Alpha Luciano’s POV
I was disturbed. It wasn’t because of the mindless conversations I had undergone while following Uncle Tommaso around. Could it be because I had left Arabella behind? Was I so caught up in her that I couldn’t think clearly when she wasn’t around me?
No, it was all in my head. I was not falling for her nor was I worried about her. She had her guards with her. They would keep her safe for the next hour. Besides, my pack lands were impenetrable. If I was still bothered about her now it meant that I… no, I would never accept that. I wasn’t. That was final.
Arabella was fine.
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Arabella’s POV
My vision blurred with tears. Margaret was… I refused to think about it. I blotted it out of my mind. I would soon reach the main entrance of the pack and every step I took felt like a betrayal.
That was what I was doing, wasn’t it? Betrayal? I was betraying Margaret to save my life and my child’s. Even if she had demanded it of me it felt unbelievably cruel.
I heard something. A whisper of sound, cloth kissing steel and I whirled ducking my head to avoid the slice that was coming. Another masked attacker fully clad in black was upon me.
I was maybe twenty paces from the door. I couldn’t allow Margaret’s death to have been in vain. I moved away from the falling swipe from the blade. I couldn’t avoid him forever.
He was a strong fighter and I was Arabella Bianchi whose father had never let her train because he wanted to protect her he claimed but knowing what she did now, it seemed so unlikely. I was the same girl that had stubbornly learnt how to use guns on her own in secret. This man wasn’t wielding a gun.
Instead, he wielded what looked like an ancient sword with a deadly edge I could scent a mile away, wolfsbane. I pushed the furnishings I could get my hands on in his way to halt his progress toward me and create an even wider distance between us. The sword was a short-range weapon depending on the length of its blade, I just had to stay far away as long as I could. It couldn’t be too hard.
I reached for the doorknob. My assailant grabbed me by my hair, yanking me back. I screamed and howled. I fought against his grip but he disregarded my efforts and pulled me close to himself and placed the sword at my throat, the blade cutting deep into my skin.
The world slowed down. I heard my attacker breathing down my neck, his breath leaving goosebumps in its wake. I saw my life flash before my eyes. I never understood the human counting of time passage. BC and AD. How could one person have affected life so much?
But then as I recalled my life, it was split into before Luciano and with Luciano. My life before Luciano felt like a mirage. It was lonely, depressing and like a long winding road to nowhere. Life with Luciano was like living near an active volcano. It had benefits like free hot water and demerits like death.
Now that I finally understood it was a little too late. The man’s sword left my throat as he threw me on the ground. I gasped in pain as I landed on my side. I caught a whiff of a very surprising scent. But the party… the man hadn’t moved quickly enough. A heavy ceramic gas came down hard on his head and he passed out at once, his blood staining the tiles in front of me.
I looked up at my saviour. It was none other than Emery.
Her auburn hair was slicked back into a bun that looked more than a little worse for wear. She wore a deep green ball gown that looked almost black.
“Arabella!” Emery exclaimed and helped me up from the ground. I grasped my belly instinctively, I hoped the fall hadn’t done anything to my child.
“Arabella, you are…” Emery’s eyes widened with shock as she took in my belly. Oh, that was right. No one knew about the baby.
“Forget about me. You need to contact Luciano, we need to get assistance for Margaret now.” My breath came fast and I saw double for a second and stumbled as I tried to stand straight. Emery held on to me.
“You don’t look too good, Arabella. Let me get you something to drink. We won’t be able to get Margaret any help if you collapse before we reach her.”
Emery set me up on a chair and before I could protest, she was gone. I was still shaky and twitchy as I came down from the adrenaline surge. Emery showed up seconds later with a glass of water. I realized I was extremely thirsty when she offered it to me. I took a gulp and instantly felt better.
“Thank you.” Every time I felt that I knew something about Emery, she went and blew me away with an act of kindness that I didn’t see coming. “Let’s get to Margaret.”
