Chapter 120: The Rotblood behind the Rose

"You..." Beatrice gurgled, her eyes beginning to fade, "must not...kill me..."

Cassian’s claws tightened.

Beatrice’s feet kicked wildly beneath her, but the wolf holding her seemed completely unmoved by her struggling. His red eyes remained fixed on hers, terrifyingly calm.

She couldn’t breathe.

She kept clawing desperately at his paw, but the thick fur beneath them might as well have been iron.

"My sister tells me you’ve been as busy as she is," Cassian’s wolf spoke, its terrifying set of canines dripping with saliva and fresh blood.

She had a feeling he didn’t particularly use his hands while ripping off the heads of those men.

"And I was going to come for you—" He continued, his teeth so close to her face that she had to squeeze her eyes shut and pray she was alive for the next minute, "Then you ran back to IronRidge, and I thought you would cool down there. That you wouldn’t be able to cause any trouble for anyone," He paused, and she felt something warm trickling down her face.

She didn’t want to know if it was saliva, or sweat, or blood.

"How stupid was I not to have kept an eye on you?" As he said that, his voice hardened and deepened, and he squeezed even more and raised her higher.

"No...," She kept kicking, "No—"

"What did Della ever do to you?"

Beatrice opened her eyes. They were stinging badly, and her vision was entirely blurry, so she couldn’t quite make out his face properly anymore. But Della’s name had suddenly made her start kicking even more.

"I...love her...,"

He squeezed again, and any other word she was supposed to say was cut off as her throat paid the ultimate price.

Her lungs screamed for air, and her skin felt like it had been set on fire. She tried to inhale, but nothing was coming in.

"Don’t fucking give me that, or I’ll rip out an arm,"

Beatrice opened her eyes again, and this time, she didn’t even bother to play the nice, sweet act. It was no use when she was dying, and when Cassian already knew the she-devil she had inside of her. After all, he’d witnessed her and Selene beating the crap out of Della on the night of the ceremony.

Instead, she suddenly smiled at him. Her teeth were bloody, and her eyes were beginning to turn bloodshot, making her look like someone who’d just escaped from a mental asylum, "But I do...," She grinned even more, "I...l..love h...er s..so much...,"

Then, she burst out laughing. It was a horrible, strangled sound, catching in her crushed throat. Every tiny burst of laughter scraped against the iron grip around her neck, sending a searing pain through her throat and up into her jaw.

Her lungs burned from the lack of air, her chest convulsed uselessly, and tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.

Yet somehow, she laughed again.

In all of his years as Alpha, Cassian had never witnessed something like this before.

His grip tightened instinctively, but the sight of her swollen lips twisting into something utterly ugly again made something colder settle into his expression.

"What’s so fucking funny?!"

Tears rolled down from her face, one born from pain and something darker, "What’s funny is you won’t kill me. You can... but you won’t,"

That made one eye twitch, and he ripped one claw deep into the side of her body. Pain and laughter flared in her eyes, and she was laughing again.

Was she...high on something?!

"You can torture me all you want, Alphas Cassian," She continued, blood now running down her lips, "But it won’t change a thing. You know why? You’d only be getting rid of one person out of millions who want my Rotblood of a sister dead!"

"I start small," He growled, digging his claws deeper and watching her tremble, "One by one. I will kill you all,"

"Can you?" She chuckled again, "It’s Nightveil Pack against Eclipse Crown and the rest of a hundred Packs out there. So, can you?!"

He didn’t answer.

"You can kill peasants, Alpha. But me? You can only satisfy your desire to kill me by threatening me, and you know exactly why. My husband is the brother of the most powerful Supreme Alive. Kill me...and Eclipse Crown Pack would wreak havoc all over Nightveil and everything your ancestors have ever built and burn it to ashes," She paused, watching it sink in, "Would you like to take that chance?"

"They’ll only know I killed you if they find out, and unfortunately for you, I cover up my tracks really well,"

"Yeah," She laughed again through clenched teeth, "You can cover up your tracks, but can you possibly erase the contents in the letter I gave to my husband to read early this morning before I left IronRidge, listing you and Selene as my murderers if I don’t get back home safely in the next...few hours?"

Now, he really wanted to kill her.

He’d met many maniac werewolves before, but none had ever shown this level of arrogance in the actual face of death.

She was laughing like the pain didn’t matter at all.

Like it was just another daily dose of whatever drug she was used to taking.

Most annoying thing about her? She was right.

He couldn’t kill her anymore.

Leopold was obsessed with her, and she’d already written a letter listing their names as the people after her life, he would never let it go.

Nightveil would be making an enemy out of Eclipse Crown, and there was already enough bad blood between her and Malachi.

War would become inevitable.

"You can’t touch any of us at IronRidge," She continued leisurely, her red eyes looking like they were about to explode from pain, "You can only watch, and watch, and watch as she suffers,"

"Do tell me something before I bury another claw inside of you," He snarled, bringing her face closer to his, "Why do you hate your sister so much?"

"I told you, I love—"

Her words were cut off when he shoved another claw into the same spot the first one had left, and her body convulsed.

"Watch your words, oh great noble wife of an esteemed Pack,"

She smiled at him again, "Then maybe you’ll have to rephrase your question because I do love my sister."

Her mind had gone so far off the rails a very long time ago, and it had apparently built its own fucking railway.

"Fine. Why do you want Della dead? And why are you getting in the way of Selene?"

"My father," She grinned again, "I want to make him look at me for once without wishing I was someone else. That it was Della instead. I want him to see my achievements, look me in the eye and call me his daughter. I want to stand in a position where...he would never be able to ignore me again!"

Well, that was definitely not the answer he was expecting. So all this twisted nonsense of hers sourced from her own father?