WESLEY
“Why do you believe she is Selene’s daughter?” Sebastian asked Lennox.
I pulled my face out of my mate’s neck to watch, tucking her so the top of her head was under my chin. Sebastian paced back and forth in front of Lennox, and Lennox moved his eyes away from Haven and me and to Sebastian. But his lips pressed together, and his jaw clenched, his eyes flashing with defiance.
“Don’t feel like talking yet?” Sebastian asked, kicking the leg of the chair. The movement from his foot meeting the metal rattled the whole chair,
making Lennox wince and grunt. His eyes closed, but he still said nothing. “That’s fine.” Sebastian shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about
what I want to do to you. Both while I was hunting you down and while my brother did his version of ‘torture’ on you,” he continued, stalking over to the tray of tools.
With practiced precision, he pulled on the gloves we’d wear when using tools infused with silver or wolfsbane. He stood so Lennox had an
unobstructed view of his hands as he picked up a silver knife and dipped it into the container of wolfsbane.
“How many scars would you say you have on your shoulder, Haven?” Sebastian asked, twirling the knife between his gloved fingers.
She furrowed her brow, and her hand reached up to stroke her scars. “I don’t know…” she said thoughtfully. “Probably at least ten?”
“Ten?” Sebastian repeated, and she nodded. “I can work with that.” He smiled.
He sauntered back over to Lennox, and with a slow downward slice, he cut the neck of Lennox’s shirt, exposing his shoulder, neck, and chest to us. The sizzle of flesh and a hiss from Lennox’s lips followed the rip of the fabric as drips of wolfsbane from the knife hit his skin.
“What do you think, Lenny? One cut on your marking spot for each of Haven’s scars?” Sebastian asked, placing the flat of the blade against Lennox’s marking spot. “Does that sound fair, Sparkles?”
“If he lasts that long,” Nolan said to us through the mindlink.
Sebastian snickered, his lip curling. And faster than you could say “Crescent Lake,” he sliced into Lennox’s neck twice in quick succession, leaving behind two sizzling, bleeding gashes.
Lennox let out a prolonged grunt, his head tilting back and the tendons in his neck tensing. But he kept his mouth shut tight, not relenting in the slightest.
Haven’s body was still in my arms. The only movements she made were caused by her inhales and exhales from breathing. But through the bond, I could simply feel her anger.
No fear, no hesitation. Just rage, resentment, and revulsion towards the weak male we had chained in silver.
Sebastian rained three more blows on Lennox with the knife. One cut went up his neck towards his jaw, and the other two crossed over his collarbone and across his chest.
All five of the gashes on his body oozed blood. It dripped down his chest and soaked into the fabric of his shirt that hung by mere threads around his neck.
“You know,” Nolan said, making Sebastian pause to glance at him over his shoulder. “That knife has a really sharp blade. It’s a true high-quality knife,” he mused.
Sebastian stepped back and looked at it in his hand, holding it up to the light.
“Huh. You’re right,” he said with a soft chuckle. “Lycan teeth are sharp, but don’t cut quite this cleanly. What was I thinking?”
He unceremoniously dropped the blade on the floor and went back to the tray, where he picked up a serrated dagger, and I swear Haven’s lips twitched with a laugh. He dipped it in the wolfsbane and then marched back over to Lennox, who was still putting on a brave face, but his mask was cracking.
“Again, why do you believe she is Selene’s daughter?”
Sebastian leaned into Lennox’s face, putting his hand on his wounded shoulder to balance himself. Lennox’s lip curled, and through his grunt of pain, he prepared his saliva to spit in Sebastian’s face. But instead, the spittle just landed on his chin, the wad of it dripping down from his lip and making a mess on his face.
I squeezed Haven’s body to prevent myself from laughing, and to hide the shaking of her own shoulders. Nolan and Seb, however, both had matching smiles of cruel amusement at his attempted defiance.
“Cute,” Sebastian sneered. “The pup is trying to keep up with the wolves.” He chuckled. “Now answer my question,” he growled, punctuating his command with a pinch of Lennox’s shoulder.
The hiss through Lennox’s teeth was loud, but it was cut off by Seb cutting his neck with the new knife, the serrated knife.
He cut him twice. The first time, Lennox yelled out, his entire body tensing against the pain of the blade. The second time, he was silent, but there were tears of pain streaking down his face.
