“I didn’t say you could. But you live off of others. Not everyone wants to play host to…someone like that.” He had almost said ‘a parasite,’ but he stopped at the last moment.
“I know.” She acknowledged as she stopped outside the building where his parents lived ever since he had become the Alpha and took over their previous home. “I’m sorry for the invasion.”
He stopped with her, and spoke to her silently, since there was a crowd gathering around the house. The crowd of wolves knelt and paid their respects to their old Alpha, and Nick made no move to stop them. You live on the connections between people. I hated and loved my father, both by extremes sometimes. He was on the edge of tears, but he wouldn’t allow himself to shed them. Live on that for now. Maybe that will blunt the edge of what my mother is feeling for you.
And who is going to help you?
I’m the one who killed him. He reminded, as though that explained everything sufficiently, and then stepped inside the house.
Inside the house, his mother’s grief was tangible in every piece of metal that was a part of the house. Even the floor Nick walked on screamed out for the missing power that once belonged to his father. They believed that souls went out into the metal that they once claimed, but that didn’t make it any easier for his mother, even believing her mate’s soul was around her. His mother was crumpled on the floor next to the bed where his father’s body laid still, sobbing into her arm.
Nick stepped up near his mother slowly, but kept his distance, since he had no idea how she would react to him at the moment. He knew she was sensible enough to know that what he had done was necessary for the survival of the pack, but that didn’t mean she would exactly thank him for it. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
His mother looked up at the sound of his voice, and she winced in pain as she stared at him. “He meant everything to me. How could you do this to us?”
He drew in a breath and sighed as he looked back at her. “He would have destroyed all of us. No one would have survived. I wasn’t thinking of you. I was thinking of the pack. As you always taught me to do.”
She whimpered as she laid there on the floor, since her whole body screamed out for a presence that was no longer with her. Even when they had been apart, her mate’s power had always been a part of her and hers a part of him. Now she felt like parts of her body had been hacked away, and she could barely think without feeling the loss.
The older the wolves and the longer they had been together, the worse it was. Some wolves could handle it. Others went insane. Most didn’t make it. She pulled off a corner of the bed that his father’s body was laid out on, and the metal responded to her as though she was grabbing a piece of clay. She molded the metal into a knife and held it out to Nick. “Kill me.” She begged.
He took the knife from her and stayed nearby, kneeling as he spoke silently to Zara, knowing she would be listening to him outside the house. Send in Lea and William. Lea had become the leader of his personal guard, and William was one of the older members of the Guard, well into his third century and one of the strongest and most respected wolves in the pack.
It wasn’t long before Lea came in, and when she did, it wasn’t easy for her to hide the shock she felt at seeing her Alpha holding a knife over his own mother. “We were told to come, Alpha.”
“You were asked to come to witness.” He looked over at William and nodded respectfully to him. He had been one of the longest-serving of his father’s fighters, but he had followed along when Nick had become Alpha with the same loyalty.
As the two of them stood on either side of the door, Nick went down on one knee in front of his mother to look her in the eye. “I’ll send you to join him, Mother, if that’s really what you want.”
She was still sobbing as she reached out and gently pulled him closer, to kiss him on his forehead. “We have always been so proud of you, Nickel. I love you so much. You know that, right?”
“I know, Mother. Almost everything I’ve ever done has been to make you proud. And I’ll keep doing so, for the rest of my life.” He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it once, then nodded to the bed where his father’s broken body was lying in a semblance of sleep, since he had died almost peacefully in the dark of the morning.
His mother got up slowly and then went over to the bed where she laid down next to his father. With broken motions, her hands shaking not in fear, but in weakness, she pulled herself close to rest her head against his chest, exposing her back entirely to her son. “Don’t forget us.” She said softly.
“I won’t. Nor will any who ever followed you.” He stepped up to the side of the bed, giving her a last moment to hold his father, even in death.
He gripped the knife that she had given him, then leaned forward and laid a hand on his mother’s shoulder, moving her hair out of the way of her back. Without another word or breath, he plunged the knife directly through her back into the heart that had been broken by his father’s death. He didn’t have to twist the knife. Instead, he twisted the steel into unseen barbs that spiraled through her chest, making her death as quick and painless as possible.
His mother gasped at the twisted pleasure and
