My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 230

Enzo

When I saw my father’s gaunt, pale body and his glassy eyes, I reacted purely out of instinct. My eyes went wide and I stumbled backwards, clamping my hand over my mouth in order to keep myself from yelling out.

We had gotten here too late. Whatever Selena was doing to my father had already run its course, and he was going to die soon. I knew for certain from the way that Nina froze while she was looking at him, then slowly turned to look at me with an apologetic look in her eyes. If anyone was going to be certain about these sorts of things, it would be Nina. She knew what happened to the body shortly before death.

“Enzo, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “We’re too late.”

I couldn’t speak. The knot in my throat was too thick and heavy for me to get any words out. All I could do was stare, wide-eyed and in shock.

Selena got what she wanted. My father was going to die, right in front of me, and there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it. All I could do was stand there and watch in abject horror as Selena’s poison worked its way through my father’s veins, causing him to have a slow, painful death.

At first, I didn’t understand why she wanted to do this to me. My father had never done anything to her. He was always supportive of our union, and only helped me that one time when he opened a portal for me. He should have been considered innocent in her eyes; I was the one who pushed him to help me. She should have punished me instead.

But now, as I saw my father laying there limply while his chest struggled just to rise and fall, I realized that she had punished me after all.

By refusing to be her mate, Selena had killed my only living parent. She used him to punish me, and therefore his death was all my fault. Even years from now, assuming Selena didn’t kill us all, I would never let go of the guilt associated with this. And in the end, she would still win. Even if she died, she would still win because I would still live with that guilt.

Selena was far more evil than I had ever even thought possible.

That must have been part of the reason why she wanted to take me back to Mountainview. If she really didn’t want me to remember Nina or my friends, she would never have taken me back to Mountainview. She easily could have kept me hostage in the mansion, and eventually I would have succumbed completely to her spells and would have never remembered my past. But she decided to take me back to Mountainview as a test, and when I failed that test, she made my father wither away.

“Enzo.”

Nina’s voice was stern. I hadn’t realized it, but she had walked over to me and was now standing in front of me, her hands firmly wrapped around my wrists. When I finally broke out of my daze and looked down at her, she was staring up at me with fire in her eyes. “Lori texted me. Selena is coming. We have to go now.”

Nina’s words broke me out of my haze and I nodded. I walked over to my father’s bed and scooped him up; even if he was going to die soon, I didn’t want to leave him here. As I picked him up, his eyelids fluttered slightly and he looked up at me through his milky eyes. He was so light now that he was practically a skeleton.

“Enzo…?” he muttered.