Zara

The woman sobbed again, and Marcus gently patted her shoulder, handing her a napkin from his pocket. She wiped her eyes and continued:

"That’s when I decided to take revenge on your parents and destroy them. It took me a long time, but I finally got to you. Their beloved daughter. Now they will understand the pain of losing a loved one. I joined Demon King for this purpose, but you and Alpha ruined my entire plan."

So this was a revenge plan. They were going to emotionally torture my parents using me.

"It’s a shame we didn’t kill her that day when we tried to hit her with the car, but this will be more fun. I can’t wait to chop her into pieces."

Marcus’s icy eyes shone with such coldness that my heart sank, and my thoughts returned to the incident that left a scar on my temple.

Marcus’s words transported me back to when I was about 12 or 13 years old. We were on vacation, visiting Aunt Erdit in the shadow pack. It was my first time there.

I remember leaving the house at noon to go for a walk. My mother and grandmother were strict and wouldn’t let us go out without the supervision of an adult, so I waited until they were asleep and then sneaked out.

I wandered for a long time and eventually reached the nearest park. As I was walking along the side of the road, a fast-moving car pulled up next to me and would have hit me if the stranger hadn’t pushed me out of the way.

My temple hit the road, and I lost consciousness. My memory of what happened was extremely vague. All I remember is the loud screech of the car and a man’s voice warning me.

I later woke up in the hospital with a bandage on my head. A scar later formed where the impact occurred. I don’t remember who this stranger was or what he looked like, but it seems those two had been stalking me for a very, very long time.

Considering that Marcus was born the same year as me, he was a few months younger than me.

By the time I was playing with dolls and paints, that despicable woman had already poisoned him to the point where he wanted to take my life.

To endanger her son’s life by trying to take another child’s life to get revenge on my parents? Because of a story she made up herself.

Maybe this Doran is alive somewhere, hiding in a secluded corner of this world. Maybe he didn’t want to be found.

"Are you responsible for the accident that almost cost me my life?" I asked, slightly stunned.

People can be so cruel that they wouldn’t even hesitate to harm a child. Why couldn’t those two have known about my pregnancy? They would have forced me to take some kind of pill to kill the fetus inside me.

"And yet you survived, but that gave us another chance. We had a long game ahead of us, and I needed to prepare my son. So he could earn a name for himself. We contacted your savior, a 22-year-old man who was just starting his business but had a strong surname."

What were they even talking about? I shook my head, not understanding their story or the logic. Seeing my confusion, Marcus stepped in to fill in the remaining details of the story. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"My mother hired someone to monitor your family’s whereabouts. So when you arrived in the pack, where my mother settled with me, she thought it was an opportunity to avenge my father. Mom hired an assassin to kill you, but someone intervened and saved you, pushing you to safety and getting shot in the process," he paused, as if savoring the memory.

"The assassin told us it was a blunder. We were already on our way, eager to witness this historic moment. So Mom decided to take matters into her own hands," he stated, continuing while I listened in stunned silence.

"By the time we arrived, a crowd had gathered. You were both unconscious, and we couldn’t reach you. Mom recognized the guy who tried to save you. He’d recently made the news as the youngest Alpha and had just founded his own clothing company; it was none other than your mate, Alpha Kane Sterling."

The news hit me like a hot splash of water on a cold day. I remembered Mom and Dad trying to find the man who saved my life. By the time they got to me, that man had vanished.

It was my mate... he’d saved my life more than once. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I held them back; these people didn’t deserve to see me so defenseless.

"Luckily for us, when Alpha came to, he remembered nothing of the accident or of saving anyone. So my friends told him he’d been hit by a car and took him to the hospital, leaving him forever in our debt."

Marcus grinned, flashing his perfect teeth.

What manipulators they were; they’d used him without even letting him know.

"My mother asked him to take me under his wing soon and teach me the art of business. I’ve always been precocious, and computers have always been my best friend. So after the war, I joined Kane’s empire, and I was the COO. He trusted me blindly, and I used his resources to my advantage, furthering our plan, planting listening devices in the system, and monitoring his actions. That’s why I always knew everything about him," he stated smugly, leaving me completely perplexed.

They betrayed his trust and used his kindness against him.

Alpha had a soft spot for fatherless people, like Miranda’s son and Marcus. While Miranda didn’t use him for negative purposes, Marcus and his mother did.

This infuriated me even more, and I just wanted to stand up and rip those smug smiles off their faces.

"So you became his best friend just to use him, and you’ve been doing it for years... pathetic," I snorted involuntarily. My wrists... It hurt to hold them in my hands.

Marcus finally...He moved away from his mother and lazily approached me.