Betrayed by Blood, Claimed by the Alpha-Chapter 16

Betrayed by Blood~

The heavy knock on Cain’s door sent a ripple of annoyance through him. Lydia stepped into the office, her lips pressed into a thin line.

"The king’s seal is here," she announced, holding up the golden sealed scroll and passed it to him.

Cain didn’t move at first, his gaze hardening. He knew it was a summons from the king—just as he had predicted. He had been expecting it ever since he heard the Richards went to him for justice or whatever it was they were searching for. His hand shot out, grabbing the scroll, but instead of opening it, he flung it across the room.

Lydia sighed internally; she too had been expecting this reaction from him after all it’s Cain.

"I’m not going," he growled, "This is about the Richards."

"You can’t ignore this. The king’s summons—it’s not something you can simply cast aside," Lydia said, walking over to where the scroll was and picked it up.

"This is just a sham, a pathetic one at that. He had his chance and he blew it. His relationship to this pack died with my father. He doesn’t have any power to summon me, and that too for Rowan," he scoffed.

Lydia nodded; she’d expected this when the summons arrived. "This isn’t just about you and him, Cain. You know that. Publicly refusing will only make things worse. You don’t have to respect him, but you cannot show your disdain for him in front of the council. The region still relies on your support."

Cain’s jaw tightened, his hands clenched into a tight fist. He knew she was right. Regardless of his relationship with the man, he still had to show up. He shut his eyes for a second, cursing the man who put him in a situation like this. He glanced at Lydia, who was waiting for his orders. "We leave first thing tomorrow morning," he said, and she nodded curtly, dropping the scroll on the table and walking out the door, ready to prepare for his departure.

Cain’s gaze was stuck on the scroll, his jaw clenched hard. It’s been years since he last heard from the king. At least personally. The king had once been a close family friend of the Knights. His father, Edward Knight, had been a close friend of the king even before he ascended the throne.

Cain’s father earned the name ’mad alpha.’ He had ruled the pack with an iron fist, but it was not just the pack that feared him. Cain had learned fear since the day he could walk. Cain remembered the first time he was forced to kill. He was five. A child, innocent, but his father saw it as weakness. He had no tolerance for such. His father had dragged him into the woods, where the air was thick with fear and piss. A rogue had strayed into their borders and was caught. He was tied to a post in the woods, and it hadn’t been enough to kill him from afar; his father insisted Cain finish him up close.

"Kill it, Cain," his father had growled into his ears, forcing the blade into his hands. "You’re not a boy anymore, you’re my son! My legacy! You kill or you die," his father had growled into his ears. And so, Cain killed.

It had been brutal, raw, violent, and yet he did. The first time was always the hardest. The second time was easier, and by the time Cain was ten, it was second nature.

And the king?

He had been no better. The king and his father were close friends, allies in a power struggle. Cain’s father was destruction, but the king? He was a coward, a greedy man who had kept his mouth shut when he should have acted. He had watched Cain’s father tear his pack apart, and he had done nothing. Worse, he had encouraged him. The king had fed his friend’s madness, seeing it as a way to further his own selfish goals. He never stopped him. He never even tried.

The madness in his father never stopped; it grew worse, from forcing Cain to kill, to torture, to hunt, to fight, to fuck.

But Cain would never forget the day he shifted for the first time.

Cain had gone to his father, seeking what? Approval? Validation? Recognition? He’d been seeking something; he just wasn’t sure what it was now.

What he found, however, was something that he could never, ever forget.

He stepped into the room, and the sight that greeted him made his skin crawl, all of his senses exploded. Right there, on the floor in a pool of her own blood was his mother, her throat slit, her eyes open with dried tears on her cheeks. There had been so much blood, so much blood that it was forever engraved in Cain’s mind. Standing over her was his father, his body soaked in his mother’s blood, a knife in his hands, the one he’d used to kill his mother. He looked just like what they called him. The mad alpha.

Cain saw red.

The beast inside him—his wolf—tore free. Cain shifted, his wolf had taken control completely. He had ripped through his father brutally, his claws had slashed his head, his fangs had sunk into the man violently as he tore into the man’s body, ripping him apart. When Cain finally stopped, his entire body was covered in blood, his father’s torn body lying in a crumpled heap at his feet.

Cain’s first act as a true wolf—his first act as a man—had been to kill his father.

And when he assumed his position as pack alpha, his sanity snapped. Where his father’s ruling had been about control, Cain’s rule was one of pure madness. He went insane.

He went on a killing rampage, hunting down anyone who questioned him or even so much as looked at him in the wrong way. He became a monster far worse than his father had ever been.