The Alpha Assassin novel Chapter 49

Nolan’s eyes widened, and he looked away from me. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

I took a deep breath through my nose. Something inside me crumpled, and I lost some of the anger.

“I understand,” I murmured, “the good and the bad are muddled.”

That was one overly simplified way to put it.

I felt him glance at me, but I was looking ahead. “Yeah. They are,” he agreed.

But who were we to discern when the bad outweighed the good? We all had different ideals.

But that was why I was here. To enact justice.

Part of me felt that was cheap, a huge part of me that wanted another reason, but I knew deep down I didn’t need one.

I knew my reason. It was vengeance, and I clung to it.

It was tight and fiery and lit me up from the inside. It tasted of justice, and I knew it would feel like it, too.

My fingers tingled at the possibility, at the very idea of more vengeance. I clutched them into a fist and tried to hide my smile.

I tried to focus and pull a response from my mind. An honest response. “I still can’t fully discern what I feel sometimes,” I admitted with a shrug. “Logic and emotions sometimes don’t fit.”

I hoped that made sense. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was even talking to him, entertaining a conversation, but my instincts told me this was right.

I stole a glance at him; his lips were pressed together. “I understand,” he agreed, and I believed he actually did.

I stiffened, unsure of what to expect next.

“I guess I’ll be Alpha,” he said. “I feel almost free from something, from everything, for the first time in forever.” He shrugged again with a deep sigh.

I went back to looking ahead but still kept an eye on him.

“But, my brothers are dead,” he added matter-of-factly. “The two closest people to me in this world.” His eyes closed, and his jaw tightened.

I braced myself. This might be the part where his grief would be replaced by anger and that anger directed at me.

“At least they were supposed to be,” he admitted.

I froze in actual shock at that truth.

I wanted to say so much, my mouth filled with questions, but I bit them back.

“Supposed to be?” I finally asked, repeating his words back to him.

He blinked a few times; every time his eyes closed, his shoulders slumped a bit more.

Finally, he said, “I think I’m mourning the thought of my brothers and not my actual brothers.”

A look of surprise contorted his face. It seemed he was trying to work through the truth that he didn’t mean to admit. Couldn’t admit. Maybe he didn’t fully understand it himself.

Finally, he stole a sideways glance toward me as if I could somehow validate that.

I held my gaze forward and nodded. “It’s hard,” I agreed. My voice sounded distant. “To accept what you actually feel when you think you should feel something different, something opposite. When you feel something that isn’t entirely right.” I scowled at the wall.

I wasn’t sure if I was me admitting that to test him or if it was me wanting to get some reassurance from him. From someone that I now felt might be a better person than me, have a more linear moral compass, at least.

I snorted at the thought… How did we end up here?

Nolan looked at me with wide eyes. “That is exactly it. I’m trying to feel sad, I think I should, but I don’t. I feel worse that I don’t feel as sad as I should.” His brows furrowed together.

“That doesn’t make you a bad person,” I answered too quickly, and I wasn’t sure if I was telling him that or myself.

“No,” he responded. “I guess it doesn’t. What happened to them-” He swallowed. “They weren’t good people.” That was putting it lightly.

“It was for the greater good,” I murmured. I knew it to be true but it still felt cheap against my initial motives that were fueled only by bloodshed.

“For the greater good,” he said, mulling those words over. “For the greater good,” he repeated more resolutely.

He was about to say something else, but the room shifted.

The very air felt like I had to compete for it. The darkness of the high stone ceilings descended on us. It wrapped around me in a way that wasn’t comforting but controlling. It seemed to want to leash me. Control me.

I looked around, but nothing had actually changed. Nolan’s eyes were wide, but they were staring at me, more confused than fearful.

“Simone?” he asked, taking a step toward me. “Are you okay?”

Was I going insane? No. this was very real.

It was a warning but an invitation.

It was something that I knew to my core; it was created for me, from me.

My bones sang to it, but my body recoiled.

I was frozen but called. The footsteps were met with others, and Nolan stepped in front of me as much as he could in this small space with his arms out as if he could protect me.

But if I was being honest, the thought was nice, and his instincts I would tuck away for further assession.

I took another breath. Now that we were safe or had the illusion of safety, I could think, and I thought I knew what this might be.

Aksala’s whimpers almost confirmed it.

I hoped I was wrong.

I prayed to The Goddess that had forsaken me years ago and any other Gods or Goddesses that my life was only a culmination of horrendous people who took advantage of a situation and not as calculated and controlled entirely by others as I now feared.

But I knew deep down, before I could put words to it that everything that happened to me was planned, maybe before I was even in this world.

I gently put my hand over Nolan’s to drop it and stepped forward. Between the cracks in the thick curtain, I could see the threat. Not a dark blight but a man.

Miles strolled into the main hall as if he owned the place.

My Uncle Miles.

I had to clasp my hand to my mouth to stop the shocked scream as he passed me.

His eyes were black, and veiny dark tendrils ran up his bare arms.

He wasn’t the person I knew. I knew he wasn’t ever who I thought he was, but now...

Now, he was a shell of a person.

And the power he radiated.

It was familiar. It was mine. It belonged to my pack.

And it didn’t belong to him.