Chapter 8
1536 Words
~ Kieran ~
The doors bang shut. She is gone.
However, her presence is still everywhere, her rosy scent filling my senses and it is so intoxicating.
What the f**k is happening to me?
My wolf is thrashing inside me, clawing at the walls of my mind and howling a single, deafening word I have ignored for two f*****g years.
Mine.
Despite everything that just happened, I still want Judy Hale. I still feel like she’s mine.
And I don’t know why.
“Kieran!” Eliza’s shrill voice shatters my haze and I see her storming towards me. Her golden blonde hair is slightly disheveled from her partial shift and her eyes are wide, stubborn, and even glaring at me with pure accusation. For two f*****g years, our marriage has been a hollow shell of misery.
Stagnant.
Passionless.
Empty.
But now, with Judy, I feel like I am being consumed with so many confusing emotions I can’t explain.
“Are you even listening to me?!” Eliza snaps. “That b***h needs to be thrown in the dungeons! She is a threat to my family’s estate, to us!”
“Never call her a b***h again,” I warn.
“But she is not a good person either,” she ignores my angry tone and reaches out, her manicured fingers brushing the lapel of my dark suit.
A deep wave of disgust instantly rolls through my guts.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl.
She flinches, her hand dropping as if I just burned her. “Excuse me? I am your Luna! Judy is nothing but worthless trash! You even banished her for treason!”
“I banished her because of the evidence you provided, Eliza,” I snap, stepping into her space. At six-foot-four, I tower over her, letting my shadow consume her.
For two years, I have lived with this hollow void inside my chest, the creeping numbness that I thought was just the heavy burden of leading this pack.
I thought I was broken.
But now, looking at my beloved wife, I am starting to realize I wasn’t broken at all.
I was blinded.
Something really wrong is going on here.
Her perfect face is still twisted with anger, and I can smell the faint, sour stench of her fear bleeding through her designer perfume.
“Elder Thaddeus mentioned dark magic and you are suddenly scared of your sister who hasn’t stepped foot on these lands in two years,” I move closer, my tone dropping to a deadly, icy whisper. “Why are you afraid?”
“I—I’m not scared!” she stammers, taking a stumbling step backwards. “Judy is jealous of me! She has always wanted what is mine!”
“Is that so?” I close the distance between us, hearing her frantic heartbeat drumming against her ribs. My eyes narrow. “Eliza, I think something fishy is going on here. Right before you barged into this room, Judy was about to tell me something regarding a bond.”
Her breath hitches, and in an instant, all the color drains from her face.
She suddenly looks like a ghost.
My wolf snarls.
She knows something.
Whatever this sick, twisted puzzle is, my f*****g wife seems to be holding the darkest piece of the game.
But I don’t have her time now. I need to find Judy.
“Eliza, go back to the estate,” I command. “Do not speak to the elders. Do not leave the grounds. If I find out you have laid a single finger on Judy, I will not hesitate to rip you apart. Luna or not.”
“You are choosing her over me?!” she screams, tears of rage finally spilling over her cheeks.
“I am choosing the truth,” I bite back, already turning towards the exit. Getting to the doors, I angrily push them open and storm out of the conference room, banging the doors shut behind me.
Fuck.
What the hell is going on?
My long strides eat up the hallway towards the elevator.
Reaching the elevator, I get in.
The doors slide shut.
The elevator ride feels like an eternity of torture. My blood is boiling with the need to hunt for answers.
I need to find Judy.
I need to pin her against a wall, breathe in that sinful scent of hers, and rip the truth from her beautiful, swollen lips.
The elevator finally arrives downstairs in the lobby. I step out.
Judy said she is suffering. She said some kind of bond is killing her.
What bond?
If she is my mate…
The thought hits me like a ruthless stab in my chest, nearly making me stumble in the lobby. A ragged, tortured breath escapes my lungs.
No.
I let her suffer all those years ago. I turned a blind eye and let her be flogged and exiled into the human world to suffer because I thought it was the right thing to do to a traitor. I thought she was a traitor.
But now… I can’t help but feel like I made the worst mistake of my life.
The pain is like a knife twisting deep in my chest. If Judy Hale is my mate, then she is mine.
Which means I have a lot of sins to atone for.
🥀🖤🥀
~ Judy ~
After leaving the council headquarters, I decided to go to the one place I never imagined to visit.
And now, I am here in the pack’s underground archives, coughing and waving off a thick cloud of dust from my face.
I am here because I need answers, and to get those answers, I need to start looking somewhere. This place was the first place that came to my mind after I left the council headquarters and I kept wondering why everything seems so complicated.
But here, I hope to find out why.
These archives have been here for years, even longer before I was born. No one really comes here anymore, so the place looks desolate and has fewer warriors guarding it. Luckily for me, the guards weren’t really paying attention, so I snuck in.
And now, I am in here.
Ahead of me, there is a bookshelf and I suddenly feel drawn towards it to check it out.
Without hesitation, I move, walking towards the shelf.
But as I move, I can feel everything that is happening inside me.
My body is completely wrecked. My core is still throbbing with heavy, wet pulses of pleasure from what Kieran did to me on that conference table. My thighs are trembling with every step I take, reminding me of the friction of his thick c**k stretching me, claiming me. I can still feel the sticky, hot residue of his c*m drying on my panties like a filthy, little secret.
Fuck.
I shake my head, violently forcing the sinful memories away.
Focus, Judy. Focus.
Getting to the shelf, I search through the old books there and after a while, I finally pull out an old ledger from the bottom of the shelf. The ledger looks like a registry, and it is also heavy and bound with black leather straps.
But most of all, what catches my attention is how it is still so intact despite being old.
Well, I guess it’s a survivor just like me.
Without wasting time, I carry the ledger to a small table in the corner.
I settle down.
Above me, there is a solitary white bulb hanging from the ceiling. The bulb is littered with cobwebs, but the light is still good enough for reading. Already blessed with the illumination, I gently open the ledger, Elder Thaddeus’s words still ringing endlessly in the back of my mind.
Dark magic.
A curse.
What are the connections?
Carefully, I flip through the brittle yellowed pages of the ledger, not wanting to tear any page. The ledger is really a registry, and the records are from twenty-four years ago.
The year I was born.
Still searching, I keep flipping and pausing to read for a bit before I flip again. I am searching for any information related to either my foster parents or my mother. Back then when I was little, the rumors of my mother’s mysterious affair plagued my entire childhood. As for my foster parents, if they actually died because of a “strange illness” with suspicious symptoms of sudden weakness and unexplained fevers, then there has to be a connection because that was the exact same way my mother died.
Mysteriously.
Just then, I stop at a page, my fingers tracing the faded ink of the two words that are staring back at me.
Seraphina Winston.
That’s my mother’s name!
But beside her name, there is a thick, black asterisk marked near the two words. Also, in the margin, I can see three other words that are scrawled in a messy handwriting beside her name:
TAINTED BY WITCHBLOOD.
I freeze, air leaving my lungs in a sharp, icy gasp. The handwriting looks nothing like the handwriting of the official record keeper, but those three words, especially the last word, feels more suspicious.
Witchblood?
What Witchblood?
- Writer
