~Mason~
I looked away, squeezed my eyes shut, and clenched my jaw. My wolf was stepping up. I wanted to run and protect them, to kill those two fuckers and bring those two girls back, but it was too late. I felt Graham’s hand on my shoulder and turned back around.
Your eyes, control your wolf, Graham said through the mind link.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling my wolf reluctantly step back.
“Wake him up,” Riley said with a sinister smile and joyful eyes. He looked at what he had done and dipped his hands in the blood of the two people he had killed. Riley walked over to Sebastian. He leaned down and wiped the blood off Sebastian’s clothes while Dimitri placed the knife in Sebastian’s hand.
Dimitri held his head back and pried his mouth open as they poured something down his throat. They walked away quickly, hiding a few feet from the scene, and Sebastian slowly came too. He shook his head, his eyes fluttered to get a grip of where he was, and his hands started patting on the ground and then on his body. He stopped when he felt the wet liquid that covered his shirt. He looked down on his blood-stained fingers and gasped.
I heard how his heart started beating faster with each passing second. He turned his head and saw the knife he held in his hands. As his eyes wandered and his mind began to wake up, he saw what I could only imagine was the most horrific of sights for a person to witness. He saw his mother and his younger sister on the ground, and the weapon with which they were killed was grasped in his shaking hand.
“What… no…” he stuttered and started crawling over to them. He collapsed next to his sister.
Her petite form was limp in his arms as he cradled her towards his chest. Tears streamed from his confused eyes. and he reached over her body to grab his mother’s hand.
“No, no, no,” he cried.
“Sebastian, there you are! What—” Dimitri and Riley came back.
They stopped behind him and stared in mock horror at what they had witnessed.
“What have you done?” Riley breathed.
Sebastian turned his head, and with desperate eyes, he frantically shook his head.
“I didn’t… I don’t know… I…” he stammered in pain.
“You killed them,” Dimitri whispered hoarsely.
“No!” Sebastian screamed and cradled his sister’s head harder.
“You were so high when you walked away after your fight. Your mother told me she was coming to find you, and you didn’t seem like yourself, but I never thought…” Dimitri murmured.
“I didn’t do it!” he screamed as the tears stained his cheeks and fell in droplets on his sister’s cheek.
“What’s that in your hand?”
Sebastian looked in his hand. The knife that killed his family rested in his grip, and his arms opened up, letting his sister fall to the ground as he shakily stood up.
“We told you not to take more drugs, Sebastian. We told you to sleep it off. What did you take? What have you done? You killed them. You murdered your family,” Riley said as he pressed his fingers against her still pulse. “Your mother is dead,” he said and looked up from the ground.
The knife dropped from Sebastian’s hand. His eyes were emptily staring at what was left of his family, and he turned to look at Dimitri and Riley.
“I—” he said without getting a word out.
Dimitri squatted next to the young girl.
“Was it so you could have the pack to yourself?” Dimitri asked. His voice rang out in defeat, and his eyes looked with condemnation at Sebastian’s broken soul.
Sebastian’s eyes drew over the last two people on this earth who loved him, cared for him, and wanted him. With the belief that he had killed them, he shifted into his wolf and took off. Graham grabbed my shoulder and held me back from running after him. Sebastian disappeared in a minute, and I couldn’t imagine he’d ever come back, so my attention turned elsewhere.
Riley and Dimitri were smiling widely as they watched the young wolf run away. They left the two dead bodies on the ground as they shook hands and stared in disgust at Sebastian’s family.
Graham and I stepped around the bush. We took slow steps to make sure they saw us and to let their fear rise to a dangerous level before we acted.
“Mason, what is this?” Riley asked. He stammered and pointed to the ground. “Can you believe this? Sebastian— Sebastian killed them. Can you believe he would do this to his own—”
“Stop,” I said calmly.
Riley visibly gulped, thinking he could swallow his fear, but little did he know I hadn’t even begun. The trees swayed in the night as the wind picked up and whipped around us. The barren land had much to say about its owner, who let it fall apart.
I remember being a child and coming here, playing on the fields and admiring the hill that used to be covered with lush green grass and small daisies that my sister always picked. Riley wasn’t an Alpha, nor a leader or a humanitarian. He was nothing that could be associated with love or respect for people. He was poison, sent to destroy anything he touched and lived in the pathetic shame of knowing he’d never amount to anything other than what he was. As a gift to him and all the werewolves, to the moon goddess and the universe, I decided to end his suffering.
Riley’s eyes widened. His head went back and forth as he watched my steps get closer and closer. He looked with pleading eyes. Despite the shiver of his lips as the words were caught in breaths, he was too afraid to breathe.
“Close your eyes if you want. Think of a happy memory,” I said in a calm tone, but it was ice-cold. He winced, but he did close his eyes before I continued. “A memory where you felt loved, happy, cherished and where everything was life as you wanted life to be.” His eyes opened up, and he looked down at his feet with his lids flickering. “You can’t, can you?” I asked, standing right in front of him now.
He looked up, his eyes sinking and the truth of his life playing before him, every despicable thing he’d done, every person he knew never truly loved him and the respect he never earned.
“That’s why I will do you this favor. Life away will be better.” My hand reached into his chest, past his ribs, and his face contorted in pain and shock. “For all of us,” I said and pulled his heart out of his chest and watched as he fell to the ground.
Dimitri was breathing loudly. His feet moved him back as his brain and his wolf sensed danger, and the hunter in me hoped he would try to run as fast as he could. I turned around and watched him. His chest was heaving as the breaths grew faster, and his eyes fell on the heart I held in my hand, and they widened to the size of two saucers.
My lips pulled up in a smirk. I turned my hand so the heart fell, and Dimitri turned on his heels and prepared to run, only to be met with Graham standing right behind him. He fell back and hit the ground. Graham raised his foot and knocked Dimitri out. I had other plans for him than death. It was too kind, and I was not in a kind mood.
