chapter 6

Chapter Six

My eyes widened in shock and I raised my hands to try to pry Louis’ fingers off my neck. I began panicking when his fingers wouldn’t budge, they were like iron on my neck. I only relaxed when I realized he wasn’t actually choking me, his fingers were wrapped loosely around my neck, but tight enough that I knew he could cause harm if he wanted to.

“I ask again, Anne, what were you doing in my mother’s room? Why could I smell you all over her room?”

I gulped. I had never seen Louis this furious. His eyes were flashing with his anger. I felt the need to rub and hide and yet I couldn’t move because of his fingers around my neck.

“I... I got lost” I said.

“You got lost did you? And when you noticed that the room with the bed and the clothes and a bathroom was not in fact the outside or a staircase, why didn’t you leave? Why did you touch everything there?”

I trembled in his grip as he pressed closer to me. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even seem like anything I said or did could diffuse his anger.

“I’m sorry. Please” I begged.

“You’re sorry? That’s all you can say? Why were you in my mother’s room Anne? Were you sent? Who sent you?” I blinked. His anger stemmed from paranoia, not the fact that I’d gone into his mother’s room without permission. Which meant that he either knew or suspected something about his mother’s death. Did he find the journal before I did? If he did then he would’ve noticed the journal was gone. I decided to test that.

“I wasn’t, I swear. I was just looking around, I didn’t take anything” I added the last part and waited for him to take the bait if he knew about the journal.

“Well that makes it better. You broke into my mother’s old room but it’s okay since you didn’t take anything. I should have you locked up!”

His fingers flexed on my throat but he didn’t squeeze harder.

He didn’t take the bait which meant he didn’t know that it had been missing in the first place.

“I’m sorry Louis. I really didn’t mean to go into her room. I’m sorry” his eyes burned into mine as if trying to tell from that alone if I was telling the truth. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him because he released me and stumbled to the chair in front of my desk.

“Fine. I’m sorry I over reacted” I blinked rapidly for five seconds. Had Louis just apologised to me? That was, wow. I had never heard him say sorry in my life until now.

“It’s fine” I said cautiously. “Why were you so worried?”

He glared at me and refused to reply.

“Ok. Another question. How come your mother had a room in your house?”

He sighed. “It used to be my father’s house. It’s passed down to every Alpha’s child when they’re eighteen and the Alpha fully begins to live in the Pack House. This was her room while the house was theirs. It was her favourite room in this whole house. When I moved in I couldn’t bring myself to move her things out so I kept it just as it was when she lived in it”

“Wow, that’s very sweet of you”

He scoffed.

“I’m sorry about your mother, Louis”

He seemed to squirm in his seat. “It was a long time ago. I was like ten”

“Still, it must have been hard”

He sighed. “It was”

I thought about the journal, thought about what it would do to his mind state to read the chilling words his mother wrote about her death. And I thought about whether I would want to know if the situation was reversed.

I slowly made my way to my bed and took the book from under the covers. As soon as Louis caught sight of it, he rushed toward me, slamming me into the wall with his body. His eyes were back to furious, no, livid.

“Her journal. You’re the one who took it? I’ve searched for this for years and you had it all along? What were you really doing in that room Angela?” He had never called me by my full name before. He always called me Anne, the same name he used to call me when we were kids and our parents were still friends.

I thought about his words. He said years. Which meant the journal really had been placed there because there was no way he would have searched as much as he says and not found it; it was out in plain sight. Plus, he’d recognized it on sight, something Alpha Roman hadn’t been able to do. Why would her son know about her journal but her mate did not?

“I’ve not had it for years Louis, I found it in her room today”

“Liar” he pressed me more into the wall and I held in a wince.

“I’m telling the truth. It was in the drawer of her vanity mirror dresser”

“That’s impossible. I searched that room, including those drawers a thousand times and I didn’t see it. How did you get your hands on it? You were seven when she died and it went missing”

“I think someone placed it there for someone to find. Have you read it before? The last thing she wrote?”

He growled. “You had the audacity to read it?!”

“Louis please focus. This is important. Did you read it?”

“Of course I didn’t” he snapped. “It disappeared after she died”

“I think you should read it” I carefully stretched the book toward him and he eyed me for a couple seconds before he took it. He opened to the last page and his eyes softened at the sight of her handwriting. He traced his fingers across the book as if he could feel her writing. And then his fingers froze.

