My Fated Mate Can Have Her-Chapter 198: Father II

Rowan

I pressed my back against the corner and stared into the darkness, trying not to listen. Trying not to picture what was happening out there.

Ezra had been teaching me about our family’s history lately.

He told me about the old wars, about the Lycans, and about how my ancestors had led the great hunt, tracking the Lycans across continents, slaughtering them one by one until none remained.

My family’s legacy had been built on the blood and extinction of another race.

I looked down at my hands in the darkness. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them. The strength inside me was growing more potent with each passing year.

Father had always said there was something wrong with me. That I was dangerous. That I was born broken, built for destruction, and that if he didn’t keep me contained, I would destroy everything and everyone I touched.

Maybe he was right. This was my curse, just as his behaviour was another curse of his.

Maybe the monster he saw in me was real.

Maybe he was right to be afraid.

It scared me.

The door to the bedroom crashed open.

My mother’s voice cut through the air, shrill with fury and betrayal. The other woman screamed. My father shouted something I couldn’t make out.

The sounds of violence followed.

I should move.

I should break down this door, step into that room, put myself between my mother and my father.

But I couldn’t.

I just sat there, frozen, paralyzed by a fear I didn’t understand, and listened to my mother fight a battle I was too much of a coward to join.

The sounds eventually stopped.

And I stayed in the closet long after silence fell, hating myself more than my father ever could.

[ - ]

The hall was quiet now.

The corrupt council my father had assembled over years of careful manipulation, the wolves who had enabled his cruelty and profited from his tyranny...

They were all dead.

I stood in the center of the carnage, blood-soaked, and my blade dripping red onto the floor.

The last one knelt at my feet, begging for mercy.

I had killed the others quickly, maybe too quickly. It didn’t help that they had moved so slowly either. Steel through the hearts. Blade across the throats. They were clean deaths, far less than what they actually deserved.

Maybe I should have used my wolf form. I could have shifted, let the beast tear them apart. Made their deaths as painful as the lives they had inflicted on others. Part of me had wanted to. Part of me still did.

But I hadn’t.

I wasn’t sure why.

The man was still begging when I drove the blade clean through his skull.

The sound it made was almost gentle. A soft crunch, a sigh of escaping breath, and then silence.

I pulled the sword free and let his body crumple to the floor.

Father would be returning from his hunting trip soon. He would walk into this hall expecting his loyal council, his obedient servants, his carefully constructed kingdom of fear.

He would find only me.

I stepped over the bodies.

[ - ]

He was in another wing of the manor when I found him.

He must have entered through a different passage, or perhaps he had been here all along, hiding upon his arrival. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the way his face went white when he saw me.

I do not know what he saw in my eyes, but they made him take a step back. Neither did I know what I looked like in that moment, having just slaughtered every wolf on the grounds who had ever done his bidding.

Whatever it was, it terrified him.

For as long as I could remember, I don’t think I had ever been afraid of this man, and I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t protected my mother either.

I was a child. I still am, but I should have done something earlier.

And standing there, watching him cower, made something shift in me.

I should have acted sooner, but why was this man so terrified of the boy before him?

He talked. I could not remember what he said, but he turned and ran after.

I followed.

And I took my time.

Walking one step after the other through empty corridors, a trail of blood following me wherever I went.

He had always been the one to pursue. The one to hunt, to corner, to trap. He wasn’t weak. Why wasn’t he putting up a fight? He could injure me this very moment, but all he did was run like a frightened animal.

And it was pathetic.

When I reached him, he didn’t fight back.

He just stood there, pressed against the wall, his chest heaving, his eyes wild and rolling like a horse about to bolt. His hands came up in a gesture that might have been surrender or supplication or simply reflex.

I stared at him.

Why was he not doing anything to defend himself.

It confused me so much that I didn’t move.

I had even thought I would feel something this very moment, but hadn’t expected it to be surprise... and the cold certainty of what came next.

"You were never fit to rule."

My voice sounded strange to my own ears.

He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out.

I stepped forward.

The blade slid into his chest with barely any resistance and his body accepted the intrusion like it had been waiting for it all along.

It was strange.

My other hand found his face.

My fingers closed around his jaw, his cheek, the skull beneath the skin.

This was strange.

Had he always been this pathetic?

All that tyranny and this was it?! It made me angry. I did not like how furious it made me!

The hot wave of fury drowned out everything else and I squeezed.

Bone cracked underneath my fingers. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

I squeezed harder.

And harder.

Until the thing beneath my hand stopped being a face, stopped being my father, stopped being anything at all.

Until there was nothing left to hold.