Cold hearted
I rose from the table with legs that felt like they didn’t belong to me, numb and trembling. My fingers curled into fists at my sides, but I didn’t speak. Didn’t fight. I just followed my father, leaving my mother dumbfounded.
The hallway stretched before me like a tunnel to nowhere. Every step toward that study felt like walking toward a cage I will never escape from. My father walked ahead, not looking back, as if the decision he'd made wasn’t shattering the ground beneath my feet.
But just as we neared the heavy double doors of the study, the low growl of a guard outside cut through the silence.
My father halted mid-step then another growl followed, louder this time, laced with warning.
A second later, the front doors burst open and two pack guards rushed in, flanking something or someone between them.
I stepped instantly around my father to see.
And then I froze.
A woman stumbled through the entrance, gasping, her hair wild with twigs tangled in it, her clothes were soaked and torn. Mud streaked her legs and blood, too. She was heavily pregnant, one hand clutching her side, the other gripping the arm of a boy barely old enough to walk on his own.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
The boy was barefoot, shivering, his cheek smeared with dirt. His wide, terrified eyes found mine and locked there pleading and lost.
“They crossed the river,” one of the guards barked. “No scent markers recognized. Rogues.”
“No,” the woman gasped. “Please, please, we’re not ... my mate .... he’s dead, he was killed—” She stammered.
"Alpha should we take them to... ",
“No,” I blurted out, stepping forward before I could think better of it. “She’s not a threat. Look at her. she’s pregnant. And the child—”
“Lily.” My father’s cut me off. “Do not interfere.”
But I couldn’t look away. The woman’s knees buckled, and she nearly collapsed, but the little boy tugged at her hand, trying to hold her upright. My chest constricted painfully.
They weren’t rogues. They were running from something. And whatever it was, it had nearly destroyed them.
“Please,” the woman rasped, her gaze finally landing on me. “Don’t let him send us back.”
My father ignored her and turned toward the guards. “Take them to the holding cells. We’ll question them after the meeting.”
“Wait—” I reached out, but my father grabbed my wrist. His grip was brutal.
“You will not interfere, Lily.”
The woman’s legs buckled again, her weight nearly dragging the child down with her. He whimpered, clinging to her as if she were the only thing anchoring him to life. My stomach twisted more as I watched them.
The guards began to drag them toward the hall, ignoring their pleas. Her sobbing grew louder and raw but then everything stopped when the door to the study out of blue slammed wide open.
A presence entered .. one that made every guard freeze and every breath hitch.
Alpha Torin.
Alpha Torin stepped into the hall, his eyes cold, deadly and filled with something that promised violence. His gaze landed immediately on the woman and child, and my breath caught in my throat.
“Eland, you’ve shown mercy where none is deserved.” He spoke immediately. My father’s face turned pale as he looked back at Torin, his posture rigid with respect or perhaps fear.
Torin's gaze swept over the woman and the boy, and the fury in his eyes was evident.
“Mercy?” he repeated, his tone deadly low. “You don’t show mercy to rogues. They deserve to die, not be coddled.”
His words rang out with finality. Without waiting for a response, he turned his attention to the guards standing at attention.
“End them,” he commanded.
The guards hesitated only for a moment, exchanging quick glances, but then their faces hardened. The air grew thick with tension. The woman’s eyes filled with desperate terror as they raised their weapons.
“No! Please!” she screamed, her body trembling, but her words were drowned out by the sharp, chilling command that followed.
“Now.”
The guards didn’t hesitate this time.
The first swing of the blade was quick, merciless. The woman’s scream was cut short, her body collapsing lifelessly to the floor in a pool of blood.
The child, still dazed from being thrown against the column, looked up in horror as his mother’s blood pooled around him. He began to crawl toward her, eyes wide with terror, but it was too late. The guards closed in on him without a second thought.
“No!” I cried out, my body moving before I could think, but my father’s grip on my wrist tightened painfully.
Torin’s gaze flicked to me, a cold expression crossing his features. “Let them learn what happens when they trespass. They were already dead the moment they crossed your borders.”
With one final command, the child’s life was extinguished, his tiny body falling limp in the face of the same brutal fate.
I stood frozen, heart hammering in my chest, the sound of their cries ringing in my ears.
Torin turned to my father, his eyes still cold. “You should have been the one to end them, Eland. You shouldn’t have waited. Weakness invites chaos.”
My father nodded stiffly, his face pale as he stood in the wake of Torin’s brutal actions. “You’re right, Alpha Torin. We were… too lenient.”
Torin’s gaze swept across the blood-stained floor, and he turned on his heel, moving toward the study without a second glance at the carnage left behind.
“I am waiting in the study. Bring the documents. We have business to discuss.”
My father didn’t speak a word as he followed, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the bodies on the floor.
This was the man, my father wanted me to get married to. The man who was ruthless. The man who didn’t care about mercy. And he didn’t care about anything but his dominance.
I was frozen that I failed to follow them.