Chapter 2:
Axton’s P.O.V:
I fixed the collar of my shirt and looked at the bouquet of multicolored lilies in my hand, debating if I should have brought something else instead.
Lily Arliss loved her namesake flowers. She wasn’t a woman people would exactly call delicate; she had survived the tyranny of an arrogant Alpha and come out sane on the other side. She was the one who had sent a secret letter to me asking for my pack’s assistance in helping them overthrow their Alpha. And she was also the woman who had helped save several of their packmates when my pack had attacked.
In many ways, she was the ideal Luna, the one who stayed calm even in the eyes of the storm. The one who always knew what to do even if the situation proved to be impossible. But I had learned too late that she had never been meant to be mine.
When I had attacked Lily’s old pack and overthrown their Alpha, I had to return back to my pack due to unrest amongst the warriors, but I had left my Beta, Gustav in charge of handling to stabilize the pack that was now going to be an extension of mine.
When I had returned, I had fallen head over heels for Lily. I had loved her courage, her innocent beauty and everything else about her. Lily had felt the same way too as she had become my lover. For half a year, everything had felt perfect.
Gustav, my Beta and my older half-brother had been happy to be in charge of another pack and I had been in a blissful relation with Lily…until a week ago, when Gustav had decided to come back to the pack for a visit and my world had turned upside down.
“Mate.”
It had been the first word out of Gustav’s lips as soon as he had seen Lily and hers had been the same.
And that had been the end of me and Lily.
No one can fight the mating bond once it snaps into place. No wolf has ever been able to resist that temptation and frankly, no wolf would ever want to. It was a devotion so pure, so loyal, that no one could question it. Yes, there were wolves that rejected their mates, but those were extreme conditions when the wolves belonged to enemy packs or when their mate was human.
Gustav and Lily had both been wolves who couldn’t deny the bond. And so, we had decided not to tell him about the brief affair that Lily and I had shared. Gustav had already been denied the title of Alpha since I was the legitimate son of the previous Alpha, our father, while he had been born from an affair our father had had with a packmate before he found his Luna. So I had spared him the pain of knowing about me and Lily.
Tonight, I stood in front of Gustav and Lily’s shared apartment, ready to have dinner with my ex-lover, the woman who still held my heart, and my brother, in order to celebrate the start of their new life together.
Taking a deep breath, I put on my best smile and rang the doorbell.
Nothing.
I tapped my shoes on the marbled floor, waiting patiently for Lily or Gustav to open the door, but there was nothing.
I frowned, checking the time on my watch. Seven thirty eight on the dot. I’d always been punctual to a fault, but I had deliberately come late to not raise any suspicions.
Exactly a minute went by without anyone responding and I began to feel a bit uneasy.
Was everything alright? Was the doorbell not working? Did I mess up the dates? Or was I no longer welcome in Gustav’s house?
A bit hesitantly, I rang the doorbell once more, waiting another whole minute without getting an answer. This time, I had strained my ears to see if the bell was working and as expected, it was.
Taking out my phone from my back pocket, I scrolled through my contacts, my fingers pausing briefly on Lily’s number, but I shook my head and kept scrolling. I called Gustav directly, hoping to find out if I had mistaken the invitation.
“Hey, Axe!” Gustav answered in his cheerful voice, the one he’s had since the day he found out Lily was his mate. “Have you reached?”
“Yeah…” I looked around the hallway, finding the only other residence on this floor had their locked. “I rang the doorbell, but no one’s answering. Where are you?”
“Oh? I’m half-way there.” Gustav replied immediately. “Sorry man, a few of my friends wanted to join us for dinner as well; I hope that’s not a problem?”
“Absolutely not!” I gave a tight smile, hoping that a crowd will help ease my uneasiness about spending time with my ex-lover and my beta’s mate. “But why isn’t anyone answering the door? Is your mate with you too?”
“Lily? No. She’s home.” His voice sounded a bit uneven, like he was running. “Why don’t you just go in? You know the code right? I think she’s probably cooking with her headphones on or in the bathroom.”
“You still haven’t changed the lock code?” I asked him incredulously. “You’re mated now, Gus! Almost half the men in the pack know your code!”
“Its fine, Axe! This is the first time I left Lily alone,” Gustav reassured me. “You rang the bell right? So just go in. It’s fine. Lily already knows you’ll be arriving soon. I’ll see you in five.”
“Alright.” I hung up the phone and stared at it a good few seconds, feeling that uneasy feeling in my stomach grow.
What was wrong with Gustav? He wasn’t usually this careless, was he? He kept his old lock code that pretty much half the pack knew about and he’s telling me to just go inside? But then again, it was the same thing he always told me to do when he wasn’t home and I arrived early. So was he really the one being careless or was I suddenly being too cautious? Maybe I was reading too much into the situation because of my own guilt?
