The Alpha Assassin novel Chapter 75

End him - Aksala growled and retreated to the back of my mind, waiting. Her excited rage was palpable.

I walked up to my father's desk that he had the nerve to sit at. My finger brushed the familiar polished wood and pain clawed at me. This was the last part, I silently promise my mother and father. Grief had no place here, not yet.

I focused instead on the sheets of paper. They started out legible, numbers that might have been accounts, a list of names, but then scribbles drowned in black ink marred the rest of the pages.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of watching him even out of the corner of my eye. It was an insult to not even watch your opponent. But I didn’t see him as one, and he knew that.

When I looked up, he wasn’t afraid anymore. He was staring at me with the disgust I should have worn for him.

His eyes were black, skin pale and etched with those crawling inky veins.

He looked and felt… wrong.

“You cannot be this shocked to see me standing here,” I started. “I won’t drag it out. And I won’t wait until your dying breath to ask you this.” I tilted my head, trying to keep the hurt from my face and voice. “Why?”

His lips pressed together in a way that seemed pained. Something in his face seemed to twitch.

“Do you speak, or has that also been a price of this stolen power?” I asked nonchalantly. “Tell me, uncle, what else did you pay? Besides my pack’s lives, what payment has it demanded from you.” I slid my eyes over him with disgust.

“I have paid the price a thousand times over, I-” He stopped. His voice was too familiar, unchanged, but it came out of husk of a person.

“Would you pay that price again?” I asked, glancing up at him.

“I-” he stammered.

I turned to him, standing tall. “Speak,” I commanded.

He fought against everything, but he lowered his head. “I am sorry for what you have gone through, it wasn’t my intention.”

“Because you intended me dead?” I asked.

“Simon-”

I cut him off, “That was not a question,” I growled. “I will accept your apology for keeping me alive; it has been… trying.” What a word to diminish years of torture.

I walked slowly back and forth in front of him. “But that is where my grace ends.” I stopped.

“Imagine my hurt that my father’s closest friend couldn’t even murder his daughter when you found me still alive.” I shook my head, tutting at him. “I am almost glad he is not here so he will not have to witness how pathetic you have turned out to be.”

“You know nothing,” he snarled.

That wicked power rose with him. But I had a wickness all of my own.

I smiled back. “I think you forget that at Blood Moon we handle our own kills. We do not hire others to do that for us.”

His eyes narrowed, and his face slackened, then hardened with rage when it clicked that Ezra was truly against him or maybe that I had outsmarted his hired help.

Either way, it was satisfying to watch.

“I did not want to kill you myself,” he snarled.

I took a step back. “Why?” I made my eyes wide. “Because that would have been too much?” I let out a hollow laugh. “But then again, wasn’t that always your style, Miles? To back away and let others do it for you?”

His rage hardened, and his thrumming power seemed to as well. I did not understand what it could do, but I knew that it was mine and it would not hurt me.

“You are not worthy to be called a Blood Moon pack member,” I said, the hard truth ringing through my words. “But I will alleviate you of any ties.” I pulled the dagged from my thigh and flipped it around in my hand.

It calmed me, settled me, it was familiar, and reminded me of Ezra.

“You think that you can do that?” He barked a wet laugh. “You have been playing the docile Alpha’s whore for far too long.” He stood tall. “Alpha Raymond is dumb, he did not know you, he did not train you. But I did.”