The Enemy's Face
POV: Kael
Blood was everywhere.
I pulled the twisted car door off its springs like it was made of paper, my werewolf strength making the metal groan and snap. Inside the rubble, Aria hung limply in her seatbelt, unconscious and bleeding from a deep cut on her forehead.
She looked nothing like the scary mafia princess my father had described.
She looked like a broken child.
"Is she alive?" Rico asked from behind me, his voice tight with fear.
I pressed my fingers against her neck and felt the movement of her pulse. Weak, but stable. "She's alive," I said, but the words felt strange in my mouth. Relief. Why was I relieved?
My wolf was going crazy inside my chest, whimpering and scratching like something was torturing him. Every urge I had was screaming at me to protect this girl, to keep her safe, to hunt down whoever had hurt her.
But I was the one who had hurt her.
"Alpha," Marco said softly, "we need to move. Someone might have heard the crash."
He was right. We were still too close to the road, too exposed. But as I carefully lifted Aria from the destroyed car, something twisted in my stomach.
She was so small in my arms. So fragile. Her head fell back against my shoulder, and I could smell her blood mixed with rain and fear. But underneath all of that, there was something else. Something familiar that made my wolf pace restlessly.
"The safe house is ten minutes away," Luca reported, already moving toward our cars. "I'll call ahead and have medical supplies ready."
Medical tools. Because I had told my pack to run her off the road, and now she was bleeding because of me.
What kind of monster did that make me?
I carried Aria to my SUV and slid into the back seat with her still in my arms. Rico took the driver's seat and started the engine, but I barely noticed. All I could focus on was the girl unconscious against my chest.
She had a small scar on her chin that looked old, maybe from childhood. Her dark hair was wet with rain and blood, but it was soft against my hand. When I brushed it away from her face, she made a tiny sound that went straight through my heart.
"She's just a college student," I said out loud, not really meaning to.
"She's Vincent Castellano's daughter," Marco answered from the front passenger seat. "That makes her the enemy, no matter what she looks like."
But my wolf growled at those words. Enemy. This girl wasn't our enemy. She was... What? What was she?
My phone buzzed with a text from my father: Do you have the girl?
I stared at the message for a long time before typing back: Yes. She's asleep. Injured in the crash.
Good. Let her suffer. It's what she gets.
I deleted the chat and put my phone away. Let her suffer. How could I let someone so innocent suffer for things she probably didn't even know about?
"Alpha?" Rico's voice pulled me back to the present. "You've been quiet back there. Everything okay?"
I looked down at Aria's pale face. A drop of blood had dried at the corner of her mouth, and without thinking, I gently wiped it away with my thumb.
The moment my skin touched hers, something electric shot through me. My wolf went totally still, like he was listening to something I couldn't hear.
And then the memory hit me like a punch to the face.
A girl with dark hair kneeling beside me in the muddy swamp. Her hands pressing against the bullet wound in my chest, trying to stop the blood. Her voice, scared but determined: "Stay awake! Please, you have to stay awake!"
Me, barely conscious, looking up at her face in the moonlight. Eighteen years old. Beautiful. Human.
Her whisper as she helped me stand: "I won't tell anyone I saw you. But you have to promise me you'll get help."
The way she looked back at me once before disappearing into the darkness, her eyes full of worry for someone she should have left to die.
My heart stopped beating.
It was her. The girl from the Bayou Massacre. The person who had saved my life five years ago when I was bleeding to death in the swamp.
Aria Castellano was the angel who had kept me living.
"Pull over," I said suddenly.
"What?" Rico looked at me in the rearview mirror. "Alpha, we're almost to the safe house—"
"Pull over now!"
Rico hit the brakes, and the SUV skidded to a stop on the side of the road. I was out of the car before it fully stopped, still carrying Aria in my arms. Rain soaked through my clothes, but I didn't care.
This changed everything. Everything.
The girl I had spent five years trying to forget, the human who had shown me kindness when no one else would, was Vincent Castellano's daughter. The enemy I was meant to destroy was the same person who had once risked her life to save mine.
"Kael, what's going on?" Marco ordered, jumping out of the passenger seat.
I looked down at Aria's unconscious face and felt my world crumble. How was this possible? How could the girl who saved me be the daughter of the man who killed my sister?
My phone rang. My father's name showed on the screen.
"Answer it," Luca said grimly. "He's been waiting for an update."
With shaking hands, I accepted the call.
"Do you have Vincent's daughter?" Marcus Ravencrest's voice was cold and hard.
I stared at Aria's face, remembering her gentle hands trying to stop my bleeding five years ago. Remembering her promise to keep my secret. Remembering how she had looked back at me with worry in her eyes.
"Yes," I whispered.
"Excellent. Bring her to the building. It's time Vincent Castellano learned what it feels like to lose someone he loves."
The line went dead.
My pack stood around me in the rain, waiting for orders. Aria lay unconscious in my arms, trusting me to keep her safe even though she had no idea who I really was.
And somewhere in New Orleans, my father was planning to torture the girl who had once saved my life.
But the most frightening part wasn't what my father might do to her.
It was the realization that had just hit me like lightning: I was in love with my family's biggest enemy.