Predator

Epilogue✔️

Days turned into weeks, that turned into years. He sat in his own lonely castle, watching the leaves change as he drank bottle after bottle of liquor until his entire cellar was empty and he was left with nothing but his thoughts.

The front door stayed unlocked, as did every other door and window on the property. Because no matter what, he didn't fully believe his love wasn't returning. He wanted to believe she'd come running through that door with cheeks tainted pink from the harsh Russian air, with those eyes of her wide as they looked at him.

Those goddamn eyes; they haunted him.

Every hour spent awake was because every time he closed his eyes, he was haunted with memories of her and those beautiful eyes. The silent house never helped much, and now that the beast inside of him was absent, he had absolutely no one.

Yet each day, he'd make the hard walk through the forest to find one specific tree. For in a little clearing, a single tree stood tall and proud, its leaves never falling to the ground, and beneath that everlasting piece of natural art was her. Buried six feet under right beside their mother.

He still remembered the day he and his brother dug the hole and placed her in it. She looked peaceful. Maksim had placed flowers in her hair and all around her body, he'd said they weren't her favorite, simple, sweet white roses that matched the paleness of her dress, but it was all he could get. He himself didn't have the courage to say anything, but simply listened with tears threatening to spill as his brother said the most magnificent words; and that still didn't do her justice.

Grey Clarke was unlike any other and goddamn did she deserve more than this.

He missed her, every second of every day. She'd given him a blessing and curse, in loving him and ridding him of the lycan curse, but now that he was human and his brother was gone too, he'd become quite acquainted with the feelings of complete and utter loneliness. Isolation was not kind to him.

Maksim left for America two months after Grey left. He'd said he couldn't stand the silence anymore and found solace in a place in the Rocky Mountains, somewhere he could embrace isolation with his wolf spirit and no one else. He didn't call, he didn't write, Alexei didn't even know if he was still alive or not but he knew deep down he couldn't die so easily - he was a true-born lycan, he was a fighter. Alexei believed though, that Maksim had harbored more feelings than a protective big brother towards Grey, and her death impacted him just as much as it did himself. He saw the way he lost the spark in his eyes after just a week, he'd lost his will to live, his light had been put out. Maksim loved Grey with every fiber of his being and losing her was like losing a part of him.

Alexei wished he'd lost only a part of him.

His heart stopped beating when Grey's did and his soul got buried with her that day.

He regretted all the times he made her cry. All the times he made her angry and all the times he told himself he hated her, that he didn't want her. He regretted not loving her and embracing her the way she deserved, because now she was cold in the ground and he was alone and cold in his own sense. He regretted everything and he wished he could go back in time to just tell her to leave Russia and never come back. He wished he could've warned her. The only thing that had given Alexei peace after her death was when he tore Petra's head from her body. But that was too short lived to mask the emptiness he felt inside.

The sound of a phone ringing somewhere in the house scared Alexei at first, it was the most noise he'd heard since Grey. It took him a minute to register what it was and practically sprinted upstairs to the room Grey stayed in, her phone buzzing atop the dresser. He didn't even look at the screen as he answered it.