Chapter 2: Bloodstains

Chapter 2:

Axton’s P.O.V:

I fixed the collar of my shirt and looked at the bouquet of multicolored lilies in my hand, debating if I should have brought something else instead.

Lily Arliss loved her namesake flowers. She wasn’t a woman people would exactly call delicate; she had survived the tyranny of an arrogant Alpha and come out sane on the other side. She was the one who had sent a secret letter to me asking for my pack’s assistance in helping them overthrow their Alpha. And she was also the woman who had helped save several of their packmates when my pack had attacked.

 In many ways, she was the ideal Luna, the one who stayed calm even in the eyes of the storm. The one who always knew what to do even if the situation proved to be impossible. But I had learned too late that she had never been meant to be mine.

When I had attacked Lily’s old pack and overthrown their Alpha, I had to return back to my pack due to unrest amongst the warriors, but I had left my Beta, Gustav in charge of handling to stabilize the pack that was now going to be an extension of mine.

When I had returned, I had fallen head over heels for Lily. I had loved her courage, her innocent beauty and everything else about her. Lily had felt the same way too as she had become my lover. For half a year, everything had felt perfect.

Gustav, my Beta and my older half-brother had been happy to be in charge of another pack and I had been in a blissful relation with Lily…until a week ago, when Gustav had decided to come back to the pack for a visit and my world had turned upside down.

“Mate.”

It had been the first word out of Gustav’s lips as soon as he had seen Lily and hers had been the same.

And that had been the end of me and Lily.

No one can fight the mating bond once it snaps into place. No wolf has ever been able to resist that temptation and frankly, no wolf would ever want to. It was a devotion so pure, so loyal, that no one could question it. Yes, there were wolves that rejected their mates, but those were extreme conditions when the wolves belonged to enemy packs or when their mate was human.

Gustav and Lily had both been wolves who couldn’t deny the bond. And so, we had decided not to tell him about the brief affair that Lily and I had shared. Gustav had already been denied the title of Alpha since I was the legitimate son of the previous Alpha, our father, while he had been born from an affair our father had had with a packmate before he found his Luna. So I had spared him the pain of knowing about me and Lily.

Tonight, I stood in front of Gustav and Lily’s shared apartment, ready to have dinner with my ex-lover, the woman who still held my heart, and my brother, in order to celebrate the start of their new life together.

Taking a deep breath, I put on my best smile and rang the doorbell.

Nothing.

I tapped my shoes on the marbled floor, waiting patiently for Lily or Gustav to open the door, but there was nothing.

I frowned, checking the time on my watch. Seven thirty eight on the dot. I’d always been punctual to a fault, but I had deliberately come late to not raise any suspicions.

Exactly a minute went by without anyone responding and I began to feel a bit uneasy.

Was everything alright? Was the doorbell not working? Did I mess up the dates? Or was I no longer welcome in Gustav’s house?

A bit hesitantly, I rang the doorbell once more, waiting another whole minute without getting an answer. This time, I had strained my ears to see if the bell was working and as expected, it was.

Taking out my phone from my back pocket, I scrolled through my contacts, my fingers pausing briefly on Lily’s number, but I shook my head and kept scrolling. I called Gustav directly, hoping to find out if I had mistaken the invitation.

“Hey, Axe!” Gustav answered in his cheerful voice, the one he’s had since the day he found out Lily was his mate. “Have you reached?”

“Yeah…” I looked around the hallway, finding the only other residence on this floor had their locked. “I rang the doorbell, but no one’s answering. Where are you?”

“Oh? I’m half-way there.” Gustav replied immediately. “Sorry man, a few of my friends wanted to join us for dinner as well; I hope that’s not a problem?”

“Absolutely not!” I gave a tight smile, hoping that a crowd will help ease my uneasiness about spending time with my ex-lover and my beta’s mate. “But why isn’t anyone answering the door? Is your mate with you too?”

“Lily? No. She’s home.” His voice sounded a bit uneven, like he was running. “Why don’t you just go in? You know the code right? I think she’s probably cooking with her headphones on or in the bathroom.”

“You still haven’t changed the lock code?” I asked him incredulously. “You’re mated now, Gus! Almost half the men in the pack know your code!”

