Queen of Death

Solana

Elena and I face off against one another sporting matching wounds. Hers weeping slightly more blood than mine. I know that whatever attack I make against her, I will also suffer for it. So the question isn’t necessarily how do I kill her without killing myself, it’s how much more pain can I tolerate than her.

She knows she has the upper hand. She doesn’t need to make a single move to hurt me. She’s banking on the assumption that I will do that for her. And she’s right. I will. Because what she doesn’t understand is I’m willing to bleed a little to get the revenge I’m due.

At this moment I think about the guys, especially Hunter. They’re going to be livid, they might even feel betrayed, that I deceived them and got myself in a position where I’m facing Elena alone.

Hunter and Griffin were right behind me. We opened the door and a bomb blasted us back. I felt Griffin grab on to me and I felt my only chance to kill Elena slipping through my fingers. So I slipped out of his.

I didn’t do this to defy them or hurt them or prove that I’m strong enough to do this on my own. I just need this to be done. And quite frankly I couldn’t stomach not going after her for another minute.

Now’s my moment.

She struggles to keep her lip from curling, but I can see it twitching in rage.

I shadow myself and creep towards her. She stands stock still, patiently waiting for whatever blow will come. Further proving to me how confident she is that I won’t do serious damage to her.

I swipe my blade across her shoulder, leaving a large, deep gash, and I swear to the Gods this psychopath fucking smiles.

“Do you want to know how your children died?” I ask if only to wipe that fucking smirk off her face.

Yeah, that got her attention.

She spins around trying to locate where the sound of my voice is coming from.

I stab my blade into the same arm I slashed, feeling a molten hot burn pierce my own arm as I do. I twist the knife, gritting my teeth as my grip falters and I have to pull it out so I can put some distance between us.

Her arm is bleeding badly, streaming down her arm and dripping off her fingers onto the floor. My bones aren’t broken, like hers, but it feels like they are. So without any damage to actually heal, I have to sit with the pain.

“If you had been smart and let Hunter have his mate then I might have spared you.” Elena snaps, shuffling away from the direction I came from. “But you’re a selfish whore, just like your mother.”

I shove the butt of my knife against her larynx, shattering the protective thyroid cartilage and preventing her from speaking another word.

It’s immediately harder to breathe. Elena starts swinging at me like a toddler. She has no form or discipline and she can’t hit for shit. But I’ll admit, the blow to her throat hurt. And now I’m really starting to wonder how I’m going to get out of this without maiming myself too badly in the process.

I grab her arm the next time she swings at me and quickly slice her pinky clean off. Elena howls in pain, clutching her hand to her chest and stumbling back away from me.

My own pinky is bleeding uncontrollably but it’s not severed. Pain radiates from my pinky through my elbow and up to my shoulder.

“Hunter killed your daughter first,” I rasp, still wheezing from my hit to her throat. “His wolf tore her apart limb by limb before hunting down your sons and doing the same thing to them.”

I use my forearm and body weight to pin her up against the wall in the corner of the room. She’s losing blood, I’m losing blood...killing her is now or never.

“Tell me Elena,” I look her square in the face, my eyes are blazing infernos. “Have you been thinking about this moment as long as I have? Is it turning out to be everything you dreamed of?”

I stab my blade into the side of her torso and begin sawing it through her midsection. “You put a hit out on me because you’re too chicken shit to do your own dirty work.” My stomach is splitting open like I’m pulling on a zipper, but I keep going. “On behalf of my family, and anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of knowing you...Fuck. You.”

We’re both screaming as I finish carving her in half. Her lower body flops to the floor at my feet while her top half stays pinned to the wall under my arm. I’m using my free arm to hold onto my organs and stop them from spilling out of me like wet noodles.

It’s not until I see the light leave her eyes that I let her top half drop to the floor. I turn around in the direction of the door but I don’t make it three steps before I feel a sudden heaviness in my head, like it’s a lead balloon. I fight to remain upright but black holes dot my vision and my neck can no longer support the weight of my head.

I don’t know when it is that I died. But I do know what a relief it was to give in to the darkness.

— — —

Ace

I should have known something was off all those years ago even though I watched them put my father in the ground. I had watched from afar and only even showed up because Tate sent me the information on his burial and I needed to see for myself as they finally returned that piece of shit to the earth.

He was a cruel man who ruled through fear, too weak to build the respect and loyalty needed to truly be an Alpha. It almost cost him his pack. When he hadn’t found his mate yet, and hadn’t named a successor, he bought my mother from breeders and used her to make himself an heir. Then once he got what he wanted out of her he sold her away to be auctioned off someplace else.

A few weeks shy of my 25th birthday, the deadline he had set for me to take over as Alpha, he met his mate, Bonnie. And with her arrival came the death of my future as Alpha.

I lived with them for a few more years until my half-brother was born. My father’s “true heir.” And to make sure everyone knew it, he named him his junior. Alec.

Bonnie, or as we all called her “Bunny”, was lovely. She was sweet, warm, and naturally maternal. She loved me like her own. It’s how I expect my children will feel about Sol. Because it’s the same fiery fierceness that makes her so lethal that also makes her incredibly protective of the people she deems worthy of her love.

You might think I left my father’s pack because of what a monster he turned out to be – undeserving of his fated mate, undeserving of his pack. Truthfully, though, I was ashamed and disgusted that I was associated with him in any way. So I left. I shrugged him off like shed skin and began looking for my mother. That’s how I ended up in this world of hunting traffickers and rescuing the people they exploit.

By all accounts my half-brother, Alec junior, grew up to be a younger version of our father. We had our disagreements about it over the years. I’d stop by every few years as he was growing up to try to undo some of the damage my father did in raising him, but that was a fruitless endeavor. The day he took over as Alpha was the last time I saw him in the last century.

He should have been dead, or at least close to death, but then he showed up at Calla’s party looking right as rain. I should have known then that if my brother could avoid death that so, too, could my father.

And now we’re here. With that spineless coward baiting me with an innocent woman, the only other woman besides Sol, and perhaps my own mother, to ever love me. I’m going to find my mate, then I’m going to put that bastard in the ground myself.

I’m careful to teleport us a few hundred yards from the coordinates my father left us. Just as we suspected they led us right to the Elder’s Council Headquarters.