To Die By His Claw Or His Blade

“He cut your tongue?” Heaven almost shrieks. The child continues moping. “Why did he do so? So that you won’t talk?”

Kaicha shrugs, her eyes big and bright. It’s then it dawns on Heaven that even this little girl may have been captured.

What if she isn’t his daughter like he claimed she is? Everyone knows that Alphas seldom have babies with people who aren’t their mate, as it could sabotage their Alpha lineage.

Even if Kaicha was his daughter, could be why he’s keeping her a secret from his pack? Or is there another bigger reason as to why the girl should be unknown?

“Do you know why he’s hiding you?” Heaven asks again. Just then, the woman fixing Kaicha’s hair finishes her job and bows out, while the child suddenly breaks into a dance.

Her steps are clumsy and lack rhythm. Even her attempt at fluidity is terrible. Now Heaven can see why Ziason badly sought a tutor.

“He’s hiding you so you can dance?” Heaven queries, utterly clueless of the girl’s gestures.

Kaicha shakes her head frantically and breaks into another round of amateur dance. She keeps signaling something with her arms, placing her hands on her chest and abdomen from time to time and then throwing them up in the air while arching herself backward.

Heaven still can’t understand.

“Can you write?” she asks. If the girl can pen down the words she can’t speak, it would be better. But Kaicha shakes her head.

Heaven wonders how Ziason can be so heartless and cruel. Why would he treat such a little girl like this?

Firstly, he cuts off her tongue, then doesn’t give her education in such a modern world.

He really is a beast.

Now Heaven can’t believe the fact that he seemed to care for Kaicha yesterday. Or is it a toxic kind of relation between the duo? As in; a man who needs Kaicha for something, therefore pretending to be kind to get it, and the little girl who doesn’t understand why he switches from good to bad from time to time but still acknowledges his good side with all her heart.

>>>>>>>>

That night, Heaven stands in her room window to watch the view below.

Her window doesn’t face the pack house like Kaicha’s. What Heaven sees from her window is the main gate from which she and Ziason came in yesterday.

At daytime, she can also behold just how the mountains surround the pack.

For now, due to the black night, she can’t see much. Except, there are small movements happening below, which look like people leaving through the tower through the main gate.

Heaven knows that Ziason has a room in this tower, but she doesn’t know which of these countless rooms it is. She doesn’t have the interest in finding it either, since she’s now hellbent on trying her best to simply avoid the man.

When he left the tower after his gym session yesterday, she knew. When he returned at night to spend the night in the tower, she knew. When he left this morning and returned in the afternoon, she knew.

She watched these movements from either her window or Kaicha’s window. But who she’s seeing leaving the main gate now isn’t Ziason.

They look like two men pushing a big wooden cart. And due to the lamp in the cart, Heaven sees what looks like three male bodies inside the cart, their clothes soaked in blood.

What the hell happened? What did Ziason do to these men, and why were they even here in the first place?

When Kaicha’s maid comes in the next morning to serve Heaven’s breakfast, it’s the first thing Heaven asks her.

“Do you know whose corpse the Alpha disposed last night, and why they were killed?”

The girl says nothing.

“Is he also holding your family captive?” Heaven pushes. She notices the girl’s brief pause. “I’m correct, aren’t I?”

The girl still doesn’t respond. Instead, she quickly sets the breakfast on the bedside stool before turning to leave the room.

Heaven jumps out of bed and grabs the girl’s forearm, pulling her back.

If she can’t understand anything about Ziason, she deserves to at least know the nature of the things that are already keeping her here.

She has tried with Kaicha—to know why Ziason needs the girl. That failed.

Now she has to try the curse. And since she doesn’t know much about curses except that marks like Ziason’s mean a curse, she decides to read about wolf curses instead.

“Where can I find books; about wolves and curses, to be precise? Do you know any place?” she asks the pain, who cranes her head in Heaven’s direction.

“The library,” she murmurs grudgingly, then quickly shrugs out of Heaven’s hold.

“Wait. Where can I find the library, then?”

But the girl has already left the room. And the small breeze left by her dash turns to cold, harsh wind on Heaven’s skin.

Heaven lets out a breath she has been holding for long. Chills spread through her body as she hugs herself, her mind running several question about her moments of demise.

Would she die by Ziason’s claws, or by his blade?

What will she be doing at the moment when she dies?

Where will she be; this tower, in Yule, or nowhere in particular?

>>>>>>>>

For the next four days, Heaven experiences a trail of reoccurring events.

A growing fear for her life.

The nightmare of the day her parents died.

Teaching Kaicha dance.

Struggling to reach the depths of Ziason’s secrets.

Watching him slip in through the small gate then sneaking to the ground hall to watch him workout as she uses her eyes to trace the lines of his tats.

Trying hard to convince the maid girl into telling her the location of the library while attempting to find it herself to no avail.

And, every night, watching a group of young men flock in through the main gate, only to leave as corpses.

Sometimes they’re two, sometimes three. The highest so far is six.

Twice, Heaven has hurried down the stairs the moment she saw these men enter. But, by the time she reached the last floor, she always didn’t find them.

She even tried to look for where they could have entered. However, she discovered that all the doors in the tower are locked except for the ballroom, her room, and Kaicha’s room.

How she didn’t see these coming still amazes her. She was always cautious so as not to fall into a trap. And she avoided wolves like they were virus. Yet, she fell for Alpha Ziason’s trick, how? Was she that desperate? Was she so scared of herself that she resulted in following a total stranger so blindly into his den?

Now, what happens next? How certain is she that Ziason wouldn’t kill her anyways, before or in five years? Also, being an Alpha, is it possible that he could know what happened to her parents seven years ago?

What if… what if this was a ploy?

She definitely doesn’t know the reason her parents were killed by ‘an Alpha’. So what if Ziason brought her here in the guise of teaching Kaicha dance, only to repeat the incident of seven years ago—get something from her, then kill her?

There must be a reason her parents made sure she survived.