Someone was trespassing. Zach felt it first thing in the morning. He sat up quickly from where he was lying on the bed beside Anna. His nose instinctively sniffed the atmosphere and he smelt the scent of danger. The smell of evil and mischief that sent his blood boiling and his eyes darkening.
Rogues.
In a blink of an eye, he was already rushing towards the door, mind-linking his men to gather at the borders of the land. Before getting out that door, however, he looked back at Anna and buried the image of her peaceful sleep in his mind. He wouldn’t risk putting her in danger. He promised Lola. And he never breaks his own promises.
Determined to protect her no matter what, he hurried out of the mansion and shifted to his wolf form. He was a big black wolf that even in himself he knew he was intimidating and terrifying to look at. Wolves and people would shrink and cringe back from his beastly large size. No wonder Anna had fainted the first time she saw him shift. He still remembered it clearly. The way her face had paled and her eyes rolled back. All he had wanted to do that time was to rip Jake’s head off and just make him disappear from existence.
He still felt the anger. Still felt his blood boiling and his eyes burning just thinking about the man he used to know. With the fire that he had, flaming in his heart, he ran faster into the woods just as a number of wolves slowly came in sight and ran along with him.
They reached the border of the land in less than a few minutes. They eyed the surroundings and felt the source of danger from afar. There was something beyond the tall trees. Something mysterious and dangerous. Something deadly.
A loud howl echoed across the forest. It was a sound of need and pain, which only meant one thing. Someone was dying. Their paces quickened in a flash. They scampered further into the woods and there they caught sight of an old house. An old mansion. Zach walked before them and neared the large house. It was a familiar place, he felt. A place long forgotten and forsaken. It used to be the Harrison’s villa. Used to be his home.
He shifted to his human form and entered the large house. His sharp eyes watched for something amiss. But then he couldn’t help but notice how the color of the walls had faded from plain white to a dark brown. It had been years since he had lived here. Years since he felt like home.
The furniture were all destroyed and ruined, scattered everywhere and some broken to pieces. The sight was a place of destruction. And like hell, it was what reminded him of madness and suffering. It was what reminded him of loss. A place filled with forgotten memories.
He refused to remember. He had buried his childhood underground and did not wish to bring back such sorrow. He had learned from the past that life is always meant to be cruel and greedy. He had been so wrecked and broken before that one flash of red would send him killing–senseless and merciless. He had liked killing. A lust for blood and death. Rogues had destroyed his home and so he killed rogues to gain revenge. To gain justice. For his dead Father. It was the only way he could put peace in his mind. In his heart.
“Alpha,” one of his men called from the living room, which was once full of bright laughters, he remembered somehow. But now, there was just a dull silence hanging in the air. Even though beneath the atmosphere, the faint shrieks and cries of a woman and child could be heard in his ears and only in his ears.
He entered the living room and smelled it instantly. It was disgusting. He knew enough to know it was the scent of death. The smelling odor of a decaying dead body. As he had predicted, he caught sight of a naked man lying on the ground. Dead. Red blood was pooling beneath his body. His head was slightly ripped off and his neck was broken and slashed. Zach looked at the body, emotionless. The body was one of his men. But it was necessary to be killed and sacrificed. They were trained to fight and destined to be killed after all.
Suddenly, he felt cold. But it was not the dead body that brought him hostile. It was the wall before them that was stained with fresh blood. And in the messy strokes, there were words written using the blood of the dead man:
I destroyed your home and I will destroy it again.
His heart was filled with anger in an instant. It was a threat. But he never had been so intimidated by such threat before. Whoever wrote this piece of shït was the one he had been searching for all these years. The man who killed his Father. The man who swore to bring destruction. Not only to him as an Alpha. But also to his pack. Only now, he just realized how true and fatal the threat was. His home was destroyed before. He never felt home with Diana. His little sister only reminded him what home used to be. Since then, things were never the same as before. He never felt the same way again.
But Anna.. she was home. She was his home. She smelt of it. She made him feel things he never thought he would feel. Made him do things he never thought he would. And he couldn’t help but think what it would be like to create a family with her. To be home.
But this threat.. it was keeping them apart.