Chapter 229
Chapter 229 Asher’s Flashback
When you’ve reached the top of a great and mighty mountain, your muscles still burning from the climb, the last thing one expects is to suddenly fall.
Holding Lola in my arms, her scent invading my brain and her warm pussy sheathed around my cock, hearing her soft sighs and the way her voice swelled with love when she agreed to be my wife, it was the highest peak I could ever hope to reach.
Until bars of silver slammed down over my eyes and an inhuman force clawed itself out from the furthest pits of my mind, I had no clue that something had even been wrong.
Sure, there were those moments of lost time where my memory frayed, but that had just been stress, right?
It couldn’t have been this-this creature with its spindly limbs and blood-soaked face wrapping around my body, winding around my torso, and dragging me back, further and further away until my limbs no longer responded to my will.
What the fuck was this? Some distant facet of my mind found this thing-this creature, familiar in a way, but that made no sense.
I roared and thrashed against it’s hold, but it was no use. The warning I bellowed was nothing more than an echo that lived and died in my head, never reaching my lips. Lola, my mate, and future wife-the one person I dared let close, writhed beneath me with hooded eyes, so innocent and oblivious to what was happening.
By the time fear and awareness seeped into her gaze, it was too late.
The thing controlling my body had its limbs wrapped around me, a bloody gash of a grin on it’s warped face as it made me watch.
There would be no living for me if I hurt her. The moment I regained control, I’d follow her from this life into the next. I’d beg for her forgiveness and spend nothing short of eternity working to earn it.
It dropped her unconscious body and headed towards the balcony, throwing us over the railing. We hit the ground on all fours, racing into the forest. It’s emotions-if they could even be called that-were so different from my own that it was easy to get lost in them.
There was a blatant lack of interest as it looked down at Lola, and a maddening determination for something-something that felt so close, yet just out of reach.
Its hunger was insatiable, a craving for something more than flesh that was so consuming I feared it would attack the first person it came across.
The thing used my body, tying invisible ropes around my wrists and ankles, yanking me left and right like a demonic puppeteer.
I watched through my own eyes as I climbed the steps to a familiar house, every piece of my soul crying out in agony and refusal, fighting against it’s hold. It didn’t matter, in the end. No matter how hard I thrashed, it had taken full control of my body.
The violation was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
Each step creaked beneath my feet, the wooden porch groaning under my weight. I focused on my fingers, on how it felt to move them, but they didn’t respond. The doorknob was cold in my hand, and twisted so easily, the lock snapping before it even had a chance.
How could I feel the smoothness of the metal but be unable to force my body to let it go?
In a last-ditch attempt to warn whoever was in the house, I cried out. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be. Not this house, not to someone Lola cared about so deeply.
The door swung open, letting out a loud creak that hung in the air even after it had faded into silence. A shadow passed behind me, one with crimson hair and pale skin. I tried to turn, feeling the muscles and tendons in my neck, but they didn’t respond.
I was still in the car, but my hands were no longer on the steering wheel. 2
The monster taking over my body forced me inside slowly, one foot after another as I crossed the threshold and stepped into the small foyer. It made a point not to turn around, not to look at the person following us so closely.
To the right, through a small entry way, was the kitchen. Warm light spewed into the foyer, and the distant sound of a football game on television trickled through the house. The commentators were laughing, joking over the piss poor performance from the playing teams. One of them must’ve made a touchdown, because following the cheer of the crowd was another shout. This one wasn’t coming from the television.
It was coming from Sean.
Fuck this. I wouldn’t give this thing what it wanted, not from Lola’s brother. It could take its pound of flesh from me, but not her family.
I thrashed against it’s hold, fighting against the spindly limbs that wrapped around my soul and latched onto it like some kind of vile leech. It’s cracked smile, split across a lumpen, almond-shaped face, didn’t waver in the slightest. If anything, I think it grew bigger when a second voice called out.
“Quit hollering at the television! I swear, you’re as bad as your dad.” Grandma’s chuckle twinkled throughout the house, warm even when she was scolding Lola’s brother.
Panic unlike anything I’ve ever known squeezed my throat. All of the battles, the gory fights that ended with hundreds of lives lost, didn’t have a fraction of the effect that this had. I never once admitted to it, but there wasn’t a person in this town that didn’t care for Lola’s grandmother.
Even in the beginning, when Lola and I fought one another at every turn, her grandmother had been the one to see
through it all. She accepted me as her grandson before I was able to even admit my attraction to Lola.
My muscles clenched, arms and legs going rigid as my steps faltered. It was as though my body knew what was going to happen, and knew it was not only an act against nature, but one so vile that I’d never come back whole.
This creature stripped me of everything. I wasn’t a werewolf, an Alpha, or anything in between. I was scared-so fucking scared.
It drove my body forward, into the kitchen where I spotted the short and slender frame of Lola’s grandma. She stood at the stove, pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. The shadow at my back moved, a flash of teeth along with crimson hair and ivory skin.
Instead of shouting at the thing holding me hostage, I tried the mate-bond. I couldn’t feel Lola’s fiery, all-consuming presence, but I had to try-I had to.
‘Lola? Fuck, fuck! This can’t be happening.
Lola, baby. Tell me you can hear me. Tell me you can hear me.’ I panted, breaking all over again when grandma turned to stare into my eyes.
It’s not me, grandma. This isn’t me! Run! Hide! Go, fucking go!
I shouted and shouted and shouted, but my lips didn’t move. They didn’t fucking move! Grandma stood there, staring at me and not at the person shadowing my every move.
