Natalia’s P. O. V

Barely ten minutes out of the shed, the whole thing was up in flames. I continued walking, only pausing to look back when the boom of an explosion shot through the air.

‘How could you?’ Candy finally cried, her voice cracking, ‘How could you just leave him there?’

‘What? Did you want me to carry him out?’

‘I don’t know, maybe not set the place on fire!’ Her retorting screech had me staggering and holding my head, ‘He didn’t deserve to die in flames and you know it!’

“He’s not dead.” I said out loud, hating the way my voice sounded like I wasn’t just trying to convince her.

‘How would you know, when you left him bleeding out and chained to the floor?’

‘I gave him the key.’

She wasn’t having it, ‘He looked awful when you left him! He wanted nothing more than your forgiveness and you brutalized him, how do you expect him to have the strength to get himself out?’

‘He left me brutalized and in pain when he rejected me! He wasn’t any better than the others, I was just returning the favour.’

She went mute. When I thought the topic was done, moisture dampened my cheeks and I raised a hand to feel the tears pouring from my eyes. Tears that were not my own.

‘He was better than them, Nat.’ She said finally, her voice empty, ‘You went too far and you know it. He just wanted to love you but you couldn’t have that, could you? Even if you didn’t get back together, the very idea of someone alive willing to spend his life with you must feel so wrong to you. You tried to push Hailey away but romantic love is just too much so you had to burn it- burn him.’

By the time she was done, the tears on my face were mine too. Her words cut me deep, opening a chasm within me so deep that it brought me to my knees in the middle of the empty street.

Hurt stabbed through me, fuelled by the fact that she would even say that to me at all. After everything she’d seen me through, how could she turn on me? How could she bear to say such things? All because of Callum?

Then fear and self-loathing began to trickle in.

What if she was right? I knew I’d resigned myself to the absence of romance, but what if that was born not out of my lack of desire, but a lack of anything in me worth loving?

What if deep down, I knew it too?

I didn’t notice when the familiar light blue van pulled up in front of me, till Kirstin had touched my shoulder, only to recoil with a hiss of pain.

“Alpha? You’re practically on fire, what’s wrong? Did they do something to you?”

I shook my head and looked up at her. The soft concern in her eyes told me she hadn’t seen Harry yet. I wondered how she’d look at me if she knew what I’d done to him. It was certainly more than she’d likely intended, but what choice did I have? He’d threatened me first, with a horror I never wanted to experience, one she’d been a victim of herself.

“I dropped them off at the pack house.” She informed me, “Nobody was around, they must still be at the training grounds. We should hurry, Hailey and Tim have already secured him in his basement.”

The very suggestion of him sent my blood rushing in my ears, forcing all my emotions and uncertainty aside for a singular, murderous intent. Everything I’d done would come down to this final act of retribution.

This was it.

I got to my feet and climbed into the van with Kirstin. She drove as inconspicuously as she could and parked some yards away from his home. We left the van and made our way to the house, unseen from the effects of the necklaces we wore. The closer we got, the more my heart felt like it would burst out of my chest.

We took our necklaces off when we reached the basement steps and shared a look. The unasked question passed between us, to which we both nodded.

My legs carried me down first. As I descended and walked to join them, Timothy’s voice carried to my ears, in both a warning and a promise, “And you were right earlier, I won’t hurt you… but she will.”

The moment my eyes landed on him, my world was a riot. Fire raged against my skin, begging to be released with the swell of emotion that accompanied the host of memories that flooded my mind.

His brown hair was peppered with more grey than I remembered, and his puke-green eyes narrowed at me, pronouncing the lines around them. He was strapped to a chair and held in place by thick, sturdy tendrils of wood.

He looked just like my nightmares.

“You couldn’t even die right.” He spat, looking at me like I was the one held captive.

Even with the position he was in, he saw me as nothing, as barely a threat. The realisation sent another wave of fire rolling through me, and I caught the others shifting uncomfortably in the heat.

But the tables had turned now, and for once, he’d be the one to fear me.

“Sorry to disappoint.”

His leery eyes ran over me, sending a shiver down my spine, “You look so much like your mother, you probably took after her in more ways than one. I’m sure you make the same face too.”

Bile rose in my throat. Memories of the stories of my forced, violent conception surfaced in my mind, both those told by him in taunts and the ones told in reluctance to sate a small girl’s horrified curiosity.

