Fated To the Alpha by Jessica Hall
Chapter 245
Getting back to the manor, we were soaking w*et; I was completely drenched, and Jax shook out his fur as Kaif placed me back on my feet, w*etting me even more. Looking up at Kaif, he was huge yet also drenched, and he ducked down through the doorway, going inside without shifting back; I followed.
“You can use my shower, Jonah, and I will use the communal ones,” Kaif says.
“You have a communal shower?”
“Yes, the floor above, Kyan’s grandmother started her own coven, witches prefer covens and for a time they lived here, in a way they still do,” Kaif says, walking up the steps just as Lucas comes out with a huge grin plastered on his face before his smile drops and his eyes go wide when he sees Kaif beside me.
“Cookie?” Lucas stutters, but I was now wary of Lucas’s baked goods.
“No, thank you,” I tell him looking down at my drenched clothes, the tray he was holding trembled when Kaif spoke.
“Have any more scones,” Kaif asked, and Lucas shook his head.
“I’ll make some,” Lucas stuttered before rushing off back toward the kitchen before returning.
“Ah Marabella, sweety, your parents called, by the way, they have been trying to reach you all day,” Lucas says, keeping his eyes on me.
“Thank you, Lucas,” I tell him and his eyes dart nervously back to Kaif before he disappears back into the kitchen. I noticed Jonah watching us at the top of the stairs. He now had on a pair of shorts. He offers a set to Kaif, who shakes his head.
“Kaif?” Jonah asks, looking wary of him.
“Kyan is still here; I won’t hurt her,” Kaif answers trudging up the steps to him. I had to run to keep up, Kaif easily taking three stairs at a time, and gracefully, it didn’t even look out of place because of how big he was. When we reached Jonah, Jonah wrapped his arms around my waist, steering me toward Kyan’s room while Kaif continued up the next set of steps, and I stopped.
“That room up there, it-?”‘ I asked Kaif, and he stopped. He glances at the door, the one I always got a strange feeling about.
“It’s where the coven did their magic,” Kaif answers, and his eyes flicker for a second as he pauses. “Kyan said I can show you,” Kaif says, and I look up at Jonah who kisses my cheek below my eye.
“You don’t need my permission,” Jonah says.
“She wants you to come, idiot,” Kaif says, and I look over at him. His eyes were on Jonah’s arms wrapped around my waist.
“You know you can be rude, right,” Jonah says to him, steering me toward the stairs.
“And you are oblivious,” Kaif says, turning back to the stairs. Jonah and I followed Kaif, and I climbed the next set of stairs. Kaif waited out the front of the door, the energy coming off it made chills run up my spine.
Kaif’s entire body suddenly shivers and the same inky ghostly sphere that Kyan showed me, which I thought were tattoos, appeared in Kaifs hand after he mummured something in a foreign tongue he chucked the globe at the door. The ghostly black stuff spread across the door covering it bleeding into the wood and then I heard a lock click. Kaif gripped the door handle and pushed it open.
“Magic opens it?” I ask.
“Only dark magic,” Kaif answered. I noticed Kaif had trouble with words, like pronouncing them, yet his voice was clearer than the last time I spoke to him. Yet when he spoke in that foreign tongue, he was clear as a bell. I thought it odd. Kaif walked in, and I followed after him. The room was dark, so dark I could see nothing, and it was freezing inside.
Kaif whispered something I couldn’t understand when suddenly thousands of candles lit the room, the flames going to the high ceiling before d***g down and creating flickering light that cast shadows on the walls.
A huge black pentagram was burnt into the middle of the floor, and there as three stairs that led to some sort of stage that looked out the bay windows. It had a huge table covered in strange mementos. Kaif let me look around, and I wandered up to the table.
“You said Kyan’s grandmother had a coven?” I ask Kaif. He hums in agreement.
“I thought all Octavian woman d*ied?” I ask before finding a strange knife. It was smaller than a sword but bigger than a dagger it had strange carvings up the hilt. A huge hole sat in the center of the handle.
“Yes, they do. Usually, in childbirth, she was the exception. They thought she actually broke the curse until Dominic’s wife d*ied and Kyan was born covered in the shadows.”
“How did she d*e,”
“I k****d her,” Kaif says matter of factly, and I look over at him. He stood in the center of the pentagram. Jonah touches my shoulder, making me jump, not seeing him sneak up on me.
“So why didn’t she d*e?”
“She did, but she was a witch. It was the first time an Octavian had been destined for another witch, like Kyan’s grandfather. They were both witches. They thought it was the key to breaking the curse. She d*ied having Dominic, but his father brought her back using necromancy. She wasn’t the same. However, she was alive,”
“How wasn’t she the same?”
