*Maddox*
Blood coats the floor in the entryway. I could see it before I even kicked in the door. My warriors, still in their human form, join me as I walk into the house.
The body of a young maid, legs prone, arms over her face, is positioned off to the side of the door. This blood is hers. She has bite marks and deep scratches from claws on her chest, neck, and face. I can see that from here, but when I step closer to her and roll her over, I notice that the blood is coagulated. She has been laying here for a while. I’m no medical expert, but I’m guessing it’s been a few hours.
I have seen my fair share of bodies on the battlefield from warriors who have died early in the fight, ones we gathered much later, and the blood is similar.
Her cold, empty, green eyes stare up at me. I close them for her, careful not to step in the blood as I walk away.
“Be careful,” I tell the men with me. “This is a crime scene.”
A whiff of the air tells me that this isn’t the only body we are going to find in this house, and that there’s a lot more spilled blood seeping into the otherwise pristine wooden floors.
The men spread throughout the house, but I go up the stairs, noticing there are bloody wolf paws on every step. Along with me, one of my most trusted soldiers carefully avoids them as she walks behind me.
“What do you think happened?” Gail asks me as we reach the top of the stairs.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But Alpha Hayes had a number of enemies. It’s possible he owed someone money. Another pack might’ve done this. I can’t imagine it was an inside job.”
Alpha Hayes might’ve been an asshole, but he didn’t have any rivals for Alpha in his pack that I was aware of.
At this point, I’m assuming he’s dead….
When I open the door to the bedroom, I no longer have to assume.
I see his body, slumped over, but pressed against the headboard, as if a wolf had leaped onto the bed and attacked before he could even get up.
His wife is hanging over the side of the bed, her upper torso pointing toward the light-colored carpet. The pool of blood beneath her is so dark, it looks almost black.
“Does he have… children?” Gail whispers near my left side and still behind me.
“Uhm… he did.” I don’t know exactly how to answer that question. I can tell that other dead bodies litter the house. But I also know that Alpha Hayes had a large staff. Perhaps, the children, two girls who were fairly young that still lived at home, older children that did not, are all okay. Perhaps the children weren’t here when the attack happened.
The idea that anyone could slaughter a couple of little girls has my heart thumping and my gut twisting.
A few years ago, I might’ve shrugged it off. The closer I’ve come to my thirtieth birthday, the more important it has become to me to have a child of my own, which means children in general have become more important to me.
Still, I find myself walking down the hallway to the next room. The door is open, and I see that it is a pink room with flowers on the walls. A little girl’s room.
The bed is empty, which makes hope spark inside of me. I don’t see any blood, but I do smell something as I enter the room.
Someone is here….
A door on the other side of the room catches my attention. I walk over to it and listen.
I hear the thundering of two hearts and shallow breaths.
My own pulse slows as I thank the Moon Goddess, if she exists, for sparing these two little girls. In a soft voice, I say, “It’s okay, girls. You’re safe. It’s Alpha King Maddox.”
I hear a slight whimper, followed by a sharp, “Shhh!” and I can tell that at least the older girl doesn’t trust me.
I can’t say that I blame her. I wouldn’t trust me either, not after this. They have no way of knowing that I won’t harm them. And Goddess only knows what they heard happening in their parents’ room.
Using the mind-link, I tell the others to gather evidence around the bodies as quickly as they can and then get things cleaned up, especially downstairs. When I take these children out of here, I don’t want them to see anything.
The Beta is their uncle, their mother’s brother. I don’t have time to explain to him what’s happened right now, so I use the mind-link to tell Gail, who is still standing in the doorway behind me, to contact Beta Ian, tell him there’s been an attack, and he needs to get over here quickly.
“Do you want me to tell him his sister and brother-in-law are dead?” she asks me, still through our minds.
“No,” I say. “But have Cody meet him downstairs when he comes in.” Cody is one of the more sympathetic members of our detail.
“Girls,” I say, softly, “I’m going to open the door now, okay? I need to see that you’re not hurt.”
They don’t speak, but I don’t wait long either before I gently tug the door open.
The two girls look like they are about five and three, maybe not even that old. I’ve never been a good judge of age when it comes to children. They have tear streaks down their cheeks that seem to have been there for several hours, and their lips are trembling in advance of more tears falling or screams of fear.
