Page 156 of Chased By My Grumpy Alpha
I’m struggling to control my rage now. “What…did…you…do?”
Gareth’s smile is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. Pure, unfiltered evil wrapped in shifter skin.
“I had the entire pack rip her to pieces in front of her daughter,” he says, his voice filled with sick satisfaction. “Every single member. Men, women, even children who were old enough to understand what defiance meant. We made it a pack bonding experience.”
The world goes completely silent. Not the kind of quiet that comes from lack of sound, but the kind that comes when your brain simply can’t process what you’ve just heard. When the horror is so complete that everything else just...stops.
“It took hours,” Gareth continues, his voice dreamy with the memory. “She was strong, Elena. Always was. She lasted much longer than I expected. The screaming was... unforgettable.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but stand here and let the full weight of his words sink into my veins like poison.
He had an entire pack—including children—tear Astra’s mother apart while she watched. Eight-year-old Astra witnessed her mother dying in the most brutal way imaginable.
“And her little girl?” Gareth is chatty now, like he’s reminiscing fondly. “Oh, she tried to help. Tried to run to her mother. But I held her back, made sure she saw every single moment. She had to learn what happened to people who thought they could disobey me.”
Something breaks inside me. Something fundamental and irreversible. The man I was five minutes ago—the one who believed in mercy, in justice, in the possibility of redemption—that man is gone. In his place is someone darker, someone who understands perfectly why some people need to suffer before they die.
“Afterward,” Gareth continues, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s ensuring his own slow, painful torture with every word, “I made sure everyone in the pack understood that Elena’s death was a lesson. That her daughter would live only as longas she remembered her place. As long as she served the pack without complaint and never, ever tried to leave.”
My voice, when I finally find it, doesn’t sound like my own. It’s colder, deadlier, the voice of a man who’s looking at a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.
“What is Eclipse Born?”
Gareth’s monologue stops abruptly. He frowns as if I’ve just asked him to pull from the deepest recesses of his mind.
“Eclipse Born?” He sits back, nodding. “Now, that’s a term I haven’t heard in...oh, decades.”
Then he chuckles to himself, a sound that makes my skin crawl.
“Elena’s little secret. Astra’s shameful bloodline.” His eyes brighten with renewed malice. “You see, Your Highness, Elena didn’t elope with just any rogue. She eloped with an Eclipse Born. That’s why her father let the bastard child live instead of drowning her at birth like he should have.”
“What does it mean?”
“Eclipse Born was an old bloodline. Very old, very powerful, and very dead.” Gareth seems to be enjoying himself now, like he has finally found a way to twist the knife deeper. “Elena’s father wanted to preserve whatever was left of that bloodline. Thought maybe little Astra would manifest some of their old power.”
“What had happened to that bloodline?”
“Went extinct. Was hunted down and eliminated generations ago.” Gareth shrugs. “I looked into it when Elena first told me about her little secret. Spent months researching Eclipse Born, trying to hit upon anything useful. Found nothing. No records, no survivors, no trace of whatever power they supposedly had.”
“Why didn’t you let Elena leave with Astra?”
The question seems to surprise him. For a moment, his mask of cruel satisfaction slips, and I see something else underneath. Something bitter and obsessive and pathetic.
“Because she made the wrong choice,” he says, his voice suddenly cold. “All she had to do was choose the right child.”
“What do you mean?”
But Gareth shakes his head, his lips twisting into that nasty smile again. “That’s all you’re getting, Your Highness. I’ve answered your questions. Our deal is done.”
“Tell me what you meant.”
“No,” he says with finality. “Kill me if you want. I’ve said plenty to save my daughter.”
I study him for a full minute, noting the way his hands shake slightly despite his bravado, the way his eyes can’t quite meet mine anymore. He has told me more than he intended, revealed more than he meant to. But there are still secrets here, still pieces of the puzzle he is keeping locked away.
And that’s fine. I have enough.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “Our deal is done.”