“Sean…” Grandma said slowly, her eyes still locked on my own. The note of warning in her voice made me cry out, but it was just another plea she couldn’t hear. “Sean, get in here.”
No, don’t call for him!
When Sean’s face appeared in the doorway across the kitchen, his eyebrows scrunched in obvious confusion, I realized the horrible mistake he’d made and why this thing had brought my body here. Like a switch had been flipped, the pure disinterest it oozed was replaced with a thirst for death. Its teeth cracked from how hard it grinned, and with nothing more than a whispered command, my body lunged.
Grandma, with all the strength of our Goddess, actually threw herself in between
Sean and I. She had the fiercest look on her face, one of righteous fury and heartbreaking concern, but it was fleeting- so fleeting.
The woman that had followed me into the house chose that moment to pounce, emerging in a flash of bright hair and nails, attacking Grandma before she even stood a chance.
“Asher? What the fuck’s going on?” Sean demanded, seconds away from leaping to grandma’s aid.
He would have, but I was blocking his way.
“Run, Sean! That’s not Asher!” Grandma yelled, her voice no longer oozing with warmth, but gurgling with blood. “RUN!”
There was a split second where he just stood there, his attention going back and forth between grandma and I, unable to focus- unable to make a decision. I’d never truly thought he and Lola looked alike, but staring at him, seeing his heart shatter in his eyes, made me realize otherwise.
As quickly as he dashed back into the living room, leaping over the back of the couch in a frantic race to the sliding glass door, I was already breathing down his neck.
When we collided, and the ache of my claws elongating radiated up my fingers, I froze. Disbelief kept me from closing my eyes, from blocking this out the way I wished I could’ve.
I would’ve given anything-my pack, my title, my land, to block the things I felt out, but I couldn’t.
These hands were my own, ripping into my soul-mate’s brother, carving open his chest until flashes of milky white bone appeared.
They were as stark white as his eyes, eyes that stared into my own, that begged even when his lungs filled with blood, and he could no longer speak.
I’m so sorry.
My claws sliced through his throat with ease.
His skin split, unfurling like the petals of a rose.
Please, forgive me.
The sticky warmth of his blood pooled in my hands.
I can’t stop myself.
Blood coated his face, his skin so pale, his lips still moving.
Why is this happening? Why?
His jaw grew lax, and with my claws still buried in his chest cavity, the light warming his eyes faded, vanishing far beyond the horizon where it would never be seen again. One second stretched into many as a soft, gurgling breath slid past his lips. His heart gave one final shudder before falling silent.
What have I done?
The arms of the creature that grinned over my shoulder loosened, slithering from around my broken soul. It didn’t crawl back into the depths of my mind. It simply…
vanished.
Blood roared in my ears, the silence a cacophony of screaming-of ghostly wailing that reminded me again and again and again just what I’d done.
I should’ve thought about grandma, about the woman that attacked her, but there was no room for anything other than Sean’s body, his torn flesh, his eyes staring into the pits of my soul even in death reminding me that I did this.
With full control of my body, I ran. Landing on all fours, my body a mass of bloody fur, I bolted through the glass door and heard its shards raining to the floor. The pain of them slicing into my skin was dull, nothing compared to the pain inside my chest, eating away at my brain and telling me to do the most awful of things.
The memories didn’t start until I made it outside.
As my paws hit the dewy grass, kicking up dirt, images filled my head and clouded my vision. They were old, grainy photographs with edges that blurred. With each one, the colors brightened, and shapes became sharper.
Carson, the college girl whose parents Lola and I spoke to. She was running, mouth agape and eyes so wide they were mostly white. Running through the forest, swatting away every branch that blocked her path, looking back again and again and again until finally I caught up to her.
It was identical to what I’d done to Sean.
Next was Judge Clint’s son, just as fear stricken as Carson even though he’d been a prick in life. Just like her, he ran. Just like her, he stared at me with his mouth agape, because who would’ve ever thought their own Alpha would be the one to kill them?
In the slideshow of blood and death, I could hear my own voice begging the thing in my body to stop, begging it until they took their final breaths and the memories faded from my mind.
The images came to an abrupt stop. Color drained from my vision, but I deserved it and much worse.
I swayed on my feet, realizing I was no longer in wolf form. Everything felt wrong. The way my skin covered my bones, the way the cold air hit my skin, it was all wrong.
I didn’t deserve to be here; I didn’t deserve her.
I’d become everything I hated an Alpha that killed his own pack members for the hell of it, a mate that did the one thing I could never take back or dare ask forgiveness for.
Every time I closed my eyes it was there. His eyes stared at me; his face now so similar to Lola’s that my mouth filled with bile.
Another plume of wind hit my chest, so cold that my vision sharpened. I wasn’t sure where I was anymore. Somewhere deep in the forest, but there was no telling if I was still within pack lines.
All I cared about was the cliff five feet away.
It looked over a sea of treetops and distant mountains, a scene Lola would’ve found breathtaking.
Never in my life would I have contemplated jumping, but just five minutes was all it took to take everything away from me, to unravel who I was so completely that the role of Alpha now felt foreign.
I wanted to jump. To pay for what I’d done, and perhaps I would’ve, but something stopped me.
A rush of untethered panic hit me square in the chest, sinking it’s claws into my heart the way I had done to Sean. It was so raw that I’d almost passed it off as my own, but then I heard her.
‘Asher?!’ Lola wailed, her voice every bit as broken as I knew mine would be, had I answered.
With her voice ringing in my ears, I backed away from the cliff and slowly sank to the ground.
