his features. I don’t pull my eyes away from his. I let him see for once and don’t bury the pain. I let him see the way I crumbled beneath the truth. I accept the torment which is dragging me back into myself and pull my hand away from his grip to close the bag.

“Lucian, w-wait,” Dad stutters as I stand, his blue eyes like broken crystals. “I know w-we should’ve told you sooner, I know. S-Sit for a moment and calm down.”

“I’m not angry, I don’t need to calm down. I’m just tired,” I reply honestly as I head for the door, which Mom stands in front of to stop me.

“I’m not going to let you go out there like this, Lucian,” she says firmly, her eyes pinning mine as if to pin my body in its place as well. “You’re going to stay here, clean yourself up, and let us help you.”

“I don’t want your help,” I repeat, clenching the straps of the bag.

“Well, you need it,” she replies, not budging.

“I might, but I don’t want it from you,” I clarify as my chest heaves in its cage, and I don’t miss the way her muscles tense in hurt and surprise. “I don’t want anything from you or you,” I repeat, turning my head to look at Dad, who was moving quickly toward me.

“Lucian, you may be upset now, but it’s for the best,” Dad argues as he looks at me almost pleadingly. “We’re doing this for you as well as the pack.”

“Goddess, Lucian, can’t you see that we’re trying to help you!” Mom exclaims, her hands reaching for me, but I move away from her grasp. “You’re not okay, Lucian! You’re just too violent!”

“And where do you think that came from?” I ask, looking up at Dad. I wipe angrily at my tears as I look at him.

“Where do you think the violence came from?”

“Lucian, don’t s…”

“Who put the knife in my hands?” I ask, not relenting. I watch as his eyes fill once more at my words, but I don’t stop. I drop the bag and jab a finger into Dad’s chest as I plant my eyes there to steady me. “Who taught me that killing rogues was right and letting them live was wrong?” I ask, my voice rising as my finger pushes at him harder.

“Who told me that being this way made me strong?!” I ask, my finger flattening to a palm as I shove him back.

“Who took me out to hunt and taught me how to fight when everyone else was being normal!” I yell, banging at his chest through the sobs. “Who do you think did this to me!”

I lay my hands flat when my body shakes with torment, sobbing in front of him. I cry as Dad does behind — beside — me, and fill the silence in my mind with the pain that lingered there.

I clench my fingers in the fabric of his shirt and look up at him with a tight jaw.

Tears pool in his eyes before falling down to wet his cheeks. He looks back at me with shame and anguish, his gaze broken like me, the strength in his eyes pouring away as he swallows my words.

“You were the one who did this to me and then left me alone to deal with it!” I scream at him, unable to stop myself, and that takes the light from his eyes as he drops his gaze from my own.

“It was you!” I scream, pushing him away as I heave in my spot.

I look across to see Kaelen and Kaia staring with wide eyes behind Milo, who was looking on as well. I wipe the tears away and take a few steps back, my hands grasping for the bag on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” a fragile voice whispers, but I push it away and the pain it causes to hear it.

I pick up the bag and stumble my way through the hallway and out of the house, ignoring the calls for me to return and the sound of my name.

I head back out into the darkness and don’t look back.

________________________________________

A/N: ​FUCK! LUCIAN! COME HERE, YOU POOR CHILD!!!!!!!!!!

​I'm going to be honest, I cried a couple of times writing this and I'm still crying right now. I'm weak, what can I say.

​Thoughts?? Lucian just can not catch a break, bitches are just CRUEL. 

​I hope you liked and cried. Comment emotions and thoughts, I love hearing them.

I'm yapping sorryyyyy 

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