Immediately, I drop to one knee so I am on their level. I don’t want to tower over them. I give them a sympathetic smile. “Hello,” I say, softly. “I’m Maddox.”
The girls look at one another, and the older one nods slightly as she looks back at me. “I’m Kayla, and this is–”
“Haylee!” the little one says in a sweet, high-pitched voice.
“Hi. I guess… something bad happened, huh?” I’m not exactly sure what to say to them, but I want to be sympathetic.
“Mommy was squweamin’,” Haylee tells me. “I was scared.”
Nodding, I say, “That sounds very scary.”
“Daddy told us in our heads to hide,” Kayla tells me. “So we ran to the closet. I don’t think….” She blinks a few times and stares up at me. “Is Daddy died?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m afraid so.”
“And… Mommy’s died too?” Haylee is on the brink of tears.
“Yes, your mother has also passed away.” They both begin to cry, and all I can think to do is open my arms. Both of them leap up off of the floor and throw themselves at me.
I catch them and hold them close whispering that it’s okay, that it’s all going to be okay.
But it’s not going to be. At least, it’s not ever going to be the same. These girls went to bed last night thinking it was just another normal evening, and they’d wake up this morning and have breakfast and do what they usually did.
Instead, they were awoken in the middle of the night by someone storming into their home and murdering everyone but them.
In a way, they are lucky. They are alive.
But as their tears soak through my shirt, I have to wonder how they will get along in life without their parents. Alpha Hayes was a bastard, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have sympathy for his children.
This is one of the main reasons why I don’t want to go to war. When a warrior falls on the battlefield, it’s never just that person who is affected. Each of them has a family–wife, husband, children, mother, father, siblings–friends, colleagues… people who will miss them.
People whose lives, like these children, will never be the same.
“Kayla! Haylee!”
I turn my head to see Beta Ian and his wife, Alaina, flying through the bedroom door, dodging around Gail. I assume someone has filled them in on what has happened since I gave that directive, and they seem to know that tragedy has struck.
The girls let go of me and lunge for their aunt who is on the floor now next to me. She holds them close, smoothing their hair, as they all cry.
Ian looks more angry than sad. “What the hell happened, Alpha King?” he demands, as if he thinks I might be the one responsible for this.
“I’m not sure,” I tell him. “But… why hasn’t anyone noticed your Alpha is missing when it’s nearly noon.”
“It’s Kayla’s birthday,” he says, as if I should know that. “They were all going to do something fun today. Together. As a family.”
I nod. That makes sense. And it’s all the more reason to feel awful for the child. “I came to speak to Alpha Hayes because I’ve heard he may have a prisoner that I’ve been looking for.”
“A prisoner?” I can tell by the genuine confusion on his face that he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“Yes. Alpha Jordan’s daughter. Zabrina,” I explain. “She’s not here?”
“No,” he says. “But I’ve been out at the river all morning. My scouts reported signs of something odd happening out there early this morning before dawn.”
“What kind of oddity?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Just… vehicles they didn’t recognize. There were only two of them, so they didn’t investigate. Instead, they called for help. Before anyone else arrived, the vehicles left.”
“Did they come toward the village or away when they left?” I ask him, puzzling over who that might’ve been.
“Away,” he says.
I have a feeling, whoever that was came here first to take out the Alpha, to make sure that he didn’t interfere with what they were up to. Either that, or Alpha Hayes had Zabrina, but someone else wanted her.
Who would go to so much trouble, though? Only one of Alpha Jordan’s allies, which Alpha Hayes was… or someone who knows how badly I want her back.
I open my mouth to tell Beta Ian I’ll help him figure it out when I hear a familiar voice in my head.
“Alpha King Maddox, I got somethin’ you’re gonna wanna get back.”
I swear under my breath and drop my head.
“What is it?” Beta Ian asks.
Inhaling sharply, I say, “I know who caused all of this. I know what happened now.”
“Well, tell me!” Beta Ian insists, making the girls cry even louder.
I think back over the events of the last few days and know I hadn’t done enough. I wasn’t careful enough. Hayes was my enemy, but no one deserves to die this way, and his staff and wife certainly didn’t deserve to be shredded in their own home.
“Alpha King Maddox, please, tell me!” Beta Ian demands. “Who is to blame for all of this?”
The only words I can say to satisfy him haunt me.
“I am.”