9 - Calum
O n Christmas Eve, while I was cozy next to the fire with Lucy after putting the pups to bed, the Alpha mind-linked me that Hannah was in labor and requested my presence at the hospital.?
“Go,” my mate said with her head on my shoulder. “You know, as much as I hate him, this is a big event in his life. And he used to be your friend once, he was the one who blessed both our children. Ugh, the holidays just make me too soft,” she fake gagged and I gently scooped her up in my lap and nuzzled her ear.
“If you want to gag, why don’t you just say so,” I playfully thrust my hips under her, and she laughed her clear, melodic laughter that never failed to melt my heart.
“Oh, you’re awful,” she kept laughing. “Although I wouldn’t mind gagging a bit for Santa later tonight,” she winked at me and got up from my now-tented lap. “Now, shoo. Go.”
“Alpha,” I said in surprise. “I thought you would be in there with Hannah.”
“I was up until a minute ago, I just needed a break. My wolf is annoyed by her, and I don’t want to ingest the wolfsbane anymore,” he replied calmly, and I was stunned by how forthcoming he was all of a sudden.
“So, are you nervous?” I tried moving us to more familiar terrain. I knew all about dad stuff.
“I don’t know,” he looked lost. “I – this is not how I imagined this moment.”
It took everything in me not to do my best impression of my mate and ask him how the fuck he imagined it. Did he imagine being here with the Luna, maybe coaching Hannah through her contractions together, like a happy throuple? Or did he maybe still hope it would be him and Regina becoming parents like I’m sure they had dreamed of back when things were better for all of us?
“The most important thing is that all goes well and that at the end of the day, you have a healthy pup in your arms,” I replied diplomatically instead.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said somewhat sadly.
Soon, the doctor called us into the delivery room, which looked like a gruesome crime scene, where Hannah lay on a bed, pale and exhausted, with a small bundle in her arms. I stayed back as Henry walked towards them, his back tensing more with each step. Hannah straightened in the bed as much as she was able to, and for some reason, she looked terrified.
Henry roughly grabbed the pup from her hands and roared in his scariest Alpha voice:
“What the fuck is this?!”
All of us in the room froze in confusion.
“This is our pup, Henry, isn’t he beautiful?”
“This is not our pup,” his voice was now like the growl of his wolf, barely intelligible due to the completely elongated canines in his mouth. “I can smell he’s not mine, and he’s no Alpha.”
He then thrust the pup violently at the nurse closest to him and I flinched. Hopefully there would be no lasting damage to the innocent pup. He then grabbed Hannah by the hair and started dragging her out of the room, leaving a trail of blood behind her. I had no choice but to follow, still somewhat in shock.
The few pack members we passed all stared at their Alpha dragging a still-pregnant-looking bleeding female in a hospital gown through the streets by her hair. Once we finally made it to the pack house, he threw her on the floor and commanded her: “ Tell the truth .” She gasped at the strength of the command or from the pain of it.
“Whose pup is that?”
“Julius’,” she ground out, clearly trying and failing to keep the words from falling out.
“Your stepbrother?” I interjected, incredulous. “How long has that been going on? Are you mates?”
I shot the Alpha an apologetic look but he just turned to Hannah for her answer.
“We’ve always been together, ever since I was 14. Neither of us found our mate in the pack when we first shifted, and then we made sure never to leave so we didn’t stumble upon them. He is my one true love even though we’re not mates, I don’t care what anyone says,” she stared at me defiantly, clearly aware at this point that she would not make it out of this alive.
The Alpha yelled for a guard, who he then instructed to bring Julius to us.
“I figure the happy family deserves a reunion, don’t you think?” When I didn’t respond, he turned back to Hannah, “Why did you volunteer for the concubine position?”
“Julius thought it would give us more power.”
“ Tell me everything ,” he commanded her again and she whimpered.
“Julius wanted to improve our position in the pack, maybe become Gamma. At first, we kept our distance from each other, I truly wanted to bear your pup,” I glanced at Henry after she said that and I saw a flash of pain briefly cross his cruel expression, “but after the first failed heat, he got impatient, so the next time, I informed you that my heat started before it really did. I faked it for three days, and only spent the first day of my actual heat with you. Then I went to Julius. You couldn’t tell the difference in my scent because of the wolfsbane you were taking, which also prevented you from smelling Julius on me.”
“What about Ginny?” he asked almost inaudibly and she hesitated for as long as the command allowed it.
“Since the pup wasn’t yours and it was only a matter of time before you found out, we hatched a plan to get rid of both her and the pup. Julius went to your house and told her she was being expected in your office, but I intercepted her and screamed before hurling myself down the stairs. The idea was that you’d kill her in a fit of rage, and I would simply never get pregnant again because of the alleged internal scarring I’d suffered during the miscarriage. But I hoped you’d either keep me around out of guilt or you’d reward my family for my suffering, both of which would give Julius what he's always wanted.”
Just then, the guard dragged a disheveled Julius in and unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. He had clearly been somewhere celebrating the birth of his pup.
“I hear congratulations are in order, it’s a male,” the Alpha told him while he got up to stand. “ Don’t move. ”
Julius remained frozen on his feet. Only his eyes darted from the Alpha to me and then to a bloody Hannah on the floor behind the Alpha. I could pinpoint the exact moment when understanding, and then immediately after that, resignation flashed in his eyes.