“She was a cruel woman. She sacrificed her entire coven in this room, k****d Dominic’s father along with them when Dominic was 8, right in front of him, she slit his throat,” Kaif answers. My mind went to Dominic, thinking of what that must have been like when his voice was suddenly behind my ear.
“She wasn’t a nice woman,” Dominic answers me.
“How so?” I ask him curiously.
“When she came back, she had no ability to love, growing up in a loveless home, I would wish on nobody, I merely existed for her to use my magic, try and take it for herself,” Dominic tells me.
“How old was Kyan when she d*ied?” I ask Kaif.
“He was 5. It was the morning, and Kyan came into this room, he was always drawn to it, and he was forbidden to enter,” Kaif walks up the steps.
“Why did you k**l her?”
“She hurt his father. Kyan came in here and knocked something over. She hit Kyan, and Dominic immobilized her power and told her he would get rid of her if she ever touched his son. He loved his mother despite never receiving love in return.
Dominic never spoke ill of her, he looked after her in her old age, but at the same time, Dominic kept Kyan away from her, wouldn’t allow him to be subjected to the same torment he endured,” Kaif answers taking the sword thing from my hand and placing it down. He reached over the table to a box and opened it. It was full of little films that would fit in the palm of my hand.
“I can show you, but it may scare you?”
“How can you show me?”
“Through memory, the shadows, which is what Kyan wants to teach you to control,” Kaif answers, and I bite my lip, wondering if I wanted to see such a thing.
“Does Kyan want me to see it? I don’t want you to invade his privacy for me, Kaif,” I tell him.
“He thinks it may scare you. It’s how the game came to be the one he used to play with his father,”
“Dominic was angry you k****d her?” I ask, but Kaif shakes his head, and Dominic answers me.
“Never, but it scared Kyan. He was a boy. What Kaif did, scared him. Kyan struggled with knowing he had k****d someone. Let him show you. It’s grotesque, but you should probably know what Kaif is capable of,” Dominic says, and my eyes dart back to Kaif. Kaif turned his head to the side and was observing me.
“His father?” Kaif asks and I nod my head. Staring up at him, I wondered what he was thinking and how he could tell when Kyan couldn’t.
“Your aura changes. It goes darker,” Kaif answers my thoughts.
“I hadn’t noticed it, but the shadows that follow you, they darken more,”
“What did he say?”
“That I should see what you are capable of,” I tell him biting the inside of my lip. Kaif looks to Jonah behind me.
“Will you hold her in case she faints?” Kaif asked him, and my stomach dropped, wondering how gruesome it would be that they were worried I would faint.
“No issues there,”‘ Jonah tells him before tugging me today the three steps. He sits on the top one before pulling me on his lap, and my eyes widen when I see the shadow s*****w both of Kaif’s gigantic hands before he grabs my face in them. The room warped and rippled around me when my surrounding changed slightly.
I was in the same room, yet everything looked bigger. Maybe it was because Kyan was a child, but I could even hear and feel Kyan like I was a host in his body. His toy car scooted across the floor inside the open door.
“We shouldn’t go in. The old hag doesn’t want us in here,” I hear Kaif tell him, but he wanted his car and the door was wide open.
“Kyan wait for your father,” Kaif tells him, but Kyan ignores him. It was right there, he thought as he quickly rushed in. He picked up the little blue hot wheels car when something caught his eye.
It glinted at him as the sun shone in the window, the stone reflecting oddly, and Kyan moved toward it, ignoring Kaif like he was in a trance. He climbed the three little steps and moved toward the table. It was the strange mini sword, yet the stone sat in the handle wrapped in gold wires, which must have been why I saw it had a hole.
Kyan picked it up when a voice sounded behind him.
“What are you doing, brat,” the voice was cold and startled Kyan, and he dropped the knife back on the table. He turned around only when he did the knife bumped his elbow and fell to the floor. He tried to grab before it did, but it sliced his palm as he grabbed the blade instead of the hilt, making him let go. For a five-year-old, his senses were insanely quick. Kyan hissed, and the blade landed at his feet. The stone in the center popped out and rolled on the floor.
“Useless, b****y useless boy,” the woman snapped and his eyes darted to her. She was a withered old woman, long white hair to her waist, her nails were long and pointed but badly stained.
She was thin too, scarely so and her cheeks hollow and eyes sunken in, but the look in her eyes was youthful and sparkly even, like the body had worn down but not the soul or mind, yet just looking at her instilled fear in Kyan, and me. She had evil eyes, cruel eyes as she stalked toward him. Moving quickly despite how frail she looked, Kyan darted underneath the table in a panic.