I decided then and there that this guilt ends today. I will tell Lily that we can’t keep our situation a secret from my brother any longer. No matter what, he has a right to know and it wasn’t like we had committed adultery! We had no idea that Lily would end up being Gustav’s mate and he had been absent at that time. And it wasn’t like Gustav had been a saint either. He had taken numerous lovers in his thirty six years of life. It was normal for wolves to have lovers, we were sexual creatures!
Punching in the code on his digital lock, I entered the apartment calling out Lily’s name as loud as I could, and noticed two things immediately.
The entire apartment was shrouded with darkness.
And the stench of blood was everywhere.
The bouquet of lilies fell to the floor as my hands fell limply at my sides. Something cold grew around my heart, hardening and suffocating me from the inside.
Something was very, very wrong.
“Lily?” I called out once again, this time my voice trembled with emotions unknown. “Lily?”
But no one answered; the darkness inside seeming to engulf my voice itself.
It took me a second to realize that my night vision had kicked in an I could faintly see the inside of the room and the silhouettes of the furniture, but the stench of blood also intensified with my increased vision. I looked down at the floor and saw a figure of a woman laying still, a trail of blood behind her.
My brain seemed to shut down momentarily, making my entire body go numb. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, as I stared blankly at the figure on the floor. It was like I knew what had happened, but rhyme and reason had deserted me.
After a few seconds of just staring blankly inside the room, my brain kick-started into gear and I moved my hand to the side of the door, where the light switches were and turned all the lights on at once.
An instant of blinding light forced me to close my eyes and when I opened them once again…horror awaited me.
The stench of blood seemed to intensify with the return of my vision and I ran inside the room, to where the familiar scent of the woman I loved lingered still.
“Lily…” I knelt next to her on the floor. She was laying face-down, her long brunette hair sprawled across the floor in waves. I shook her shoulders once, found her body still warm. Hope bloomed in my chest momentarily, but it was quashed the next instant, as I flipped her over to her front with great care and found a silver dagger protruding out of her chest…right through to her heart.
“No…” I whispered, touching her cheeks with trembling hands.
Her body was still warm, but she didn’t have a pulse. She was gone…my beautify, brilliant Lily was just…gone.
The front of her golden dress was now a matted dark brown from the drying blood and the silver dagger had been plunged right into her heart with an intent to kill. Silver was lethal for wolves once it entered their bloodstream. Whoever had stabbed Lily had known that.
Who? Who could’ve killed her? Who could’ve had a grudge against her so deep that they would want to murder an innocent woman? Had it been someone from her previous pack? Someone close to the Alpha that had known she was the one who had alerted her?
My mind raced in a million different directions, trying to find a reason why anyone would want to kill Lily. I knew it was my mind’s way of trying to distract me from my heartache. This wasn’t the time for me to crumble, even though my lips trembled as I spoke her name over and over. Even while on her last breath, she had tried to crawl her way out on bloody hands and knees. But in the end, death had prevailed.
I wrapped one hand around the dagger, feeling the tingle of the silver on my skin, and pulled it out of her chest slowly. But as soon as the dagger was out, a spray of her blood hit my face, covering my shirt. It was still a bit warm, telling me that she had been alive even a few hours ago.
“Axe?”
Startled at the voice, my head snapped up in the direction of the front door, which was still wide open. And there I saw my half-brother, staring at me wide-eyed in shock along with two of his friends, as the bouquet of lilies lay on the floor next to his feet.
It was too late when I realized exactly how this scene looked in the eyes of the onlookers.
The silver knife fell from my hand and chattered to the floor.
