Chapter 333: Blood Sacrifice
Ajax and Laxus came running as soon as they realised that there was something amiss. Their instincts had been top-notch from the day he had met them. Laxus frowned at him but wisely stayed quiet without asking Killian to calm down. Because at that moment, Killian knew that there was no way he would be able to control his anger.
"Stay back," he warned the two men. If they tried to stop him now, they might end up getting caught in the fray.
Laxus stepped forward, but Ajax caught him by the back of his collar and pulled him back. A smart move, truly.
Dominance rolled off him like a wild tornado, swirling around as if determined to raze everything in his path. It silenced the crowd, sending a wave of anxiety through the entire banquet hall, cutting off the music and the soft murmur of the shifters.
"Where is Dawson?" He rumbled, his eyes flickering around the entire banquet hall. But there was no hint of their alpha; that fucker seemed to have disappeared. His beast rushed to the surface, and his voice boomed through the crowd, "Where the fuck is your alpha!?"
He stalked through the banquet hall, his vision turning red because of the rage that was swimming within his veins. The Silver Dawn Pack scampered backwards; most of the elderly cowered against the floor tiles, submission rippled through the air as Killian’s dominance rolled over the entire pack. But at that moment, he couldn’t care about their fear or their old age.
He needed fucking answers.
"DAWSON!" Killian roared, his voice cutting through the booming silence. "Come out and fight me, you motherfucker."
Ajax’s voice cuts through the raging thoughts in his head. The man on the left is Dawson’s beta. I heard him talk about Scarlet. Most probably, he knows why the two women were taken to the prison cell.
His world came to a stop, and Killian turned to look at the beta, his beast hardly contained within him. He wanted to lunge to the surface and rip the head off of the cowering man in front of them, but they couldn’t do that. Because this man was the only one who could prove that Inez was innocent, even he wouldn’t be able to break her out of the council’s prison without firm and ironclad evidence.
He walked over to the man. Catching him by the collar, he questioned, "What did you do!?"
The hall turned even quieter. A chill surged through the entire pack, and the casting shadows looked even more unnatural than they did before.
The beta shook his head, his shoulders sagging as if gravity itself was weighing heavier on him than on anyone else in the room. "I don’t know what you are talking about, Alpha Sokolov. I didn’t — we didn’t do anything to anyone. Who are you speaking about?" Behind him stood the entire pack. They didn’t even dare to breathe or shuffle at all. With bated breath, they all looked at Killian, waiting for him to make the judgement.
Killian laughed out loud, but there was no humour in his laughter. He pulled the man off the floor and brought him up, with his eyes staring right within the beta’s. Killian said to him, "You better not play this game with me, alright? I know you did something, so you’d better confess when I am being nice to you or else I will make sure that you will never be able to speak again."
The beta’s lips moved, trembling at first before curling upward in a humourless smile. His yellowed teeth, cracked and chipped, came into view. "You came here thinking that you could make us talk? Haha! You are a fool, Alpha Sokolov, a real fool. You are hers now. She will take your blood and soul. You will be hers! Always hers."
Killian’s jaw tightened. He reached out and gripped the beta’s chin, forcing the man to look at him as his eyes were flickering all over the room like a drug addict. However, what he saw made him suck in a breath. The beta’s eyes... they were glazed and faintly luminescent... they reflected the lights that were brightly lit above on the ceiling. Dull grey and glass-like. Like that of a dead person.
"Answer me," demanded Killian. "Who is she? And why did you target my mate?"
The beta chuckled; his breathing had turned jagged. It was as if he was choking on something. Like his throat had been ripped and torn, and the voice was reverberating within his flesh. "She is in the way. She needs to be gone! It is her fault! All her fault; if she were not alive, then our sacrifices wouldn’t be wasted. But if she stays alive... our sacrifice... the troubles that we have gone through, they all will be wasted."
"Sacrifices, what kind of sacrifices?" Finn asked sharply.
"Our wolves," the man cackled. "We have no wolves. We have to give them up. Can’t you see? We are not what you think we are. We are hers."
A ripple passed through the room. Making Killian and the rest uneasy. The shifters lining against the wall began to twitch, shoulders jerking, fingers scraping against the floor, skin and the walls. It was a horrible sight, as if they were being tormented with an invisible fire that neither Killian nor anyone else could see. Their eyes turned glassy, and they all turned to look at Killian and his enforcers. All at once. More than fifty pupils dilated in an eerie unison.
"Mommy," Ajax stepped back. His eyes stared at the crowd, and slowly he turned to look at the beta of the Silver Dawn pack. "You are acting, right? You all are playing a prank on us? This is all part of the play, right?"
"Stop acting like a coward!" Finn snapped at the man who was jumping around like a little girl.
"Shut up! You know I am not good with horror movies," cried out Ajax.