Chapter 78: Chapter 78: PRINCE OF CARNAGE

AZRAEL

I pride myself in never making mistakes, in being far ahead of the enemy’s plans because it’s always the same.

You tend to know what they’re thinking after living for so long because they always repeat the same shit over and over again. Werewolves aren’t smart.

But today I made two mistakes… and one of them was letting Ottomar live for as long as he has.

The Wilderose Alpha bursts into his dark office as if he’s being chased by something terrifying in the shadows, darting for his desk first.

A key tied around his neck reveals a secret compartment hidden underneath before he takes out all the documents inside.

He shivers in fear, looking around him and over his shoulders constantly, as if he knows something is coming for him.

And it is.

I wait in the cloak of darkness until I step out into the light, revealing my presence and the fact that I’ve been waiting for him.

“Ottomar Wilderose, first born son of Hickory Wilderose,” I call out his name.

His eyes dart to me, widening with fear the second he realizes I’m standing in front of him.

He gasps, stumbling backwards and falling, tossing the documents in the air haphazardly.

Coincidentally, one of them floats right into my hands amid the chaos; a piece that partly details experiments on extending werewolf transformations into a second phase.

Just as I had suspected.

The paper fizzles into flames, influenced by the power in my hands, and my gaze shifts to the shivering man in front of me again—this worthless chunk of flesh that dared to cross me.

“I had high hopes for you, Ottomar. Even when you became a criminal, I still thought you to be smart, calculative… wise enough not to mess with me at the very least.”

I take a step closer.

With a fling of my hand, the desk separating us is tossed to the side, exposing his body to me fully. He falls on his knees, cowering, drenched in perspiration.

“Your Majesty, there’s been a misunderstanding…” he begins.

I don’t bother listening. My rage is unquenchable. My anger sears hotter than the flames in hell, only to be satiated by his blood.

“You know, I experienced the strangest string of events today. Valoria—whom I made strict instructions was off-limits—was out of her room and locked up with your little experiment. Bruised. Battered…” I clench my teeth with every word describing how I found her. “…And the mutt turns out to be some kind of mutated undead Lycan I had no idea existed. Care to explain?”

His trembling doubles down; his lips move to speak, yet only broken, incomprehensible words escape them. And then he pisses himself in front of me, hanging his head in shame.

I sigh.

“Wrong answer, Ottomar.”

I raise my palm, and he’s pulled closer, levitating into my grasp.

The second I grab him, I snap one arm in two, shattering the bones in one swift motion. He yelps in pain, thrashing midair, about to lose his mind—but it’s not enough yet.

“I’ll tell you everything!” he yells more coherently now, sobbing. “I’ll tell you everything I know about the Lycan experiments, about what the rebels have been plotting in secret if you please spare me!” he pleads in tears, but I’m not moved at all.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t care about that anymore. I know your information is limited. You only follow Alpha Ziba’s orders because you’re a footman. I can always find another way to figure that out, but I gave you the chance to be useful. I don’t know if you’re an idiot—going after Valoria the second I left—or if perhaps you have a death wish.”

“Your Majesty, it was a mistake!”

“I made it clear from the beginning not to touch what is mine, over and over again. But you chose not to heed my warnings. You chose to ignore me. Perhaps your fear wasn’t enough. Perhaps I need to remind your generation what you’re up against.”

Then I snap another arm, twisting it into a disfigured state. He screams louder, thrashing more violently with more tears.

“You know me as Lycan King now, but your ancestor before knew me as something else, when they knew true fear,” I explain, drawing closer to him. “Prince of Carnage. Reaver King. Soul-drinker. Gore Feaster. The Rumbling in the Abyss. Judgement.”

Each name was earned after massacre and chaos, after countless numbers of them had stained the earth and bathed it in crimson blood.

Realization and terror finally sink into him.

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know she was important! I would never have gotten close—mercy, Your Majesty, please, mercy.”

“Your punishment is already decided.”

I clench my fist tightly, and an invisible force begins to crush him, squeezing him tight.

I begin to chant a familiar spell, summoning power from a deep, dark source within me, and chains rise from an abyss that appears in the floor below us, reaching out and binding him—down and forever.

The pace quickens, repeating the last few words as his vigor begins to fade and his body shrinks into a smaller, pale version of himself. The chanting fades.

He falls forward, flat on his face, gasping for air that cuts into his lungs painfully. He scurries to his knees, looking down at himself, expecting his punishment to be death.

But no. Death is too much of a mercy for him.

He deserves to suffer for as long as possible for every scar on her body, every cut and pain he inflicted on her—and even worse. To live and watch everything he’s built be taken away from him.

“Your wolf is confined within you, eating its way out from the inside until you’re nothing but an empty husk,” I explain the terms of his punishment.

He stares silently at his thin arm and pale, patchy skin, shaking with pain and regret. Slowly, he looks up at me—already a shadow of his former self, less than a wolf now.

“Kill me… please, kill me!” he begs in a low, scratchy whisper, bearing only a portion of the strength he once had.

I give him one last look before walking away from him.

“Please!” he yells out one final time before the door is shut behind me.

Killing that bastard—punishing Ottomar—none of it feels remotely enough.

None of it seems to erase the images in my head from seeing her accepting her fate, accepting death while wounded.

I bear just as much blame. I let it get this far… I brought her here to be tortured and abused.

My heart stings painfully. Self-loathing burns itself right into me. A mind-shattering agony, worse than physical pain, eats its way into me.

“Azrael.” Eros stands in the hallway, blocking my path.

I had left him back at the pack during inspection when I felt something wrong with Valoria and came back on my own.

I must have looked like a crazy bastard running off to her side, but I don’t regret it. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Rather, I wish I had gotten back sooner. Or rather that I had never left.

It was all because of that stupid kiss plaguing my thoughts—because I couldn’t face her with the things she stirred in my chest over something as measly as a kiss.

“You took it too far. You’ve used too much chaos in one night,” he chides me like always, only tonight I’m in no mood for it at all. Not when I was close to losing her.

“Fuck off,” I growl in his face, walking right past him.

The last thing I need from him is to be reminded to be careful.

How could I be careful or sane after seeing her in that state? After watching him put his hands on her?

How can I not seek to destroy everything that threatened to ruin her, even if it means using a little bit of chaos stored up?

Chaos is the true source of my power—the reason I bring pain and damnation to the world, all to harvest chaos from the suffering and agony of others.

The only downside is that the more complicated the spell, the more chaos it eats from me.

My head begins to spin as the after-effects start to take over, blurring my vision.

Despite my warning, he appears in front of me again.

“My job as beta is to remind you when you need to stop and be logical. I know that you care about her, but she’s one girl. She isn’t worth it.”

So he says—so he keeps implying and nagging at every chance he gets. Reminding me of my immortality and how fleeting her life is.

Telling me to focus on my mission, as if I’m not already aware of how fucking insane it is that I can’t let go no matter how blatantly obvious what all of this will eventually lead to.

“Get in my fucking way again, and I really will kill you,” I threaten, meaning every word, holding his gaze in a glare until he willingly steps aside for me to walk away.

He doesn’t understand what it feels like or what this feeling even is.

Neither do I.

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