Chapter 3: Anika’s P.O.V “Rahul?” I looked from my fiancé to my roommate. “Ash?” “Anika…” Ash laughed nervously, pulling the sheets up to her neck as her and Rahul sprang apart. “This isn’t how it looks like…” My mind just shifted to autopilot-bitch mode on its own. It was my defense mechanism since I was a teenager. Being continuously harassed for my ‘smelly hair’ and ‘curry’ lunches, I had developed almost like a split-personality that didn’t give a shit about what other people thought and always ended up getting me in trouble, but it was what had helped me survive The American High School Experience as a woman of colour. “Really?” I pulled out my phone from my purse and snapped a picture of the shameless duo without a second thought. “Because this clearly looks like cheating to me.” I held the phone up to show them their picture and Rahul sprang up from the bed, in all his three inch glory and rushe
Axton’s P.O.V“Gustav…” My voice came out a whisper, as I slowly stood up from the floor; Lily’s body lying unmoving by my feet.“Axe…why?” Gustav fell to the floor, his eyes wide and fixated on Lily’s lifeless form.“Alpha…” One of the men next to Gustav looked at me in horror before looking at Lily’s lifeless form and then back up at me.Everyone stood stunned, rooted to their spot; including me. The situation kept getting worse with every second that passed.“I found her like this, I swear.” I told my half-brother, putting my hands up in surrender as I watched his lips tremble as he watched blood gush out of Lily’s heart.It is said that when a sharp object is impaled in your body, you mustn’t pull it out to prevent death due to blood loss. But the dagger that had been plunged into Lily’s heart had been silver. T
Anika’s P.O.VThis evening, I got harassed by my boss and almost got molested; punched my boss in the nuts to escape. Got home to find my fiancé in bed with my roommate and then found out he had been cheating on me for five whole months. And finally, got kicked out of my preferred hospital and ended up on a stupid clinic by the mountain side where the only patients I would be treating would be a few deer’s and grizzlies.If only I had been fired and thrown out of my house at the same time, it would’ve been the perfect plot for some kind of a CEO romance novel bullshit.The CEO’s Doctor Sex Slave, or, CEO’s personal Maid. Wouldn’t that just be the perfect title for my messed up life?The only difference was, the real world didn’t have half as many CEO’s as they did in the romance novels and not every girl that went through a rough day was lucky enough to land on a CEO’s lap, espe
Chapter 6:Anika’s P.O.V“Oh My God!”My heart thundered against my chest as I took deep breaths to calm myself.I was afraid to look up. I was afraid I’d see blood splattered all across my window…or worse…organs. It made my stomach churn.The only thing that broke the eerie silence in that moment was my mother’s frantic voice over the phone, which was now lying at my feet.Gulping down my nausea, I picked up my cell from near the brakes as I was already hunched over the steering, my hand trembling so bad that I dropped it several times before successfully bringing it to my ears.“I-I w-ill call y-ou la-ter.”I hate that my voice trembled, as did the rest of my body, because my mother kept asking me continuously if I was okay, even as I hung up. But I wasn’t concerned about myself. Not now.Swallowing past my fear, I jerker my
Anika’s P.O.V“Fucking sack of potatoes!” I cursed for the millionth time as I dragged the man across the driveway and into the house.I had taken out one of the bedcovers from the cupboard in the bedroom and then placed it on the ground before pushing and pulling the man onto the cover and tied it around him to help me pull him along. By the time I had made it to the bedroom with him, more than half an hour had passed and my entire dress was soaked through with sweat.Why was I doing this again you say? I could have easily just left him on the road and pretended I hadn't seen him and gotten away with it too, because apart from the bruising, his two main injuries were the stab wounds. But damn that Hippocratic Oath and my conscience as a doctor! I just couldn’t leave a wounded person behind, no matter what he did or who he was.So, after another few minutes of struggle, I hauled him on top of the bed and discarded
Axton’s P.O.V “Gus…You need to stop. It wasn’t me! I didn’t kill Lily!” “I know.” … “You’ve always been privileged, my dear litter brother. That’s why you never noticed how much I’ve suffered all my life.” “Gus…what are you talking about?” I managed to stutter out. … “You’re a pathetic weakling that got everything served on a silver platter.” “You don’t deserve to be Alpha.” “Gus…” “I know, you weakling. I know.” … “Because I killed her.” * * I jerked up in bed, my hands and legs trembling and my whole body covered in perspiration. I closed my eyes momentarily, fisting my hands to stop the trembling. It was all just a nightmare, right? Lily couldn’t possibly be dead, right? And Gustav? My older half-bro
Anika’s P.O.VI felt my eyes twitch at the corners as I gave my patient a forced smile.“So, let me get this straight?” I told him through my forced smile. “You remember that you’re a size XXL; hate the colors pink and orange; have to eat meat every single day and cannot stand the scent of lavender. But in all of this, you don’t remember your name or any of your personal information?”He raised his head from his bowl of ‘my’ noodles temporarily, to give me a nod, before going back to devouring the bowl like I was an irrelevant fly that he couldn’t even give two shits about.I was getting ripped off, wasn’t I?I was certain that this man was a conman in disguise and that he had probably faked his injuries to catch any person who came down that road. And now that he had his victim, he was going to leech me dry until I was bankrupt and on the streets, before he moved on
Anika’s P.O.V“Razz.”“No, R-A-A-Z, not R-A-Z-Z!” I corrected him for the millionth time. “It’s not spelt like Jazz!”“Ra-az?” He tilted his head to the side, trying to pronounce it with the accent I was using.“Okay, you’re nearly there.” I told him with a smile. “It’s fine, really. It’s just a temporary name anyway. Once you have your memories, you’ll be all set.”Raaz seemed like he was thinking about it before he nodded. “Okay.” He gave me a smile. “So? How much did you spend on the clothes?”“Huh?” I looked up from my bowl of yogurt and cereal mix. “Why are you asking?”“Because I want to pay you back…when I retrieve my memory.” He said firmly. “I know I’m being a hindrance and if I had somewhere to go, I would. But right now, yo