Into the Alpha’s Keep Chapter 116: 116

POV Savannah Bowen

He kept my arm raised with one hand, while with the other, in a swift motion, he grabbed the knife and thrust it at me. The blade pierced my skin, ruptured the vein, and became lodged between the broken bones of my wrist.

Nothing had prepared me for that pain. Nothing.

The blood that shot from the wound cascaded down, warm and smelling strongly, staining the wall, my arm, my clothes, and spreading through a puddle on the floor. It was so intense that I already felt weak, my body slowly going numb, just like the pain.

I was dying. Me and my pup.

Hunter left me pinned to the wall with the blade, stepping back, distancing himself to admire his masterpiece.

"Now, yes. Beautiful, in pain, trapped, and losing blood, just how I need it for the ritual."

"I hope you live a long time, Hunter. As many years as you can, because, once you get to hell, I’ll finish you off. I’ll be waiting for you down there, ready for my revenge."

He laughed and moved away.

"How much love! You’ll die thinking of me and spend all your afterlife with me in your mind? That’s incredible, a love that crosses borders."

My eyes felt tired, as though my eyelids weighed tons.

Hunter walked over to the wolf and pulled the pup from her arms. She screamed and tried to stop him, but couldn’t. The pup woke up and began to cry.

"No, please, not my pup." She kneeled on the ground, begging him.

He held the pup in one arm and with the other, he struck her face, knocking her to the floor with the impact.

"Shut your mouth, bitch! This pup is from my pack, so it belongs to me. Just like you and all the other miserable lives that follow me."

He turned away with the pup in his arms.

"What are you going to do?" I whispered, in a weak sigh.

"In the ritual, it said I needed the blood of an innocent," he shrugged. "I thought about getting a virgin, but then I remembered you claimed to be one to your parents. So, I couldn’t trust the magnitude of what I’m doing to the word of a female. That’s why I chose a pup; there’s nothing more innocent than them, no mistake."

The reality of what he was about to do hit me. My eyes widened and my lips parted in desperation, just like the pup’s mother, who was crying, lying on the ground.

I was dying. My blood was draining through the wound, weakening me more with each passing second. I couldn’t feel my arm or move my fingers anymore.

Still, I tried to gather strength from somewhere I didn’t even know I had, to free myself and help the pup.

"Don’t do this," I pleaded, not for my life, but for the life of the innocent little one. "Please, don’t do this. I’ll go with you, I’ll follow you, we can run away and find someone else for the ritual, someone who is innocent, but not a pup."

He ran his tongue over his lips. He lowered his eyes, tilting his head as he observed the crying baby in his arms, squirming in the blue blanket covering his tiny body, missing the comfort of his mother’s arms.

"Your promises are too vague and mean nothing to me."

"Please," I insisted, tears overflowing from my eyes, soaking my dirty face.

"No," he rejected the plea, smiling like the sick person he was, pleased and happy to see me cry, to make me suffer.

He placed a container on the table and pulled the blanket off the pup, exposing his tiny, slender body. The boy screamed, crying nonstop, squirming in his arms. Hunter held him by the feet, as if he were a doll, as if he meant nothing to him.

The boy’s mother did nothing, lying on the ground, her hands clasped in prayer, crying and begging him not to kill her child.

I would rip her head off as soon as I was free. She wasn’t trapped, why wasn’t she fighting him for her son’s life? Why didn’t she take the silver knife he kept? Why didn’t she just do something, anything?

I tried to pull my arm that was stuck by the knife. My vision blurred and my stomach twisted. I clenched my teeth, holding the food in my stomach.

"Stop being a selfish psychopath, Hunter!" I screamed, pleading for the pup’s life. "He’s just a baby, leave him alone."

Hunter pretended to think.

"You’re right, I’m extremely selfish," he agreed, pulling a blade from the makeshift kitchen cupboard of Alpha Bason. "My only interest is making you pay for running from me and for despising me. And deep down, I don’t really care about any of this. But I will kill this pup, Savannah. Not only for the ritual, but because you care about him." He laughed.

I pressed my head against the stone wall, trying to find a solution, some way to save the little one, but found nothing. I placed my free hand on my abdomen in an involuntary movement, a failed attempt to protect my own pup that had barely started to grow in my womb and was already going through all of this.

I would die and take him with me, cutting his still-young life short.

I shook my head, and more tears overflowed.

My pup.

I felt each beat of my heart echoing like a deafening drum in my ears. The pain of reality tore through every fiber of my being, like sharp claws embedded in my soul.

Each breath became a Herculean effort, as if the air refused to fill my lungs.

"Hunter," I tried one last time.

Each moment, the awareness that an innocent being, a life, was growing inside me, and depended on my very existence, gave me strength to fight, even though they were becoming minuscule.

I couldn’t allow myself to falter, I couldn’t surrender to the approaching death. If I succumbed, I would take with me the purest ray of light that ever shone in my soul.

He lifted the pup by the feet. I turned to the mother, trying to urge her to do something. She did nothing but watch, cry, and pray.

"Hunter!" I tried again.

The pup cried and squirmed. Hunter, smiling, held the sharp blade and passed it across the pup’s neck, slicing through the soft, thin skin, opening the flesh. His blood spurted, dripping onto the table and falling into a container the alpha had placed there.

It took no more than a few seconds for him to stop crying, succumbing to death.

The mother screamed, letting out a shrill scream that made my eardrums feel like they were going to explode. My body bent in a wave of pain and anguish. Pure desperation and hopelessness.

He filled the vessel with the innocent little one’s blood, shook it up and down, then threw his body to the other side of the cave, making it hit the ground with a sharp thud, as if it were just a discarded object. He dipped the tip of his finger in the blood-filled container and brought it to his lips, sucking it.

"Mm... now I understand what they mean by 'blood of an innocent.'" He made quotation marks with his fingers. "The taste is really different."

He approached me. I could barely move, I didn’t have the strength even to speak.

My heart was shattered, broken into countless little pieces. He was the worst of monsters, and even if I lived a thousand years in hell, I would never forget everything he did, all the atrocities.

He crouched in front of me and stared into my eyes, pressing his lips into a pout.

"Are you very sad about the pup? If you survive the ritual and I change my mind about killing you, we can make our own pups."

I stayed silent, motionless, without strength.

He looked at the pool of my blood that stretched across the floor, analyzing it.

"Almost done, almost time to drink all that innocent blood and see how your body reacts." He rubbed his finger on his lips. "Just a little more and you'll be a wolf free of mating marks."

An object rolled by his side, invading the cave.

Hunter stood up and looked at the floor at the same time I did.

It wasn’t an object, nor something that could be considered normal or natural.

He gasped and took a staggering step back upon seeing the decapitated head of his father stop at his feet.

A figure appeared in the entrance, its silhouette standing out against the dim light. My heart leapt in my chest when I recognized him. His robust body casting a shadow at the back of the cave.

My chest eased, and all the weight of longing I had felt in the past days hit me, striking me with force and impact.

Hunter dragged his gaze from his father’s decapitated head to the entrance, where Alpha Dăneşti stood out.

He took a step forward, revealing his face.

"I just privatized peace," he declared, his voice resonating like an unyielding authority. "Those who disturb the peace I fought so hard to build will only find destruction in their wake.

There is no more Twilight pack, nor Eclipse pack."