Kirstin emerged from behind the three of us, her whole body stiff as she took determined steps towards him. When she was close enough, he simply raised his head to look at her and licked his lips.

The action snapped the tenuous restraint she’d been holding on to. She grabbed the nearest sharp object off the table near him and hacked away at his crotch. Their screams bounced off the walls and filled the space, hers full of manic rage and his – agonized pain. She didn’t stop, repeatedly raising the knife over her head and bringing it down with a squelch and a metallic ping, not even noticing the blood splattering on her face.

After nearly a full minute, Timothy stepped in, carefully coming up behind her to wrap his arm around her in a tight hold. She screamed against him briefly, before deflating in exhausted seething tears. He carried the wailing, blood-splattered Kirstin upstairs and, with a nod from me, Hailey followed up after them.

Then it was just the two of us.

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He was trembling, the sound of his teeth gritting against the pain ringing low. His crotch area and legs were a bloody, fleshy mess, and the blood was already dripping from the chair to the floor in a small but steady stream.

When going over our plans yesterday, I’d informed them for the final time that I would be the one to deliver the killing strike to Clark, but they were welcome to take out any frustration they had before then. Timothy had declined, maintaining his earlier stance of simply wanting to witness his end with his own two eyes.

“I want to take away the thing he used to violate me.” Kirstin had said in a low voice.

We all shared a look but said nothing. Castration was a more than appropriate response to the vile thing he’d done to her.

Granted, what I’d had in mind involved more taunting and precision but from the looks of it, I suppose she still got the job done all the same.

With the illusion of his unscathed survival of this shattered, his eyes held much more caution as he regarded me. Wordlessly, I approached the table and scanned it. I recognised a few of them as instruments he’d used to extract the cries of my own pain, but the very fact that he had so many in his basement, along with a bed and chains, left me sick to my stomach.

My first thought was to use everything on him as he begged for his life, but I feared we didn’t have that much time left before someone would get the idea to investigate his absence. My hand found the instrument I was most acquainted with – his silver hunting knife.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” He tried to demand, but his voice betrayed the panic creeping up on him.

I looked over my shoulder at him, “I’m going to kill you.” I deadpanned.

His face flushed red, the veins in his forehead thumping, “You ungrateful bitch! I could have just killed you after your mother left but I gave you a roof to live under, food to eat and clothes to wear. After everything I did for you this-”

I rounded on him, my lips pulled back in a snarl, “After everything you did to me!” Laughter bubbled in my belly and trickled out of me in giggles, “You know exactly what you did to me and you think I’d let you live for it? Are you fucking stupid?”

His eyes locked on the knife in my hand and he swallowed. Then he switched gears.

“Even if you want to, you won’t. Killing me would make you a bigger monster than I am.”

I threw my head back in a laugh so hard that I had to hold my stomach. He watched me with increasing unease till I finished with a sigh, wiping the beads of tears in the corners of my eyes.

My smile dropped, “I burned and maimed your chosen children, I brutalized your new Luna knowing she’s pregnant, I’m not even sure if my old mate is still alive after I finished with him…” I placed the tip of the knife at his throat then dragged it up to raise his chin, a thin line of red blooming on its path, “Don’t think I won’t sleep like a baby after slitting your throat.”

“If you do that, you’ll never know what happened to your mother.”

I froze.

“What did you say…?” My voice came out in a whisper as I blinked, the back of my eyes starting to prickle.

Satisfied he’d found his way out of this alive, he smirked, “I said, if you kill me, you’ll never find out what happened to your mother.”

He’d told me that mom had abandoned me in the dead of the night, that she couldn’t stand to have to keep caring for me and had left. While I’d refused to believe him, the abruptness of her disappearance had left part of me scared that his words were the truth.

And here he was, confirming that they weren’t.

My eyes narrowed and my grip on the knife tightened, “How do I know you aren’t lying to save your skin?”

“You don’t, but the note and key she left you will confirm it.”

My hand flew to my mouth as a choked sob escaped me, “She left me something and you kept it from me?!”

He scoffed, “She said to give them to you when you turned sixteen, but you went and ran away. Not that I would have given them to you anyway. I would have gotten rid of them, but Tiffany begged me not to.”

My heart sped up in my chest. “Where are they?” I demanded.

