"He's called the Alpha of Death because death always follows him around." One male begins.
"Some say he came back from the dead."
"Others say that he's the King of the Dead."
"You know Hades, the Greek God of the Underworld?" The other man questions...
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...Lucas
With a jerk, I wake up, breathing heavily. Where am I? With sleep-filled eyes, I gaze around the room until my eyes land on a red-haired goddess lying in a bed, my bed, a few feet away from me. She's attached to multiple machines with multiple wires. I remember having her moved here with everything she needed to survive almost two months ago. I couldn't stay in my Pack Hospital with her all the time and she needed to be as close to me as possible. It helps her healing process, not that she needed healing anymore. She was completely healed up and fine after the first month. Why is she still asleep, then? The tiny voice in the back of my head asks.
I had been so volatile since that recurring nightmare from my teenage years a few months ago, that every night I would return to this very room coated in dark red blood. My Pack members were terrified to come near me and Jackson or my siblings were often called to speak to me instead. Anything and everything would send me over the edge. I remember the time Carmen and Jackson came here elated to give me some news, and instead of being happy for them, I went into a blind rage, destroying everything in my path. I have a bad habit of doing that...
Anyway, Carmen and Jackson's appearances have become annoying for me. They're a pair of happy mates, free of pain, expecting their first child. Carmen's two months pregnant, and werewolf pregnancies only take half as long as human ones. Had Melanie and I been normal mates with no history between our families or Caine's family, we would've probably had the beginnings of a happy, stable family.
Like every other night, my once crisp white dress shirt is a dark crimson. Caine's blood. Torturing him daily is the only relief away from the fact that he had done such despicable deeds to my mate that she could no longer handle being awake. What if she never wakes up? We'll all know that it's my fault. What will I tell my Pack? After a while, I'll probably disappear too, just like my dad did. What is a life without your other half? Your soulmate?
Refusing to accept defeat and to back down from my hopes of being as happy as Jackson and Carmen - as happy as my parents once were - I push off the chair and stroll towards my bathroom, ripping off my tie. A shower will set my thoughts straight. The jumbled mess that has been running through my head ever since Melanie went away, might finally become more coherent and less annoying. Jake has been abnormally quiet after Melanie didn't wake up when her body repaired itself completely. I don't know how well he's holding out either. I turn on the water to my shower.
My mind is a mess.
My life is a mess.
My Pack is a mess.
Get yourself together, I berate myself, angrily yanking off the rest of my clothes and stepping into the scalding hot water. It immediately burns my skin, turning it a dark red. The red doesn't quite reach the shade of Caine's blood as I furiously rub it off of me. I'm disgusting. I was a disgusting mate and now I may never be able to prove myself better. I let out a hiss as the rage skyrockets. It's the only thing I've been able to feel these days. Anger, madness, fury. What is wrong with me? What kind of a person am I becoming?
I recently found out that the lying bitch Alessandra had been Caine's mate. It took the removal of four fingers and three teeth for Caine to spit that out at me, along with his blood mixed in saliva. He wanted revenge for how I ruined everything for the two of them. How ironic. He, like his father had blamed my father, blamed me for taking away his woman. I wasn't even interested in her. She used poor Leo to get close to me and even then, she failed in her endeavors and ended up dying in the hands of her own mate.
Life's a backstabbing bitch.
As I wash my hair, I recall Caine's vivid description of his time between my mate's legs. My mate. The way her forced himself on her... I also remember slitting his throat at that, after pulling off all his fingernails and feeding them to him. Sweet revenge. His atrocities will be paid for in full as long as he remains my prisoner. Thankfully, that's not where it ended for Caine. His vampire abilities brought him back to life a few hours later. Which means I still get to torture him for everything he's done to me.
I am barely living. I've been throwing myself into my work, but it hasn't gotten me anywhere. My mate's still comatose and my Pack is still slowly falling apart. No matter what I do, my full attention is never on what needs to be done, but rather on what could've been. I sigh, placing my hands on the steamy walls of my bathroom, letting the water roll off of my body, dripping down towards the drain... Everything in my life has fallen out of place and it all began with the loss of my parents. Who could've anticipated that a young, careless teenager like me would have to take over my Pack so quick?
When my mom died, my dad mysteriously disappeared after the first month of trying to prove that everything would be alright. After that, everything was anything but okay. I was inexperienced, but I was the only one who could rightfully rule the Pack. I was training to do it anyway. Even though I was challenged on multiple occasions, I somehow always won. Looking back, I wish I didn't. I've killed many people to reserve my position as Alpha. I sometimes wondered if it would be better for me to have just died fighting for my mom, or even fighting for my childhood Pack. It would have saved me and a bunch of other people, including Melanie, worlds of pain.
She doesn't deserve a terrible mate like me, does she?
Stepping out of the shower into my steaming bathroom, I dry myself off before wrapping the towel around my lower half. Every night, I'd sleep at my mate's side, careful not to disturb the fluids and wires keeping her alive. The tiniest things would wake me up, whether it was the sound of an irregularity of her heartbeat on the heart monitor, or it was the silence of her not breathing. These happened more often than I would like to admit. As I exit the bathroom, wishing to get some decent sleep tonight, the first thing I notice is that someone's been in my room. Something's very off.
My bed is empty.
Someone's stolen my mate.
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Short chapter, I know. Just another filler and an insight into Lucas's new mindset. Hope you guys like him better now and if not, lemme know why :)
