The Survivor ( #2 Eastern Werewolves Pack Series)

“Jaxon, why didn’t you come to save me?” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

He couldn’t speak as if his vocal chord was torn out of his throat. All he could do was looking at her and felt the pang of pain in his heart. Her body was covered in blood and she could barely stand still. Her blood-stained hands clenched on his shirt as she cried on.

“Why didn’t you?” Zia sobbed on his chest. “Why didn’t you?” She pounded on his chest. “How could you let them got me?”

“Zia...” Jaxon said her name at last.

His trembled hand reached to touch her cheek to wipe the tears away. But, she swatted his hand away before her fist flew to his direction. Her eyes glowed in red color as if she had become something else.

“You let them tortured me,” she shouted.

Jaxon jerked upward on the bed and panted heavily. His body covered in sweat and hands trembled. This wasn’t the first time he had a dream like this. Since she died in front of his eyes, Jaxon barely had any sleep because of this kind of dream. He would always see her and the dream ended the same way. She would punch him and her eyes glowed in red.

“Bad dream again?” Winston was lying on his bed, ankles crossed while his eyes fixed on the book he was reading.

Jaxon reached for the cigarette packet and pulled one out. He lit it up and took a long drag as if the cigarette could keep the dream away.

“I thought you quit smoking long ago,” Winston kept on.

“Stress Reliever.”

The hybrid eyed him. “I didn’t know a lung cancer could be a stress reliever.”

The former Alpha ignored him and his hand reached for something from the chair next to the bed. Realized his jacket wasn’t there, Jaxon’s heart beat fast as he remembered it was with Kaya. Zia’s photo was in one of the pockets of the jacket. He grunted at his mistake. He shouldn’t have left the jacket. There was no way he could get it back this instant. Not at this hour. The clock was showing it was just three in the morning. He grunted again. He needed to get the jacket back first thing in the morning later on.

“What are you reading on?” Jaxon sat up and ruffled his hair in frustration.

“Trying to figure out what ′ith′ could mean. Maybe it’s a name. I figured I started with that one.”

Winston showed the book to him which had a label of the town’s archives. The book contained the name of the town’s residents with their current address, dates and a few important points. The former Alpha realized this book could never leave the archives.

“You stole it?”

“I prefer the word ′borrowing’. I’ll return it before the place is opened.” Winston grinned. “If I stole it, I wouldn’t plan to return it later on.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Not at the moment. But, I know I’ll find something in here. Just a hunch though.” He closed the book and sat to face Jaxon. “Where did you go last night?”

“Out for a walk.”

Jaxon didn’t tell Winston that he met Kaya by accident. The former Alpha was wandering around the town when he spotted Kaya was cornered by ten men. He knew he had to act fast if he wanted to save her. What kind of a man would he become if he didn’t save a woman in trouble like that? He already failed that duty once.

“I already found one name though.” Winston scribbled something on a receipt. “Dave Smith. He was a detective in the local precinct and died about three years ago at age of thirty.”

“You know we can’t talk to the dead, right?”

“Good point. I made a quick errand with someone to find out more about Dave Smith. I found something very interesting.”

Winston’s hands tapped on his jacket as if he wanted to find something. He dug his hand in and pulled out a folded paper before he passed it to the Alpha. A photo of a man named Dave Smith along with a few information about him. He had curly brown hair with deep blue eyes.

“This was him?” Jaxon showed the photo to Winston.

“That was him.”

“And...” Winston handed another folded paper. “This one is Alaric Konstantine who died ten years ago. See the resemblance?”

He was right. The resemblance was uncanny except for the hair and scar. Alaric Konstantine had white hair and there was a scar on his left cheek as if it was left there to be a reminder for the rest of his life. Despite the differences on those features, the structure of his face was resembling Dave Smith. What this could mean? How there could be two people with uncanny resemblance but different age and information? Was this just like Mira and Adeline Domenico’s story all over again?

“Alaric Konstantine was an assassin for the Witches and Warlocks’ Council. He was a warlock too and the level of his skill was considered as Master’s level.” Winston went on with his investigation. “His real age was nine hundred and twenty-eight years old. I asked Dalton to speak with Lady Astrid of the Witches and Warlocks’ Council. She didn’t reveal as much about Alaric because there was nothing much about him in their archives but there were a few points worthy for us to look on. The previous Councilors gave him the assignment to kill a certain someone. The name of the target was never recorded in any report.”

“Let me guess, he didn’t make the kill?”

“Nobody knew the actual outcome of his assignment whether he made the kill or not. He disappeared after three months since he started on the assignment. According to the final information in the report, the target was never to be found again.” Winston crossed his arms as he thought hard. “If my assumption is correct that Dave Smith was Alaric Konstantine, then we need to figure out the names of Dave Smith’s wife and kid.”

“He had a wife and a kid?”

Winston nodded. “I’ve been running the system to find anything else I might have missed on the first lookout. I have the feeling that the wife could be the target he was supposed to kill.”

“Instead, he fell in love with her and had a kid with her.”

“Sounds cliche but that’s all we got for the moment. Lady Astrid is trying to find out more about Alaric’s target and why the previous Councilors wanted him to eliminate the target.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

Jaxon couldn’t shrug the bad feeling no matter how hard he tried. It seemed like the previous Witches and Warlocks’ Council was in the middle of something when their plan was interrupted by Dalton’s investigation with the aids of Amanda and Mira. But, Dalton didn’t reveal everything about the investigation as if somebody had asked him to disclose a few things. Mira must have known a few things about it.