Seb went in for a third cut, and Lennox cried out, “My dad! It was my dad, okay?!”
Sebastian paused, the knife still against the skin on his neck, the wolfsbane leaving a burn mark.
“My dad told me she was Selene’s daughter,” Lennox panted out, his chest heaving and his voice almost destroyed from his screaming, crying, and grunting.
“And where did he get his information from? How did he know or figure it out?” Sebastian pressed, pushing the knife so it nicked Lennox’s skin.
“I don’t know,” he replied with a shake of his head.
Sebastian sighed and pulled the knife across his neck and collarbone as quickly as the serrated edge of the blade would allow him to.
“I DON’T KNOW!!” Lennox screamed, his voice almost a sob. “I don’t know,” he whispered through his crying. “I didn’t even know that’s what she was until recently. Until right before her birthday.”
“You expect me to believe you didn’t have this information about her the whole time you knew her? That the only reason you wanted her before was so you could be an alpha of a pack?”
“Believe it or don’t believe it. It doesn’t matter. You’ve already decided my fate and my guilt,” Lennox choked. “But I was told marking her would make me stronger and able to lead, and I didn’t question it. Now I realize it was because of what she is.”
“Who she is,” Nolan snarled, correcting him. “She’s a person, not an object.”
Lennox snorted and rolled his eyes. Nolan’s body twitched forward, but Sebastian held his hand out to stop him. They exchanged a look, and most likely some words through the mindlink, before Nolan stepped back and crossed his arms.
“It seems you and your dad forgot a tiny detail about Asteria’s story, though,” Sebastian pointed out, circling around Lennox’s chair.
“And what’s that?” Lennox asked in defeat.
“That Selene made sure the only wolf who could mark Asteria was her mate. Conan. Surely she did the same for Haven and Wesley,” Sebastian said, glancing at us.
Neither of us said anything. Lennox’s eyes glowered over at us, at her in my arms, letting me hold her in a way she probably never let him. She stared back at him, her normally sparkling blue eyes icy and sharp.
While Lennox was focused on us, Sebastian lifted the blade and brought it down two more times on his neck, finishing out the ten cuts he’d promised him.
“We’re done here,” Haven said, turning in my arms to look at me. “He can’t tell us anything more than he already has.”
“You’re right,” I nodded, leaning forward to kiss her. “Let’s go, Sugar Plum.”
Sebastian’s knife dropped to the floor with the other, and he walked to the door with us. Nolan stayed in his spot, still staring at Lennox as he seethed in his chair, his chin to his chest, his breaths labored and shallow.
“It may not be the mark of a mate,” Lennox whispered, his chin lifting in slow motion. “But I still got to sink my teeth into her neck first. And the reminder of that will never fade,” he taunted.
I lunged towards him, the loudest roar ever spilling out of me. My skin bubbled and itched, my claws lengthening and my canines descending as my lycan pushed forward to attack this awful bastard and defend our mate.
But before I could reach him, Nolan had Lennox’s head in his hands, and in half a second, he’d ripped Lennox’s jaw from his face.
“Sorry. I’ve been wanting to do that since I saw him trying to mark Haven,” he said as he dumped the detached body part onto the floor with the discarded knives.
But I barely heard him because my focus was on Haven. She stood as still as a statue, her eyes glued to Lennox’s body. I couldn’t feel anything from her through the bond or figure out what she felt based on her expression. Her face was blank, her eyes unblinking.
I was torn. Torn between joining Nolan and digging my claws into Lennox’s flesh and ripping his heart out while it still beat, and taking my mate out of that room and pulling her into my arms to keep her safe and to make sure she was all right. And using that contact to calm the beast raging beneath the surface.
Then I realized—ripping his heart out would be a swift and easy death.
And he didn’t deserve that.
“Leave him like that,” I ordered the others, walking towards Haven, my eyes never leaving hers. “Let him die the way my mate would have died—
bleeding out on the ground.”
I heard the chair get kicked over, heard the strangled noise from Lennox as he hit the ground, but my focus was on my mate. While there had been blank indifference in her eyes before, after my orders, I found a blazing fire burning there.
The possessiveness radiating through the bond from her nearly knocked me to the ground myself, and the whiff of her arousal had me growling and rushing to her to grab her. I lifted her body off the ground and against mine, her legs wrapping around my waist as she kissed me with a fierce passion.