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Alpha Luciano’s POV
It happened when I was in the middle of giving the toast for the celebration. It felt like a tug on my midsection that escalated into pain very quickly.
I froze remembering the first time I’d felt something like this happen. It was when Arabella had killed Alec. A feeling of dread came over me. No, no.
“Please enjoy the celebrations.”
I rounded up hastily, not finishing what I had been saying initially. I left the podium and reached for my phone calling Jack, the head of her security team. He would tell me that she was fine and that I was just imagining this impending sense of doom. He didn’t pick up.
“Luciano, my boy, what was all of that? You haven’t spoken to the–”
I didn’t answer him, hell I barely heard whatever he was saying. I brushed him aside and began to run. I hoped that I wasn’t too late again. I entered my car and drove towards the pack house.
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Emery’s POV
I noticed when the drug effects began to kick in.
I repressed a smile and followed a stumbling Arabella to where Margaret apparently lay injured.
When we reached Margaret, she was too still, too pale and too cold. The bitch was dead already. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Arabella keened like a dying animal falling to the ground next to her dearest companion. She shook her and begged her to open her eyes. It was pathetic and irritating as hell. Arabella was a wolf, surely she could hear that Margaret’s heart had ceased to beat.
I waited anxiously. She should lose consciousness any moment now. To think that I thought that my plan had fallen through when Anastasia’s men had failed to find Arabella initially.
I had gone to the celebrations with everyone then doubled back almost immediately to personally witness the death of Arabella Bianchi. When they’d lost her, I came up with another plan on the spot. Arabella didn’t need to die. She just needed to lose that child quickly.
Then I saw my opportunity. As I killed Anastasia’s man, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. It would be more cost-effective to let Arabella die now so that she would never have another opportunity to take Luciano from me.
But this way, I could become a hero to Luciano for saving her life while also screwing her over. I dosed the water before giving it to her watching her gulp it down unawares. The drug was colourless, odourless and tasteless once dissolved. Best of all it wasn’t an abortifacient on its own. It just triggered other reactions in the body to give that outcome like a catalyst.
When they analyzed her, they wouldn’t even find traces of anything in her system.
“Emery, come let us take her to the pack doctors. She will be fine.”
Arabella’s eyes struggled to stay open and I crouched to meet her gaze. “Of course, Arabella.”
“I feel…” Arabella’s gaze grew even more unfocused and she finally passed out. I didn’t bother catching her. She slumped next to her friend. I would wait twenty minutes then call Luciano and act like I didn’t know what was going on. By then she would surely have lost the child and probably her womb in the process as well.
I smiled and straightened up, my wrist going into my pocket fingering my phone. Soon I would make the call but not yet. But what had Arabella expected, that I would truly help her? And what had Luciano thought? That he could just screw me over like that? I had shown them.
And the best part was that no one would ever blame me, they would never know because they would believe this was all Anastasia’s handiwork.
“Emery.”
I froze. Was that… I looked around to see Luciano looking at me with rage making his eyes flash silver. Fuck. What was he doing here so soon?
Had Arabella managed to contact him?
Then his hands wrapped around my neck and squeezed, cutting off my airflow. I choked.
“What the fuck did you do to Arabella, you crazy bitch?”
My vision blurred as I shook my head denying the charges. The moment I admitted the truth I was dead. The scene looked terrible, I realized, with Margaret dead, Anastasia’s man also dead with a lot of blood on the ground and Arabella….
“Arabella.” I managed to choke out. As I hoped, he hesitated before he flung me aside and raced to Arabella.
“Bianchi, look at me. Arabella… fuck.”
I gasped, inhaling deeply as my air-starved lungs filled back up again. I heard the thundering of approaching feet.
“Take her to the dungeons.”
Luciano didn’t look at me as he raced away to the infirmary, Arabella in his arms.
As the guards dragged me away, the only thought on my mind was if Arabella had already lost the baby.