CHAPTER four: Death

　　Amelia first stilled a leg in the air as if to jump and her hands trembled violently as she held onto the vase.

　　Adrenaline pumping in her veins, her senses kicked back in and she quickly returned the vase to its spot and rolled over to a tall table, hiding beneath it just as the werewolf unfurled itself from the ground and whined.

　　Amelia watched as its yellow eyes glowed in the dark and it canines were jutting down from his jaw as he yawned. He turned to leave and then paused. He stood on hind legs and began sniffing the air.

　　‘Holy shit.’ Amelia thought.

　　His nose kept twitching and the sniffing sounds continued to emit from him, then he shrugged and pawed out through the backdoor into the night, his tail swishing behind him.

　　Amelia collapsed against the wall in relief and her grip relaxed on her silver sword. She knew her chances of surviving were next to zero had the wolf caught her. She crawled out from beneath the table in a crouch and her eyes scanned the hallway again, it was empty. She began a ghostly quiet climb up the stairs to the last floor, where the bedroom of the alpha was, the monster responsible for her lifelong agony.

　　She soon found his chambers and quietly pushed its double doors open with its latch designed intricately with gold and turquoise. His king sized bed, took almost half of the enormous room and white canopies hung from all sides. She wasn’t interested in the interior decoration of his room, so she didn’t bother looking around and she closed the door behind her, gently approaching the alpha’s bed. A ghastly error that was, because a mirror hung on the opposite wall facing the bed and her reflection was obvious to whoever was laying on the bed, pretending to be deep in the slumber.

　　Her hands pushed open the canopies and for the first time in her painful nineteen years of existence, she came face to face with the one responsible for the death of her parent, the one who caused her misery and anguish, the one who tainted her thirteen years old mind with the gory details of death.

　　The one who made her into an emotionless assassin! An empty hateful husk of a human!

　　Shivers broke out on her human skin as she stared at him and weird sensations came over her, a sweet vanilla and cinnamon smell hit her nostrils and it seemed to be emitting from the sleeping alpha and also her, she tried fighting the sudden fog clogging her brain but she couldn’t. Only one thing repeated in her head, ‘Why is the monster of my youth so handsome?’ her hand tightened on the silver sword and with a silent groan, she drew it from its sheath and raised it above her head, it’s sharp pointy edge focused on his heart. As she brought her hand down with a force she summoned from within her weakened body, she screamed, trying to shut the voice up in her head and complete the mission.

　　The blade plunged into the figure on the bed and Amelia Whittaker slithered to the floor, tears cascading her eyes, slipping down her cheeks. She was a treacherous failure, a weakling. This was her first mission for which she had trained for years, she knows the drill too well. If you can’t complete the mission, kill yourself. It was the only way to keep the ‘Creed’ a secret. Because if you are taken captive alive, you might break and spill all the hidden truths about the creed.

　　“Why didn’t you kill me?” her nemesis, Alpha Conroy asked in a gruff voice from the bed as he pulled out the silver sword by its handle from the pillow she sunk it into, jolting her a little as she didn’t know he was awake yet.

　　“I… I don’t know—I… uh,’ she sniffled as the tears fell without control. “I just couldn’t, something stopped me.”

　　He regarded her silently with curious blue eyes rimmed with golden circles that left her bewildered at the strangeness of the situation. He should have called his wolves on her already to rip her apart… just like they did her parent.

　　She passed him a watery smile that took everything in her to form on her face. “Today is your lucky day Alpha Conroy, you are one lucky bastard.”

　　Without taking their eyes off each other, Amelia reached into the boot of the leather suit she wore and pulled out a vial. In it contained a lethal poison that offered a quick and painless death in less than 300 seconds. Uncorking it, she poured its content into her mouth, swallowing it with a loud gulp.

　　“What are you doing?” Alpha Conroy barked, narrowing his icy blue eyes at her.

　　“Ensuring you live.”

　　“What do you mean?”

　　As she tried to string up a sentence in response, her eyes began to well up with tears and a piercing headache shot through her skull, she gasped silently and held on to the satin bedspreads, clutching her head. She has never felt such pain before, as though her brain was ripping into two. Her mouth watered and she fought a wave of nausea and the vomit that was threatening to clamor up her lungs. She doubled over as another pain shot through her belly, the agony threatening to suffocate her.

　　He lied to her. Her master had promised her that the effect of the poison was quick and painless.

　　Clutching her belly that felt as though it was squeezing every last breath out of her, she looked up at the handsome king whose face oddly mirrored hers, twisted in agony.

　　What was wrong with him? She idly wondered as her body fought to gain control over death but she knew it was pointless. This was how she was meant to die… a bitter failure who couldn’t take revenge.

　　Suddenly, the entirety of her life and purpose of living became a joke to her as she lay down on the floor face squished up in pain and she began to laugh.

　　Laughing as though her death depended on it.

　　She cackled like an old witch as a whitish substance foamed out from her mouth and she began to jerk like she was concussing.

　　The last thing she heard before death wrapped her in its sharp clutches was the alpha’s voice yelling, “Mate, No!”

　　Mate?

　　She welcomed the darkness, the stillness and peace death offered with a warm smile and an even warmer embrace. She would finally be reunited with her parents even though she was a useless disappoint to them. She was sad, not because she was dying but because she wasn’t able to avenge their deaths by killing the man who murdered them.

　　How would she face them in the afterlife knowing their killers still roamed the earth free and uninhibited?

　　But the deed was done. Amelia Whittaker was dead.