Chapter 6

• Malrik.
• The cloud was thick tonight, hanging low over the pack. The sky looked bruised, almost hiding the moon, turning everything dim and mean.
• The cold wind pushed at me on the balcony, carrying the smoke from my cigarette away before I could enjoy it.
• I leaned on the railing, while staring out at the garden, letting the night settle on my shoulders. It always did. Darkness fit me better than light ever could.
• People said I was a monster. Maybe they were right. I felt more stone than flesh most days. Hard, heavy and built for fear, not comfort.
• Comfort has never been a thing to me, it was more of a foreign concept. And that way, I had built my life, never blinking an eye.
• There was footsteps behind me, quiet and careful. It was Beta Sam, I didn't turn, didn't have to. The air shifted enough to tell me he was there.
• He stopped a few steps back, like the shadow of my shape was already warning him.
• "Alpha Malrik." He called out, his voice low, hanging around the air for a while
• I took another drag, let the smoke burn through my lips, then blew it out slow. The wind grabbed it fast, like even the smoke didn't want to stay near me.
• "Did you get it done?" I asked.
• His breathing shifted, just with the sky as the thunder rolled off somewhere. Even the sky was as nervous as Beta Sam.
• He cleared his throat. "Alpha Reed is ready to do whatever you ask for but he has said that he isn't ready for the merge. Not just now."
• I chuckled. I had expected it to be this way. "He wants to put a fight that he can't win?"
• "From what I can see, he wants to stake all that he has to fight you, he wants to hide behind the fact that you are a." He stopped, his words playing around.
• I turned to face him, raising a brow while ready for him to finish off his words. "I mean, what people address you as." Beta Sam changed his choice of word.
• A monster, that was what I had always been since before I became Alpha. The monster that killed his parents.
• "Then let him have his way. Let him have that victory for a while before you have your men teach him a lesson." I instructed.
• I wasn't going to go over the board, all because of a minion like Alpha Reed. Beta Sam and his boys could deal with him.
• As I took another drag of the cigarette, I saw the corner of Beta Sam's lip trembling. "Anything else?"
• He hesitated. I could hear it in the way his breath stopped, in the way he shifted his weight like the words were too heavy.
• "It is about the girl with the rare blood." he said.
• My jaw tightened. We had been hunting for one for months, the rare one, the bloodline everyone thought was gone. Powerful. Dangerous. Worth more than any of them cared to admit.
• She was the last one to remain on earth.
• I was one of them, with the rare blood until that night, when everything was destroyed and I became this.
• Life had never been better, it never was, even now that I had everything I could ever asked for. The daily nightmares, and other things that had affected me.
• All because of a night that I never want to remember of. No one dared to speak of it, nor remind me of it. "What about her?" I didn't raise my voice, but it still made him flinch.
• "I think I have found her," he said. "Or so I thought. And she is close to us."
• When our eyes met, his dropped right away. He was Smart. He knew better than to meet mine unless I gave permission.
• "Where?" I asked.
• He swallowed. "I believe she is the lost daughter of Alpha Reed, Nysera. I saw her at the house today. The air lingered too much with her scent. There was no way that she isn't the one."
• Of course she didn't let her scent out intentionally. The special ones never did. Not until they were threatened or when they died.
• I threw the cigarette off the balcony, watching the ember fall like a dying candle.
• "Get ready then," I said. "We have a different mission to plan. And as I had said, let Alpha Reed have his way." I reminded.
• He nodded quickly and backed away, leaving me alone with the cold, the dark, and the sudden pulse of something I hadn't felt in a long time.
• Hope or the threat of it. Hard to tell which was worse. If he was right, then the search has come to an end.
• "What if the scent he caught wasn't hers?" My wolf, Skorne questioned.
• Well, there had always been one thing about Beta Sam, he always made sure that his fact were right. It was one of the reasons why I never let him go.
• "He can't be wrong. It has to be her." I responded.
• "Then you will be meeting Alpha Reed for her?"
• This time, a laugh escaped through my lips. I wasn't going to meet with him, nor was I be going to be sending a friendly army to him.
• I was Alpha Malrik, the monster feared by all. I don't ask, I take away. And now, she might not know it but she belonged to me.
• She always has.