Chapter 465: Sully my hands.
Darius.
"Prove it!" Leilani had said to me, but how in hell am I supposed to prove my innocence when the moon goddess and I know that we are guilty?
How am I supposed to look at her, to look her in the eyes, knowing fully well that she could never get the opportunity to meet her father because I had been too greedy to let that happen?"
I buried my face in my trembling hands as I listened to the elder in front of me ramble on and on about how long it was taking me to get Leilani to join our pack and how it was supposedly time for me to step down; But I wasn’t listening.
If you were me, would you listen?
Of course not.
So I spent the entire time thinking about what to do, how to convince her... goddess, I needed to get her on my team!
I have seen just what she can do, tasted a fragment of the unlimited power in which she possesses. I have witnessed how easily she can take down anyone, and frankly, there was no better person to rule beside me, but her.
I sighed.
"Why have you been standing there, staring at me like you have something tangible to say to me?" I asked my beta coldly, my voice hoarse as it grated its way from somewhere deep inside my dry throat.
At the sound of my words, he lowered his head quickly, curtsied and drawled; "I do."
Now, that got my attention. "You do?" I asked, lifting my head abruptly to meet his gaze. "What is it you want to say to me? Is it about the case that I asked you to look into?"
He lowered his head one more time but I didn’t miss the sudden shift in his demeanor. I also didn’t miss the way he seemed somewhat fearless all of a sudden, like he could no longer stand to be before me.
He drawled; "Yes, Alpha, it is about that."
And as soon as I heard those words, my heart skipped a beat in my chest. Panic like no other clawed its way up my spine, filling me with so much dread, I could barely do anything to stop the goosebumps spreading across my skin. I sat up even before I realized what I was doing and rasped;
"W-what did you f-find?"
"The identity of the man who you met some days ago is still unknown. He has been living abroad for a very long time now, it is even rumored that he was born there."
I frowned. "And?"
"And Late Alpha Ragnar was the man who was executed by the Alpha of Stormborn pack four years ago, not someone else."
"So why the fuck does that man remind me of him?" I rushed out, "Why the fuck do they look so much alike like they are long lost twins or something?" I asked in annoyance, but as soon as I did, the confused expression on my Beta’s face wiped off and was replaced instead with a stern frown.
He drawled; "Well, I have no idea, Alpha. I think you are in the best position to ask him about it." He replied, but for some reason, I couldn’t help but think that he was making a mockery of me.
I couldn’t help but feel like there was something he was hiding from me.
I wanted to say this to him but deciding not to, I settled for something different instead. I snorted. "Ask him?!" I couldn’t believe my ears, "...didn’t I say that when you get the information I want, you can kill him?"
"Yes, you did." He answered without missing a beat, "...but with all due respect, Alpha, I do not wish to sully my hands in blood. I do not wish to kill an innocent man simply because you have been feeling insecure ever since you both met..."
My jaw fell open.
But he didn’t stop. He continued; "If you would punish me for refusing to do this, then please go ahead and punish me. But I will not kill anyone, especially someone who looks just like our late Alpha." He finished, and with that, he turned and left my office without waiting to hear what else I had to say.
And as I watched him leave, I couldn’t help the feeling of foreboding that immediately enveloped me.
I sighed; "Well, that’s too bad." I said coldly, my voice barely above a whisper. "...you know too much now and have to go."
—
Leilani.
I spent the remaining days of that week as a wreck, and I mean it in all literal sense when I say the word ’wreck’.
Why?
Because for days now, I haven’t slept a wink. My eyes were swollen and red with eyebags and dark circles, and my hair was a total mess. It disheveled and shrunk, and to top it all, I couldn’t stop going through all the paperworks of the projects that had been left on hold ever since Jarek’s demise.
Wait, that is not the top of it all. The top of it all is the fact that I have been combing through millions of files containing the entirety of the details about the incident leading to my father’s death, not missing even a single info such as the witnesses who had testified against him, the so-called evidence they had gathered, pinning the theft case to him... and his execution.
"If you continue at this rate, you will break down before you know it." A soft familiar voice suddenly said to me just as the scent of wood and pine hit my nostrils.
At the sound, my breath hitched but I didn’t look up when Gavin plopped into the chair in front of me. I also didn’t look up when he pushed a shiny flask in my direction and sighed;
"You’ve lost some weight."
"No one cares about some weight." I shot back at him, and didn’t even need to look at him to know that he had rolled his eyes. "No one would notice if I am a hundred and twenty pounds or if I am about three hundred, or..."
"But they will surely notice just how hard you have been pushing yourself for several days now." He cut in, instantly interrupting me.
At the sound of his voice, I squeezed my eyes shut and dragged in a lungful of air. I then lifted my head slowly and when I saw the worry in his eyes, and the pain, I sighed.
"Thank you for the food." I said, but he didn’t answer right away.
He drawled; "Not everything in there is food."
I frowned. "Huh?"
"These days, I have been having a hard time trusting anyone so I had to deliver that to you myself."
My frown deepened. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that I looked into the case from four years ago. I can still remember the time when a man named Ragnar was killed for theft and treason... and for the attempted murder of our late Alpha, Alpha—"
"He didn’t do any of that..." I began to say but stopped when Gavin pinned me with a glare.
"If I believed that he committed any of those aforementioned crimes, then I would not be here." He snapped at me, and then lowering his voice slightly, he added;
"Recently, after some digging, I found out that he was intentionally weakened during his trial, just so that he wouldn’t be able to speak in his defense. Malakai and Zach had made sure to inject him with a lethal dose of the mixture of Crescent tear and Moonveil draught... and guess what?" He said slowly, his voice trailing off.
I gulped. "What?"
"They got this said poison from a Lycan. A Lycan that goes by the name Darius. Doesn’t he sound familiar?"
I froze.
Comments