“Its fine, Axe! This is the first time I left Lily alone,” Gustav reassured me. “You rang the bell right? So just go in. It’s fine. Lily already knows you’ll be arriving soon. I’ll see you in five.”

“Alright.” I hung up the phone and stared at it a good few seconds, feeling that uneasy feeling in my stomach grow.

What was wrong with Gustav? He wasn’t usually this careless, was he? He kept his old lock code that pretty much half the pack knew about and he’s telling me to just go inside? But then again, it was the same thing he always told me to do when he wasn’t home and I arrived early. So was he really the one being careless or was I suddenly being too cautious? Maybe I was reading too much into the situation because of my own guilt?

I decided then and there that this guilt ends today. I will tell Lily that we can’t keep our situation a secret from my brother any longer. No matter what, he has a right to know and it wasn’t like we had committed adultery! We had no idea that Lily would end up being Gustav’s mate and he had been absent at that time. And it wasn’t like Gustav had been a saint either. He had taken numerous lovers in his thirty six years of life. It was normal for wolves to have lovers, we were sexual creatures!

Punching in the code on his digital lock, I entered the apartment calling out Lily’s name as loud as I could, and noticed two things immediately.

The entire apartment was shrouded with darkness.

And the stench of blood was everywhere.

The bouquet of lilies fell to the floor as my hands fell limply at my sides. Something cold grew around my heart, hardening and suffocating me from the inside.

Something was very, very wrong.

“Lily?” I called out once again, this time my voice trembled with emotions unknown. “Lily?”

But no one answered; the darkness inside seeming to engulf my voice itself.

It took me a second to realize that my night vision had kicked in an I could faintly see the inside of the room and the silhouettes of the furniture, but the stench of blood also intensified with my increased vision. I looked down at the floor and saw a figure of a woman laying still, a trail of blood behind her.

My brain seemed to shut down momentarily, making my entire body go numb. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, as I stared blankly at the figure on the floor. It was like I knew what had happened, but rhyme and reason had deserted me.

 After a few seconds of just staring blankly inside the room, my brain kick-started into gear and I moved my hand to the side of the door, where the light switches were and turned all the lights on at once.

An instant of blinding light forced me to close my eyes and when I opened them once again…horror awaited me.

The stench of blood seemed to intensify with the return of my vision and I ran inside the room, to where the familiar scent of the woman I loved lingered still.

“Lily…” I knelt next to her on the floor. She was laying face-down, her long brunette hair sprawled across the floor in waves. I shook her shoulders once, found her body still warm. Hope bloomed in my chest momentarily, but it was quashed the next instant, as I flipped her over to her front with great care and found a silver dagger protruding out of her chest…right through to her heart.

“No…” I whispered, touching her cheeks with trembling hands.

Her body was still warm, but she didn’t have a pulse. She was gone…my beautify, brilliant Lily was just…gone.

The front of her golden dress was now a matted dark brown from the drying blood and the silver dagger had been plunged right into her heart with an intent to kill. Silver was lethal for wolves once it entered their bloodstream. Whoever had stabbed Lily had known that.

Who? Who could’ve killed her? Who could’ve had a grudge against her so deep that they would want to murder an innocent woman? Had it been someone from her previous pack? Someone close to the Alpha that had known she was the one who had alerted her?

My mind raced in a million different directions, trying to find a reason why anyone would want to kill Lily. I knew it was my mind’s way of trying to distract me from my heartache. This wasn’t the time for me to crumble, even though my lips trembled as I spoke her name over and over. Even while on her last breath, she had tried to crawl her way out on bloody hands and knees. But in the end, death had prevailed.

I wrapped one hand around the dagger, feeling the tingle of the silver on my skin, and pulled it out of her chest slowly. But as soon as the dagger was out, a spray of her blood hit my face, covering my shirt. It was still a bit warm, telling me that she had been alive even a few hours ago.

“Axe?”

Startled at the voice, my head snapped up in the direction of the front door, which was still wide open. And there I saw my half-brother, staring at me wide-eyed in shock along with two of his friends, as the bouquet of lilies lay on the floor next to his feet.

It was too late when I realized exactly how this scene looked in the eyes of the onlookers.

The silver knife fell from my hand and chattered to the floor.