Chapter 2: The Monster's Bedroom
946 Words
Lena's POV
His room smelled like him.
Pine. Coffee. Something darker underneath—like rain on concrete. I pressed myself against the cold stone wall and tried not to breathe too deep.
The guards had thrown me in here twenty minutes ago. Locked the door. Left me alone in the dark.
Now I sat on the floor, knees to my chest, staring at a bedroom that cost more than my entire childhood home.
Massive bed. Dark furs. A window that took up half the wall. A closet the size of my old den.
This was where the Alpha slept.
This was where he'd probably kill me.
Don't cry. Don't cry. You're not a pup anymore.
I cried.
For ten minutes, I sobbed into my knees. Ugly crying. Snotty crying. The kind where you can't breathe and your whole body shakes.
The vision kept playing behind my eyes. His empty stare. My broken back. The way he'd said "You made me do this" like he actually believed it.
I was still crying when the door opened.
Axel walked in, stripped off his black jacket, and threw it on a chair. He didn't look at me. Went straight to a small table by the window and poured something amber into a glass.
Whiskey.
"You have two minutes," he said.
My voice came out raw. "Two minutes for what?"
"To explain why you just ruined my life in front of three hundred people."
"I saw you kill me."
He stopped. Glass halfway to his lips.
Then he lowered it. Turned around.
Those grey eyes pinned me to the wall.
"Say that again."
"I saw you kill me." My voice shook, but I didn't look away. "In the vision. You stood over me. Your hands were covered in my blood. You said—" I choked. "You said I made you do it."
Axel stared at me for a long time.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't a happy laugh. It was ugly and broken and wrong.
"You're crazy," he said. "You're actually crazy."
"I'm not crazy."
"You rejected your mate—me—in front of the entire pack because of a bad dream?"
"It wasn't a dream. I'm a seer."
The word hung between us like smoke.
Axel went very still.
"A what?"
"A seer." I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. "I see fragments of the future. Visions. They started when I was seven. I've never told anyone."
"Because seers get killed," he said quietly.
"Because seers get killed."
He stared at me. I stared back.
Neither of us blinked.
"Do you know what happened to the last seer in Shadowfen Pack?" he asked.
My heart stopped. "No."
"My mother."
The world tilted.
"She started having visions when I was eight. At first, they were small—a storm coming, a hunt going wrong. My father thought it was a gift." Axel's jaw tightened. "Then she saw something. I don't know what. She wouldn't tell anyone. But she changed."
He walked toward me. Slow. Deliberate.
"One night, I woke up to her standing over my bed. She had a knife. She said she was saving me. Saving the pack." He stopped inches from my face. "She said she saw me becoming a monster."
My breath caught.
"I was ten years old, Lena. Ten. And my mother tried to kill me because of a vision."
"I'm not your mother."
"No. You're worse." His voice dropped. "You're a stranger who just destroyed my reputation because you had a nightmare. And now I'm supposed to believe you?"
"I'm not asking you to believe me."
"Then what are you asking?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Nothing came out.
Because I didn't know what I was asking. To be free? To be killed? To be left alone in my corner of the pack where no one noticed me?
Axel watched me struggle. Then he sighed—deep and tired—and stepped back.
"Sleep on the bed," he said.
"What?"
"The bed. Use it. I'll take the floor."
"I'm not sleeping in your bed."
"I'm not asking." He grabbed a blanket from the closet and tossed it on the stone floor. "You're no good to me dead from exhaustion. I need answers. And I can't get answers if you haven't slept in three days."
"How do you know I haven't slept?"
He looked at me.
Just looked.
And for some reason, I burst into tears again.
Not ugly sobs this time. Quiet ones. The kind where you've been holding everything together for so long that one gentle look makes the whole thing collapse.
Axel didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stood there while I fell apart on his bedroom floor.
When I finally stopped, he walked to the bed, grabbed a pillow, and tossed it to me.
"Sleep," he said. "We'll talk in the morning."
He lay down on the floor. Turned his back to me.
Within minutes, his breathing evened out.
He was actually asleep.
I stared at his massive back—at the way his dark hair spread across the pillow he'd stolen from his own bed—and felt something I didn't expect.
Safe.
Which was insane. Because this was the man from my vision. The one with empty eyes and bloody hands.
But monsters didn't give up their beds.
Monsters didn't look at you like you were a person instead of a problem.
I curled up on the edge of his mattress, clutching the pillow to my chest, and watched him breathe.
Maybe the vision was wrong.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe—
My eyes closed.
And for the first time in three days, I slept.
- Writer
