THE ALPHA KING'S BASTARD SON

🌒 THE OLD HAG - PART 2

The cafeteria erupted into absolute chaos.

Prisoners dropped their buckets, screaming as they scrambled over tables and piled into the far corners of the room, trampling one another to escape the beast's reach.

The guards at the main doors instantly drew their crossbows, their hands shaking so violently that the bolts rattled against the iron stocks.

"Don't move! Nobody move!" the commander shouted from the safety of the raised catwalk, his face pale as milk.

The Old Hag ignored them all. His snout twitched, his thick lips pulling back to reveal rows of jagged, broken teeth coated in black saliva. His white eyes rolled in their sockets, settling directly on the sixteen-year-old boy kneeling by the drain.

With a guttural roar that shattered three of the glass panes in the high windows, the monster lunged. He didn't just attack, he threw his entire big, muscular bulk forward, his claws aimed directly at Danriv’s throat to tear the life out of him in a single, messy stroke.

To the guards and the screaming prisoners, it looked like a tragedy, a young, disgraced boy about to be torn to ribbons by an ancient demon.

But Danriv did not run. He did not scream. He did not even blink.The moment that the beast moved, the strange, heavy gravity that Alpha King Darius had sensed back at the capital erupted from Danriv’s skin like an invisible shockwave.

The air in the cafeteria grew so dense that the falling water droplets from the leaking roof seemed to slow down mid-air.

Danriv rose from his knees in a single, fluid motion that defied the clumsy terror around him. He showed no mercy. He did not attempt to parry or defend, he went entirely on the offensive with a terrifying, calculated brutality.

As the Old Hag’s claws came down, Danriv stepped inside the beast’s reach. His left hand shot out like a piston, his fingers locking onto the monster's thick, hairy throat with a grip that shattered the ancient cartilage instantly. The Old Hag’s roar turned into a wet, choked wheeze.

Before the beast could realize his strength was being overwhelmed, Danriv drove his right fist straight into the center of the monster’s chest. The impact was not a standard strike, it carried the full, unbridled force of the dormant power he had hidden for five long years.

A sickening crack echoed through the hall as the Old Hag’s ribs splintered inward, driving the bone fragments directly into his old, black heart.

Danriv did not stop there. Holding the massive creature upright by his crushed throat, he twisted his body and slammed the monster’s skull hard into the stone floor. The impact fractured the flagstone beneath them.

The Old Hag gave one final, pathetic tremor, his milk-white eyes widening in a brief moment of sudden, lucid terror as he looked into the cold silver eyes of his executioner. Then, his body went entirely limp, his dark, sour blood pooling rapidly around Danriv’s boots. He killed him on the spot.

The entire cafeteria fell into a deathly, suffocating silence. The prisoners stared from the corners, their mouths open, their breath catching in their throats. The guards raised their crossbows higher, but none of them dared to pull the trigger. They were no longer looking at a sixteen-year-old disgraced conscript, they were looking at something far more dangerous than the monster that had just died.

Danriv stood over the corpse, his breathing perfectly calm, his uniform barely wrinkled. He took a slow, deep breath, letting the sour smell of the dead beast fill his lungs.

For six long winters, the kingdom had believed that Danriv was a victim of circumstance, a tragic orphan taken in by royal charity. Alpha King Darius and Omega Garrick never knew the truth. They believed his exile was a punishment, a tactical move to test his compliance or harden his resolve. They had absolutely no idea that this was his plan all along.

Six years ago, inside the Sandoval village, a rogue pack had slaughtered his family in their beds. The kingdom’s records had listed the attackers was the wild outlaws who had vanished into the Scarp. But Danriv had never forgotten the face of the beast who had led them, the massive, distorted wolf with the curved spine and the milk-white eyes who had torn his father’s throat out, while Danriv hid in the dark.

He had tracked the monster’s scent through public records, through the whispers of old soldiers, and through the high-level intelligence logs he had secretly memorized while pretending to be a brainless trainee under Garrick’s nose. He knew the Old Hag had been captured by the crown years later for an unrelated crime and buried deep within the Mud Sump, kept alive only because the King liked to keep old monsters in cages.

Danriv had engineered his own downfall. He had allowed himself to be caught letting the young rogue boy go at the Eastern Gate. He had deliberately provoked the King’s wrath, knowing exactly where Darius sent his broken warriors. He had walked into his own exile because it was the only way to reach the cage.

Danriv wiped a single drop of black blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. He looked down at the dead monster, his face entirely devoid of emotion.The thing he had never said to the King, the secret he had kept hidden deep within his wolf, was now absolute reality. His father’s killer was dead, but the fight was far from being fair. The King who had allowed these monsters to roam, the system that had protected them, and the kingdom that had built its walls on the bones of the innocent, they were all responsible!

Danriv looked toward the northern windows, where the distant towers of the palace lay far beyond the storm clouds. His revenge had not ended here! it had just started.

All the prisoners and guards witness of what he did, they stayed frozen on their hinges, later on, many of then tried to find their way out. The silence that followed the death of the Old Hag was not a peaceful one. It was the thick, suffocating quiet that occurs like just after lightning strikes a crowded forest.

Danriv stood perfectly still in the center of the flagstones. His boots were submerged an inch deep in the dark, viscous pool spreading from the shattered skull of the ancient werewolf. He did not shake. He did not look at his hands. He simply reached down, grabbed his discarded bristle brush from the floor, and dropped it into the bucket of lye water. The splash was the loudest sound in the room.

Across the hall, the garrison guards did not move. The crossbows in their hands remained raised, but the iron tips of the bolts were dipping toward the floor, trembling in time with the soldiers' frantic breathing.

The garrison commander, whose face had turned to pale, slowly descended the wooden stairs of the raised catwalk. His boots, usually heavy and arrogant, clicked softly against the steps as if he were afraid the structural vibrations might draw Danriv’s attention back to him. He stopped ten paces away, his hand hovering over the hilt of his short sword, though everyone in the room knew the weapon was completely useless against the pressure Danriv had just released.

"Secure the... secure the carcass," the commander choked out, his voice cracking with a high-pitched terror he couldn't hide. He didn't look at Danriv, he kept his eyes locked on the massive, dead shape of the Old Hag.

"Get the iron nets. Move!"