Chapter 32: Chapter 32
[Nivera’s POV]
I brushed my long hair as I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I looked pretty, way more pretty than I did in the past.
“You are beautiful,” Lucien’s voice echoed in my ears, and I shuddered, looking around as though I could feel his presence around me… but no, he wasn’t there. He won’t be coming anymore.
A week had passed since he had bade me goodbye after I had cruelly told him not to show up in front of me again. I felt bad about what I had said, but I knew it was something that needed to be said. He couldn’t keep wasting his precious time on me as I already belonged to someone else.
A faint smile appeared on my face as I thought about that someone else: Alpha Tyler. True to his words, he had stayed by my side, and had announced to the elders and the rest of the Pack members that he had chosen to accept me as his beloved mate; much to the anger of everyone, and by everyone, I meant everyone including his grandmother, Vivian, who was over seventy and rarely involved herself in matters concerning him or the Pack.
Everyone was so sure that I had charmed him or somehow possessed him with my curse, and although they never voiced it out to the hearing of the Alpha, they made sure I heard their indirect comments, irritably spat at me in disgust anytime I walked past, pretended to have mistakenly splashed water on me and other things I couldn’t start naming. The Alpha was oblivious of this, however, and I didn’t tell him, especially as he was very busy lately with matters of the State.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door, and through my weak sense of smell, I knew it wasn’t the Alpha who was at the door. It was an unfamiliar scent, and wondering who it was, I placed the hairbrush on the dressing table and headed out to the door.
There was no one outside when I got there, but looking to my feet, I saw a bouquet of lilies lying next to the door and a smile found its way to my lips. I assumed the flowers were from the Alpha King and picked them up, then closed the door gently behind me.
Once I was inside, I pressed my nose against the flowers and their beautiful fragrance filled the room. They were truly beautiful, and a note had been placed along with them in a visible area. I checked the note and it read, “Meet me at the Amethyst garden in thirty minutes. I’ll be waiting. Love, Tyler.”
I smiled even harder and chuckled as over-excitement filled my heart. He had said he would be working overnight with the warriors, but he had probably missed me and wanted to see me outside the palace walls while lying to the warriors that he was taking a stroll or something.
I didn’t give it much thought and quickly grabbed a long sleeveless emerald-green evening dress from the wardrobe and matched it with a pair of black sandals. It was quite cold outside and I wanted to wear a coat, but I decided against it. I wanted the Alpha to see me this way, and even went ahead to apply some lip gloss, then began to search for my tiny ball-shaped earrings. I eventually found them behind the lamp-stand, but in my hurry, one of them pricked my thumb and a small amount of blood oozed from it.
“Can you even do a single thing without sustaining an injury?” Lucien’s voice echoed all around me once again.
I turned around instantly, with a slight hope that he just might show up, but all I could see around me was mere emptiness and I didn’t know why, but my heart ached a little. I shook my head slightly and tried to brush it off, but I couldn’t. Over the past one week, he didn’t show up like he had said he would. At the back of my mind, I had thought he was bluffing, but as the days kept rolling by, it was getting clearer and more obvious that he had been serious about finally giving up on me.
I thought I would be happy if I finally got out of his obsession with me, but I had been lying to myself and it hurt so much that even at the few times I had hurt myself on purpose, he failed to show up. He truly wasn’t going to come anymore.
I stared at the note the Alpha had supposedly sent and forced myself to shake off the thoughts about Lucien, then left the bedroom in a hurry. I explained to the guards at the palace gate that I needed to get something down the road before the shops were closed and they let me out.
I had less than fifteen minutes left to get to the Amethyst garden after my entire preparation which was a little bit far off. I knew the Alpha meant for me to take the shorter route since no one would be around there to notice me, and he had probably chosen that particular garden because it was lonely, private and not in an area where people lived.
It had only been a few minutes since I had started walking when I began to hear the sound of footsteps behind me. I glanced slightly over my shoulders and saw two guys of average height dressed in grey hoodies walking behind me. They seemed to be minding their own business and I ignored them, believing they didn’t seem to care for me either.
My fears, however, began when two men wearing similar grey hoodies began coming from the opposite direction. I blinked twice and even pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Apparently, it was real, and as I calculated what to do in my head, two more groups of similar men came from the left and right side of the road, and began walking towards me.
That was when I fully understood that something was going to happen to me. It was an ambush, a trap, a set-up; and I began to doubt if the Alpha had truly sent that note to me.
The first thing I did was move slowly backwards, but then, I hit the chest of a roughly-built man who pushed me forward onto the chest of another man of the same build. There was nowhere to go, no place to run to and certainly not a single area to hide. I was all surrounded, and in that moment, I began to hyperventilate and fell to my knees, clasping my hands tightly.
“Please, please, spare my life. Don’t kill me, please,” I pleaded, tearfully.
“That’s too bad, because we were ordered to take your life,” one of them said, coming towards me with a menacing look on his face which I couldn’t see clearly in the dark.
“I’ll do anything… anything at all. Just spare my life, please. I don’t want to die,” I pleaded with them, crying so hard.
“You should have thought about that before getting so close to the Alpha King and confusing him. What did you think was going to happen? That we would allow a cursed thing like you to become the Luna of the Crescent Pack? No way! Life isn’t a fairytale, you dumbass bitch. You can’t be a slave one day, and wake up as a Luna the next,” he said at the top of his voice.
So, this was all about the Alpha King? Did people detest me that much?
“I won’t marry the Alpha King, then or be by his side. I won’t. Just don’t let me die,” I begged, hearing them slowly begin to growl.
“You should have accepted his rejection when you had the chance. It’s too late now, and since the stupid Alpha was too weak to get rid of you, it is our job to do so on his behalf,” and with that, they shedded off their human skin and slowly transformed into big black wolves; they were all huge, had the same threatening aura and they looked like I had seen them before.
With quick speed like lightning, they charged at me at once… eight of them in total, and as they did, it all replayed in my head. It was a dream I had consistently had over the years, only that in my head, it was too clear and too detailed to be a dream.
The wolves didn’t hesitate in attacking me from every angle, and any attempt I made at escaping was useless. They ripped my dress apart, bit my arms and legs with their wide fangs, dragged their long claws across every inch of my body.
I was too weak to even shed tears, and just looked towards the sky, feeling so much pain in every part of my body. I was struggling to live, but not even the strongest of werewolves could survive an attack like this one. They decided it was enough after an endless attack of five minutes and transformed back into their human forms, waiting eagerly for me to finally succumb to the calls of death.
I couldn’t move or say a word, but I was conscious of all that was going on around me. My breathing was slow and for me, time had stopped.
In my final moments, that dream that had never felt quite like a dream became lucid; I was dressed in an ancient long-sleeved gown and wolves charged at me. The only difference was that as they had made to attack me, the 6’4 stranger who was always my saviour appeared from nowhere and defeated them all.
“Here, Eloise, let me help you up,” his familiar voice said, and when I looked up at him, I discovered it wasn’t a stranger. It was someone I knew maybe not too well, but very well. It was Lucien. Lucien O’Hara.
“Was about time you came,” I responded, and got up with the help of his outstretched hand.
He laughed and I giggled excitedly, then he pulled me into his arms… we looked really happy together, so very happy.
It was then it dawned on me that that was no dream. It was a memory I had locked away for so long, and it was now when I couldn’t do anything about it that it had come flooding my mind all at once.
A drop of tear slid down my eyes. “Lucien, it was you. All this time, it was you,” was the last thing I could voice out and the last feeling I felt was an overwhelming pang of regret as my eyes closed, giving in to the impenetrable darkness.