"You are a weird man, Akyl. " Stephen said while handing him a wet towel. "And so is your mate. " They were in the training room reserved for their use. Akyl glared at him and applied pressure on his bloodied knuckles. He was so used to the pain that he wasn't fazed by it anymore. Sweat dripped from his forehead to his thighs. His beating heart was the only thing keeping him grounded to the earth. Everything recently had taken a toll on him. It had been years since Attic, his wolf had tried to surface. Years. And that mate of his was never in his plan. She knew everything about that pack. She saw him and the destruction he caused. On that aspect, he was confused about whether that angered him or if he was happy about it. The loss of control however wasn't disconcerting, it felt good uncertainty. "Call her, I need to talk to her. " he voiced out loud. Stephen stopped putting away the boxing equipment Akyl had used and studied his friend. "Are you serious? " Akyl finished washing

She excused herself. Solemnly once when she was outside, did she allow fear to cloud her vision. Questions were purring in her mind, redundant but frightening nonetheless. Why in the basement? Hadn't he shown her enough misery? Even as she douted him, she felt the need to go down and to see yet again the suffering. That despair shown across the faces of his victims would haunt her at night as if she didn't already have enough fuel for those dreams. She retraced the trajectory they had taken. First, she went up to the ninth floor, and from there, she used the second elevator, reserved for his personal use, and clicked the button. Again, she didn't feel the device move but watched as the numbers decreased while her anxiety increased. Something about this visit troubled her. A gut feeling that she was about to understand just how messed up and damned the Conqueror truly was. The acute voice of the machine brought her back to earth and she set her foot out. Stephan was already entering

Stephen carefully walked into Akyl's office, taking precautions to not step on the papers on the floor. Akyl was sleeping in the canopy bed fully clothed. It wasn't a rare occurrence to see him sleeping in the late afternoon. He was in black attire: a black velvet Italian suit and a double-breasted blazer. His uncombed hair spread on his face, the curls had grown too fast, and his white leather gloves were laying next to him. Stephen contemplated the idea of waking him up so they could go and fetch his date. But as he looked at his sleeping boss/best friend, another idea crossed his mind: he could lie down with him. After all the work and cases they handled these past 3 days, didn't they deserve a break? But he knew this thought to be bad, undisciplined, and wrong. He passed his hand through his dark ominous hair and caressed his brown skin. He wished he could feel the little hairs there usually were on his beard but unfortunately, he had shaved. He wished he could see those dark b

"Why does it come to you so easily to call me mate? " She wondered about that fact for a while now. She had trouble still adapting to the recent changes and the chemicals were still making her head feel fuzzy. "To what are you referring to? " He retorqued as they proceeded to the ballroom where a poor werewolf was about to meet his end. "Exactly what I said. Your way of calling me by what I am is disturbing, use my name. " She had picked another glass of wine, having soon realized that she was starting to like the feeling of being poisoned, with this type of chemicals at least; her wolf could easily digest them and they made the anxiety flutter away for a short while. Stephen who was hearing the conversation from behind them grinned slightly, being only too familiar with Akyl's way of speaking. "But anybody can call you Raïna, sole I can call you mate. Isn't it more beneficial to use the privilege I have to the full extent? " he casually brought her closer to him and started walki

Akyl had blood on his hands. Not the image of people he had assassinated over the past decade but the liquid that flows through the arteries. He tried to recall how he stained his hands and clothes but ultimately gave up: his memories were too fuzzy. He looked around, confused. Where was Stephen? Why wasn't he in proximity? Since when was he left all alone like this? That's when he noticed: his hands were shaking, his heart was pounding furiously and his eyes began spinning. It was the closest to afraid he had been in years. But afraid of what, there was nothing. Precisely. But then, it stops. As suddenly as it came, the ushers in his heart calmed down, his view cleared out, and his hands stopped moving. Slowly, he began the hear a familiar voice and slowly came back to himself. "Akyl, do you hear me?" The worried voice asked. " For the MoonGodness sake, answer! " Akyl finally opened his eyes to see his best friend on the verge of crying. It calmed him down, knowing someone cared an