He shook his head, “That’s not how this works. Let me go, and I’ll tell you.”

“You must think I’m a fool.” I laughed, “Tell me everything, then I’ll let you go so you can get the letter and key.”

Seconds passed as he regarded me. I held his contemplative gaze with an unmoving one of my own till he saw he wouldn’t get his way.

“Fine.” He snapped, “I’ll tell you and you’ll let me go.”

I stepped back and placed the knife on the table.

‘My mom left me a letter and a key before she disappeared.’ I announced through our link, ‘I need you guys to find them. Try asking Tiffany if possible.’

I didn’t stop to listen to their response, shifting every ounce of attention I had to him.

“A week before she left, some members noticed a few vampires snooping around here. We thought it was strange since vampires always avoid werewolf territories, but before we could do anything about it, a group of them turned up at my house one night. They said they were looking for your mother and wouldn’t leave without her, so we could either hand her over or they’d go through us to get her.”

He paused and gave me a lewd smile that had me clenching my fists and teeth to keep from hitting him, “She was a great fuck, and was more than ready to give it up if it meant I’d leave you alone. But I had no interest in starting another two-century war. They gave us a day to decide so, as soon as they left, I called her over to have her one more time before telling her what was going to happen. She agreed to go with them but wanted to see you one last time for your birthday or whatever. I couldn’t have her running off with you, so I locked her down here. She begged and cried till Tiffany gave her a pen and some paper to write you a letter. As for the key, I don’t know where she was hiding it, but she gave it and the letter to Tiffany to give to you when you turned sixteen. I handed her over the next day and was wired some money the following week. Easiest hundred grand I ever made.”

He finished the story with a smug look, but I barely noticed through the tornado of thoughts and emotions reeling through me. My breath quickened and I reached out to steady myself on the table as cold buckets of shock doused me.

Vampires had taken my mother. I understood that they were dangerous in theory, but they’d always felt like the Syren equivalent of a bogeyman, never like a real, tangible threat. But this was real. Somehow, they’d found her and despite the fear she must have felt she’d, gone willingly.

All to protect me.

And despite everything, all she’d wanted on her last day was to see me, to have one last birthday with me, but he’d stopped her. She hadn’t even known what would happen when he’d called for her, only expecting another vile, degrading meeting with him. The lump forming in my throat grew larger as I thought of how she’d spent years subjecting herself to his violation for my sake.

My heart filled with more grief than I thought possible for a person to feel. I fought a losing battle to keep the sobs from escaping, ending up hyperventilating in the process. The longer I thought about it, the more my lungs burned as I struggled to breathe through the anguish.

I heard a snort and my eyes focused on Clark watching me with amusement.

In an instant, the overwhelming mass of pain in me transmuted into wrath. Every cell of my body wanted to torch him alive, but I didn’t have the letter or key yet. My skin prickled and quaked with the effort of containing myself, to the point of pain. My body was a crumbling dam as I watched his eyes widen as trickles of fire leaked from my hands and the corners of my eyes.

If I so much as twitched, I would erupt.

‘We found them.’ Hailey’s voice suddenly echoed in my head, ‘But you have to hurry, Ari. A member came to the house and we had to knock him out but we don’t know if he was able to call someone before he lost consciousness.’

My lips pulled back in a cross between a grin and a snarl. We were out of time, but I only needed a minute.

I stretched a hand out to his legs. Taking a breath, I gathered everything raging within me and directed it to that single point. Then I let it out.

Fire roared and he howled with pain, bucking against the chair that held him in a futile attempt to escape the inferno ravaging the lower half of his body. The smell of ash and burning flesh filled the air, nearly choking me as I burnt the source of my pain.

When his legs were nothing more than black, charred stumps and the wood around him was reduced to ash, I stopped. Picking up the knife, I stepped over the small flames lingering on the ground to approach him.

“The Royals gave an order to arrest you and your future leaders and disband your pack.” I informed him, “By the end of tomorrow, all your years of scheming will be reduced to nothing.”

He gaped at me, his head shaking with the barest of movements.

I leaned forward with the knife trained over his heart, inclining my head as if to share a secret, “I need you to die knowing that you are nothing.”

“You said… you’d let me go…” He murmured, his voice already weak and defeated.

“I lied.”

I buried the knife in his heart and watched the life drain from his eyes.