Chapter 229
Chapter 229 Asher’s shback
When you’ve reached the top of a great and mighty mountain, your muscles still burning from the climb,
thest thing one expects is to suddenly fall.
Holding L 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 mmed down over my eyes and an inhuman force wed 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. L, 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 toote.
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 tantck of interest as it looked down at L, 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 vition 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 ast-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 L 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. Thementators were
touchdown, because following the cheer of the crowd was another shout. This one wasn’ting from
the television.
It wasing from Sean.
Fuck this. I wouldn’t give this thing what it wanted, not from L’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 andtched
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 L’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 L’s grandmother.
Even in the beginning, when L and I fought one another at every turn, her grandmother had been
the one to see
through it all. She epted me as her grandson before I was able to even admit my attraction to L.
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
nevere 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 L’s
grandma. She stood at the stove, pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven. The shadow at my back
moved, a sh 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 L’s fiery,
all-consuming presence, but I had to try-I had to.
‘L? Fuck, fuck! This can’t be happening.
L, 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 reced with a thirst for death. Its teeth
cracked from how hard it grinned, and with nothing more than a whisperedmand, 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 sh 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 L 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 ss door, I was already breathing down his neck.
When we collided, and the ache of my ws 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, mynd, 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 shes 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 ws 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.
N?velDrama.Org is the owner.
Why is this happening? Why?
His jaw grewx, and with my ws 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 ss door and heard its shards raining to the floor. The pain of them slicing into my skin was dull,
nothingpared 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 L 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 be 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 simr to L’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 L would’ve found breathtaking.
Never in my life would I have contemted jumping, but just five minutes was all it took to take
everything away from me, to unravel who I was sopletely 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 ws 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?!’ L 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.