ALPHA PARTHE.
Rorden’s body trembled around my claws, his life ebbing from him in slow, uneven breaths. His blood coated my hand, and it was slick and hot, its coppery scent filling my nostrils.
His trembling fingers still clung to my wrist as if he wanted to hold on.
His lips parted, with the blood pooling there, spilling over, trailing down his chin in dark rivulets.
“Parthe…” His voice was weak and fractured. His body convulsed against mine, the last vestiges of strength slipping from him. But his eyes… his eyes burned, filled with something I had never seen in him before. Something… broken.
I clenched my jaw, willing myself to finish this and end it. But my fingers hesitated around the fragile organ still beating weakly in my palm.
“Say it,” I rasped, my voice thick and my jaw locked. “Say you regret it.”
A faint, blood-tinged smile touched his lips. “I don’t,” he whispered. “I never… regretted… trying to take back… what should have been mine.”
I exhaled sharply, my grip tightening, causing him to shudder violently. “You crossed the line, Rorden. There is no coming back from this.”
His fingers twitched, tightening weakly around my wrist. His breathing was shallow now. The light in his eyes flickered, but he wasn’t done yet. He still had more to say.
“You were always… the chosen one, weren’t you?” His brittle voice wavered, “The one they loved. The one they nurtured. I… I was just the inconvenience.”
His words cut deeper than I expected, slicing through the thick walls I had built around my heart.
I swallowed hard, my chest rising and falling.
I had never thought of Rorden as my enemy.
Never once.
He had always been here and there-reckless, fucking all the young women in the pack, sticking his nose in my business the best way he could… but never seemed like a threat. Not even like someone I needed to keep my guard up against.
He was family to me, even though we weren’t the best of relatives.
But now, staring at him, his body trembling, his eyes hollowed out by so many years of bitterness and pain, I realized something…
Maybe I should have seen it sooner.
Maybe he had been drowning all along. And I had never reached out.
“You think I had it easy?” My voice was quieter now, “You think being the ‘chosen one’ meant anything? That it didn’t come with its own burdens? I was never allowed to be weak. Never allowed to falter. Do you know what it’s like to carry a weight so heavy that you suffocate under it?”
Rorden let out a weak, bitter laugh that ended in a cough, blood splattering from his lips. “At least you had… something… to suffocate under,” he whispered. “At least they saw you.”
Silence.
“You killed our grandfather,” I said. “You hurt Luxuria. You tried to destroy everything I’ve built.”
“I know,” he breathed. “And if I could do it again… I would.”
My grip tightened. A deep growl rumbled in my chest, but it lacked the fury it should have carried.
He shuddered again, another tremor racking his body. His lips moved, but no words came out at first. Then, his eyes locked onto mine.
I should have crushed his heart already and ended this war. Ended him.
But something held me there, staring into those wild, broken eyes.
For the first time, I saw more than just a traitor on the battlefield. More than just an enemy. More than just the reckless boy I had grown up with, who fucks around.
I saw the boy who had spent his whole life screaming into the void, waiting for someone-anyone-to hear him. A boy who had grown up feeling like a shadow. The boy who had been denied everything. The boy who had been left behind, turned bitter, turned cruel, and now-at the very end-was just a shattered thing, clinging to dear life.
“You could have had a different life, Rorden.” My voice was quiet, almost sounding with compassion. “If you had just-” I clenched my jaw, shaking my head. “If you had just chosen differently, none of this had to happen.”
Rorden let out a strangled, bloodied laugh.
“Chosen differently?” His voice was hoarse, laced with something between fury and despair. “Like I had a fucking choice?”
His eyes burned into mine.
“Tell me something, Parthe…” His breath hitched, his fingers twitching weakly against my wrist. “If it had been me… if I had been you… would you have saved me?”
The words slammed into me like a punch to the gut.
I didn’t answer.
Because I didn’t know.
His gaze searched mine desperately, waiting for me to say something that might, perhaps, offer him some comfort in his last moments. But I had nothing to give him. No comfort. No redemption.
A slow, deep exhale left his lips, almost a sigh of relief.
“That’s what I thought,” he murmured.
And then, as if he had been waiting for my silence… for my answer that never came-his fingers loosened around my wrist.
A peace settled over his face, twisted with something almost like… acceptance.
And in that moment, I knew there was nothing left for him to say.
Nothing left to save.
I curled my fingers around his heart-
And, slowly, agonizingly, I pulled.
The sickening rip of flesh and tendon filled the atmosphere, his body jerking once before going utterly still. Blood poured from the open cavity in his chest, drenching the ground beneath us.
For a moment, his eyes remained open, locked onto mine. But there was no pain in them anymore. No rage.
Just the empty quiet of a man who had finally stopped fighting.
The body that had once been Rorden crumpled to the ground.
I stared down at the heart in my hand… the last fragile piece of him. It was still warm. Still pulsing weakly as if refusing to accept its own end.
I crushed it in my palm.
The blood seeped through my fingers, dripping onto the earth below.
And just like that…
Rorden was no more.