4

Scott

I drive the truck and search for Hailey's body all night. I can't let my mate die like this.

The headlights of our pack’s search team illuminate all the nearby roads and hills.

But we find nothing.

I am so angry but I have no place to vent. In the dim morning light, I return home and sit alone in my study.

“This can’t be real,” I say to myself as I stare into the void, my hands crossed against my lips. “I must be dreaming.”

Taking a sip from my glass filled with bourbon, I let the burning sensation stream from my throat into my body without getting myself to wake up.

I close my eyes, taking a deep breath. “This is it. It is just a stupid nightmare, and I’ll wake up any moment.”

Maybe there is another explanation to it, maybe it is all just a bad joke.

A very bad one.

Grabbing the glass with the amber liquid standing on my desk, I catapult it against the wall, making it shatter into thousands of pieces.

I roar as my heart squeezes painfully, the pain over Hailey’s disappearance too heavy to bear.

It had been already hours ago when my wolf last felt the mate bond, but the connection had been interrupted ever since, making me guess that Hailey might have died.

“Damn, April. What did you do?” I groan, burying my head into my hands.

Sighing deeply, I pass my hand over my face before standing up. The shatters of the broken crystal glass crunch under my shoes as I pace around, feeling angry like a wild beast.

‘We have to make her pay! Get her to tell us where mate is,’ My wolf growls, wanting to see blood and, honestly, I crave to see a lot of that too.

***

April is breathing heavily, hunching over as she is tied to a chair.

Blood is dripping from her face onto the floor, fueling my sadistic side to make her feel the same pain as I feel.

I gesture to the warriors to step away and walk closer to her before crunching down to get into her line of sight.

“Do you still want to continue to lie to me, April?” I ask coldly, making her whimper.

I distort my face disgusted as her scent envelops me. Earlier today in the Alpha ceremony, I felt a pull towards her and her smell confused me. But soon, I felt a stronger and clearer bond with Hailey

And I identified Hailey as my true mate.

“I’m not lying,” she says, whining. “I didn’t send that text. And I don’t know where Hailey is. I didn’t hurt her.”

I sigh as she goes on rambling powerlessly about how she is innocent.

Maybe it’s the stupid sentiment that I harbored towards my childhood friend, but her voice is full of her suffering because of me not believing her.

I never knew what a talented actress she was.

“Stop it, April. Tell me where she is!” I command her through clenched teeth, but she seems to be unaffected by my Alpha command as she shakes her head once more, sobbing.

“I didn’t hurt her. I didn’t text her,” she continues with a whining tone.

Taking a deep breath, I look at her face covered in blood, “Listen, even if we never got along well, I really would hate to hurt you!”

Shaking herself, she sobs, her heart seemingly bleeding as much as her wounds.

“I’ve always loved you,” she whispers, her pain paralyzing her. “I would never do something that could hurt you…”

I get closer to her, making her whimper, and I shift my index finger into a claw. “I’m going to give you another chance to tell me where Hailey is.”

Pressing her lips together, she fights against the ropes constricting her. “No, no. Please! Scott! I didn’t do anything!”

“Alpha Scott for you!” I snarl through clenched teeth, before burying the claw into her thigh.

She screams in pain, causing an uncomfortable shiver to pass through me. “It wasn’t me.”

“Why did you lure her to the pack's borders?” I ask her again with an annoyed tone. “Is that where your accomplices were? Are they from another pack?”

Shaking her head again, she makes my blood boil as she remains stubborn.

“No! No! Please!” She sobs, her pleading getting under my skin.

It irks me so much that she had the guts to lure my mate into a trap to have her attacked and possibly murdered.

Rage streams through me at the thought, the pain radiating from my heart right into my limbs as I move my claw, tearing her skin.

Her blood-curdling scream echoes from the cold walls of the dungeon, feeding my desire to cut her throat. “What did you do to my mate?”

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything!” she cries, gasping for air as the blood drips onto the floor. “She was walking towards the border all alone and I wanted to stop her.”

Her cries echo from the wall, filling the cold cells with her pain and desperation. It must be indeed horrible to have the person you have loved all your life doing this to you.

For a moment, I think about letting a warrior take my place, but then I remember what she has done to us, making my blood boil again.

Right, we don’t care about her.

“It would be so much easier to just admit what you have done, April,” I growl, tilting my head. “Just admit that you were jealous of her!”

“No!”

“That you wanted to be like her because she was my mate, and you are obsessed with becoming the Luna of this pack!”

“I swear that I didn’t!”

Shifting my entire hand into claws, I sink them into her side, causing her already shaken-up frame to collapse.

“You knew that if you didn’t get rid of her you would never get what you wanted. She was in your way!”

She sobs, spitting blood as she denies it once again, “No! I didn’t hurt her.”

“In your sick brain that was all that mattered, right? It never once crossed your mind that you were never interesting to me. Even if I would have found out that you were my mate, I would have probably rejected you!”

I can literally hear her heart breaking as she slumps even further into the chair. “No! It wasn’t me! I wanted to warn her. I didn’t want her to get hurt.”

Tears fall down her face as she whispers her usual statement over and over again. “I didn’t do anything!”

Clicking my tongue, I retreat my hand, “I would really want to believe you, April. I really wished I could.”

She holds her breath as I grab her chin forcefully, her pleadings getting stuck in her lying throat as I snatch a silver blade off the table, sinking it into her shoulder.