He moved to the back of it when she bent down looking at him. She smiled at him, yet I didn’t like the look in her eye.
“You know not to come in here,”
“I only came to get my car, Grandma, I promise,’ Kyan said, holding the car out to show her. She clicked her tongue and her eyes went to the fallen blade and the stone.
“You broke it,” She says, and her eyes flicker.
“Daddy will fix it,” Kyan tells her, and her eyes snapped to his.
“Your father is just as useless as you, b*y pathetic, he is making you soft, ruining you, like he did that b***h mother of yours always pampering her and tending to her needs. Look where that got her, dd, in the ground, didn’t it? You k****d her, you Octavians K*ll everything you touch, what you need is good discipline, none of this naughty corner cp your father tries to do,” Kaif growls in his head at her words.
Kyan starts to cry and Kaif tries to calm him, like he knew it would anger the old woman more, seeing his tears as weakness. Kaif tried to soothe him when the woman picked up the blade and stone and dropped them on the table before bending down again. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head.
“I’m sorry, son, I was just angry, Granny didn’t mean it,” she says. “Come, come show me that hand,”‘ She says while offering out hers to him.
Kaif tells him not to trust her, to wait for his father, but the woman motions him toward her and he hesitantly scoots forward a little and places his now healed hand in hers, Kaif having already healed it.
Kyan wanted to go to his father, so he obeyed. Only when he put his hand in hers she reefed him forward, pulling him onto his stomach at her feet.
Kaif lurched forward as she whipped his backside with a piece of leather strap that she had from the table. He took the blow so Kyan did not have to. He struggled under her trying to get out, and Kyan felt bad that Kaif took his punishment while Kaif was livid she touched him.
“I will teach you manners, boy,” The woman snarled, raising the strap again, only this time it didn’t hit him. Instead, feet appeared by his face, and her foot was no longer on his back as she staggered back. Kyan looked up to see the strap wrapped around his father’s arm, his arm bleeding, and the woman laughed manically in his face.
“You have gone too far this time, mother. You dare touch my f*g son, you old hag,”
“That boy needs discipline,”
“Never at your hands, you don’t touch my boy, and if you do again, you will meet your maker far earlier,” He spits at her.
“Kyan, go wait in your room,” Dominic says when Kyan’s eyes darted to the leather strap wrapped around his father’s arm. The strap appeared to be tightening and for some reason, Kyan knew his grandmother was using magic as his father’s blood dripped down onto the floor.
“Now, son. Go to your room and wait for me,” Dominic repeated. He doesn’t take his eyes off his mother, where he had her by the front of her blouse.
Kyan scrambled to his feet and rushed down the steps to the door when his father was suddenly blasted back, smashing into the pentagram just as he reached the door to escape.
The woman laughed, and Dominic growled, getting to his feet before he waved his hand at her and murmured some incantation. The gasp from her made Kyan turn around to find her clawing at her neck like she couldn’t breathe.
“Maybe it is your turn to be disciplined, mother,” Dominic says, getting to his feet. He spotted his son staring horrified at his grandmother as she ch*oked and Dominic dropped his magic, letting the woman breathe, not wanting to scare his son.
“Come on, I will make your lunch; I will see you soon, Mother,” Dominic says, turning his back on the woman and moving toward him. Kyan walks out the door but sends a nervous glance back at the woman before walking out the door.
Dominic’s voice cut off abruptly, and Kyan looked up at his father only to see him ripped back into the room as shadows engulfed him like tentacles before the door slammed shut in Kyan’s face.
Kyan banged on the door with his tiny fists screaming for his father as he heard banging inside the room and his feral growls and snarls and the woman taunting voice.
“Kaif, stop her, stop her,” Kyan cried out while Kaif tried to rea*s*sure him his father would be okay, only when Kaif heard the woman laugh and gasping breath, he shoved forward just as Kyan’s hands hit the door, smashing it inward with a blast of magic.
Dominic was suspended in the air clawing at his throat, his legs kicking frantically and a growl so menacing tore out of Kyan when he suddenly shifted.
A boy so tiny should not be able to grow so large, but he did, taking on the whole body of Kaif. I knew he shifted young, but I expected him to match his human counterpart. Not morph into a full-grown Lycan.
He whipped his hands out, blasting the woman. Recognition hit her face a seconds before, and her eyes widened to the size of saucers as she was slammed back against the tiny stairs.
Dominic hit the floor with a hard thud, and Kaif stalked past him over to the woman and grabbed either side of her head. She laughed in his face.
Kaif lifted her off the ground with his hands and held her in the air. Her feet dangling when her laughter cut off. Kaif murmurs something and she started screaming and thrashing, yet he doesn’t let go.