“Your lover here,” Henry spat the word with disgust, “has informed us about the little scheme you two had going. I admit I have only myself to blame for falling for it, for being blinded by my desire for progeny so much that I took her word over my mate’s,” he seemed to be choking on his own words, “but that will not prevent me from taking out my anger on the two of you.”
He slowly unbuckled Julius’ pants while staring him in the eyes. “So you are the one who led my Luna to her demise,” he growled. “I think that deserves an especially creative punishment.”
He then removed a silver knife from Julius’ sheath, which he first held up to show him, before slowly slicing his dick off as he screamed in pain. I flinched in solidarity with the male, and I heard Hannah gasp. Henry then dangled the limp appendage in front of Julius’ eyes as the male got paler and paler from the blood loss.
“I imagine this is the same knife you used to cut my mate, isn’t it, Hannah?” he asked darkly and she whispered a yes .
“How poetic. Eye for an eye, Hannah. This is what you wanted, isn’t it, you cock-hungry whore,” he asked her while showing her the piece of flesh in his hand. “Well, you got it. Open wide.”
We both stared at him in horror, the long-forgotten guard and I, while Hannah squeezed her eyes shut and was chanting no, no, please no .
Henry was merciless.
“ Look at it, ” he commanded. “ Open your mouth .”
If he continued commanding her at this rate, her brain would soon turn to mush. I wanted to look away but couldn’t, and I watched with a sick fascination while my Alpha stuffed Hannah’s dying lover’s dead dick down her throat, enjoying her suffocation before he took her skull between his hands, kissed her forehead roughly, and then applied pressure to her skull until it smashed into smithereens. He then just stood there, covered in bits of skull and brain, while her dead body lay at his feet. All that could be heard was Julius sobbing while he was bleeding out.
“Wait until he’s dead, then burn both of them,” he told the guard and motioned for me to follow him. I quickly realized we were heading towards his mother’s house. She opened the door, startled by his pounding on it, and her eyes widened when she saw the state he was in.
“Henry, what on Earth -”
“Hannah gave birth tonight, mother.”
“Oh that is wonderful news, how is my grandpup?” the old female beamed with happiness at the news. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
“He’s not mine, mother.”
“What?!” She screeched.
“Yes, turns out your son has trouble impregnating females, so this one turned to someone else to do it for him. This situation that you so subtly manipulated me into didn't work out for either of us,” he pushed her aside and entered her house. I followed, eagerly anticipating the next installment of this family drama.
“Henry, dear, I never did any such thing. Can’t a mother simply talk to her son about his life?”
“I don’t think a mother should be burdening her son with sob stories of how difficult not having pups for so long was for her, how she almost wished someone would give her a pup to raise instead of all those fruitless attempts – what do you think, Calum?”
“I think it borders on inappropriate, Alpha,” I said.
He hummed thoughtfully.
“She actually told me she would have been happy if my father had taken a concubine. She convinced me that, with time, Ginny would be too. That, once we had our pup, everything could go back to the way it used to be. She said I was only torturing my mate by trying to get something from her she wasn’t capable of giving me. I was such a fool,” he sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands. His mother stepped closer to him and tried putting her hand on his head but he recoiled from her touch and jumped up angrily.
“You vile old hag, you ruined the best thing that ever happened to me with your poison! I hate you, I’ll never forgive you!”
“Henry, I was just doing what I thought was in your best interest,” his mother cried.
“Being happy wasn’t? Being with my mate wasn’t?”
“She wasn’t good enough for you, Henry; she always acted like she was better than everyone. Let’s not forget she tried killing what she thought was your pup!”
“She didn’t, those were all lies. Everything, all of this, the whole thing was one big fat lie. Ginny is the only truth of my life.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Get out of my sight, Mother; I never want to see you again. I will not banish you out of respect to my father’s memory but you better make sure you spend most of the year visiting your sisters. You can start today. I will have a car ready to take you to aunt Eliza’s pack later this morning,” upon hearing his words I looked out the window and saw that the Sun was slowly rising outside. It was Christmas Day.
“Henry, you can’t -” he slammed the door shut, and we both walked away in silence without hearing any more of her pleas.
“I have to get her back, Calum,” he finally spoke when we arrived at the dungeon. “She’s my mate, she’ll have to forgive me,” he said, more for his sake than mine.
“I just wanted to have a family with her, I just wanted to be a father, but I managed to ruin everything in the process. She was happy, Calum, and I – I ruined her.”
He then straightened his shoulders and assumed a pose I knew only too well. It was one I’d seen countless times during negotiations with other packs. It signaled that he wouldn’t back down.
“I’m going to make it up to her. We had three great years, we are mates, I will make her happy again. My mate will be by my side and things will go back to the way they were,” he muttered the last sentence as he turned his back on me to go enter the dungeon. Despite the gory deaths I’d witnessed last night, it was only now that I felt true fear.
I quickly snuck into his office using my spare key and took the tin box out of the wall safe. I grit my teeth while suffering the electric impulses emitted by the device while I dialed the number for the Royal Court. I needed them to expedite our complaint, as things had just gotten way worse.