Even when blood started pouring from eyes, mouth and beneath his hands covering her ears, her eyes melted out of her head when he suddenly slammed her on the ground, her body fallen and writhing on the floor and her face started melting.
I could hear Kyan crying, saying to stop, trying to pull back control when Kaif’s foot came down on her face, crushing her face inward. Dominic gasped, and Kaif looked over his shoulder at him while Dominic stared in h****r at what became of his mother. Her blood smeared his floor along with her brain matter when Kaif suddenly shifted back.
Kyan peered down at his grandmother in h****r when hands were suddenly over his eyes, and he was ripped from the room and only able to hear the soft murmurings of his father.
The room rippled and warped, and I was suddenly back in the room. My stomach lurched forward, and bile rose up my throat. before I swallowed it down. I don’t know what sickened me most, what I saw, or the fact it reminded me of what I did in City to those men.
Kaif was back over at the table, holding the knife between his fingers and looking at it.
“The stone?” I asked him.
“Buried with Dominic, it was Talisman,”
“For what?”
“To k**l me?” Kaif shrugs, and I look at Jonah over my shoulder.
“It was part of the curse. It was the same Talisman that was in the dagger used to k**l Luna,” Kaif says.
“Why did Hades curse you though if it was your Son that k****d her?”
“He blamed me for brainwashing our son against her, but also because when he plunged the dagger in her chest, the knife used was one Celeste had made to k**l Hades,” He says, holding it up.
“Celeste was going to k**l her husband?”
“He was going to take her daughter. She gave it to me before she was banished to the Moon Goddess realm, in case he came back so I could protect my son,”
“So what happened after he k****d her?”
“Hades felt her d***h and came after my son, Hades cursed me, said I took not only his daughter from him but Celeste,”
“But that makes no sense because Moon Goddess Seline would have had to k**l her when Celeste handed over her power to her,” Kaif nods, his head before answering.
“When she found out her daughter was dd, she started looking for someone to take her place. Hades waited a year before he came looking for his daughter. Seline was a human woman Celeste saw could tame the Lycans. Celeste tried to tame us, she couldn’t, so when Seline’s daughter Koraline was k*****d. Celeste offered to bring her back using the same spell that created the Lycans, only she would be forever trapped in her wolf form since she was only half, Lycan. In return for bringing her daughter back, she would have to become the next Moon Goddess,”
“Gosh, that name sounds familiar,” Kora muses. Kaif holds the dagger up to show me.
“That dagger is the only thing that can k**l a gd. When Hades came for my son, I learned that dagger didn’t just k**l a gd. It trapped their soul in it, to never know peace only agony, your mother would have another similar, when this was made so was another, but it transfers power and gives life between the Goddesses while this one trapped their soul and power and k****d them.”
“Celeste wanted to d*e,” I asked.
“She couldn’t live without her daughter. Hades blamed me, and I happily would have taken his place anyway. Only I expected him to k**l me,” Kaif states.
Jonah remained quiet, also listening, and I wondered if I was making his legs numb sitting on him when he ran his nose across my shoulder, inhaling my scent. Kaif watched him but said nothing instead continuing to explain.
“When he realized what my son had done, he placed the curse on me, said the only love her monsters deserved was the pain of losing it, so when another Octavian has been born, the mother has always d*ied, and the child has always grown up never knowing a mothers love. Exactly how my son was raised, and the men always lost their mates just like Hades lost Celeste,”
“But you didn’t k**l Celeste or Luna, so why curse you?” I asked.
“I was one of her coven elders before I became a Lycan. Even after I still had power. Celeste asked for my help to protect her daughter, and Luna was my mate, so I helped her create the one thing that could k*l a gd, and in turn, it k****d both of them. I helped create the daggers that k*****d them both,”
Jonah went to ask another question when Lucas tapped on the door but didn’t enter. I looked over at him, and so did Kaif and Jonah.
“Marabella, your mother is downstairs waiting to see you,” Lucas says while glancing nervously at Kaif. I wondered why he was like that with him. I knew Kaif had hurt him in the past yet, Kaif had done nothing to make him nervous, and I was finding his fear of him odd.
“I will be right down,” I tell Lucas getting up.
Kaif grabs my arm as I p@sshim, stopping me.
“You don’t leave with her,” he tells me.
“I will be right back. I am not going anywhere unless Kyan wants me to,” I rea*s*sure him. He looks over at Jonah.
“You go with her; I may k**l her brother if I go,”
“My brother is here?”
“Yes, I can feel his aura,” Kaif answers and Jonah also gets up.