“She knew. She knew she was going to be murdered and she did nothing?!”

He was furious. He kept pacing my room and I sat and watched him. I wouldn’t interrupt. He needed to process what he’d just read.

Although, I came to regret my decision when he turned and punched my wall so hard it cracked and a few chips fell off.

“How could she just do nothing? How could she just accept the fact that they were going to kill her? How could she leave me with him? Was she so fucking selfish?!”

I winced at the anger and pure unadulterated agony I heard in his voice. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was going through. Finding out his mother had chosen to die instead of fight. She had been a very powerful werewolf, if she’d fought, she probably would have won. Instead, she’d chosen to die. She’d chosen to leave him.

“I’m sorry Louis” I said, at a complete loss for what else to say that could possibly ease the pain he was feeling.

“Why didn’t she stop it? All this time I thought she didn’t know, I thought she was blindsided. But no, she knew and she accepted it!”

I frowned. “You knew she was murdered?”

He turned sharply to me. “Don’t say that so loudly. But yes, I knew. It didn’t seem feasible. My mother was the most in control woman I have ever met. There’s no way she would lose control of her wolf for any reason. The story didn’t add up. So I decided to investigate. I was positive I’d find at least something in her journal but something like this?” He sighed and sank into the chair again.

I could feel the pain that he felt. Literally. My wolf was emerging and our minds were linking. I tried hard to shove her back. This was the last thing he needed right now, accidentally linking and making the mate bond stronger because we were both feeling vulnerable, him much more than me.

“You say you found the journal in her dresser?” He asked, seemingly back in control of himself despite the turbulent emotions I could feel swirling around him.

“Yeah”

“Who could have put it there? It can’t have been my father. I don’t think he knew she kept a journal”

“Oh I can confirm, he didn’t. He caught me in the room and gave me the journal thinking it was mine. Oh, is it possible that he left it there and gave me on purpose because he wants someone else to try to find out what happened to the Luna?” I asked, excited at the prospect of a new lead.

“No, he definitely did not”

I frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

He threw me a look. “Because he’s one of the people who killed her”

Alpha Roman needed a way to get Angela White out of the picture. All that he’d worked for could not collapse just because of her. His first thought was having her exiled but he couldn’t do that. Not without valid reason anyway, something he did not have. So his next step would have to be getting her out of this pack. He couldn’t do that by banishing her so, he would have to get her to want to leave herself. How could he do that?

It clicked a few seconds later. Every year, the pack with the largest territory threw a gathering of a sort for all the neighbouring packs. The high ranking members and some of their friends and family were invited to come. Since the Lunar pack was the pack with the biggest territory, he would be the one throwing the party. If he could manage to convince one of the packs further away from the Lunar pack to accept her and her family, to make them an offer they couldn’t refuse, then he would be free of them. Of course he wasn’t nice enough to ensure that his former friend and his family end up in a nice, lovely situation. No. He would tell the pack that they would be taking Angela as an Omega. Packs were always looking for new omegas. Of course he wouldn’t let Cole and his family find out until it was too late.

He grinned at his plan. This would be perfect pay back to the friend that betrayed him. He was still furious, even after all these years. They were supposed to be a team, they were supposed to agree. But Cole became blind to the truth, he didn’t want to see things from his perspective. If only he’d sided with him, if only he’d agreed.

He couldn’t lie he often missed his friend. They used to be inseparable from birth. Cole should have been his Beta. It was all planned out and they were ready for him to take over and be at his side forever. But then the falling out had to happen. Cole had to go and be foolish.

The stupid thing was that he would forgive Cole if he apologized and sided with him but Cole was being the same stubborn old mule he’d always been and was refusing to come apologize.

Or, maybe Cole had been waiting for him to apologize. How delusional. He was in the right and Cole knew it. Or at least he should have. But his eyes were blinded by false beliefs.

Well, he was going off track. What he should have been focused on was Angela White. He would not let her sit on his mate’s throne, not while he lived.

He stood. It was time for him to iron out the details of his plans and begin execution.

He thought of the worst packs in the neighbourhood as he walked. The worst and the cruellest to their omegas. He needed to find one that would teach both Cole and his daughter, Angela a lesson.

There was Blood pack, Moon pack, and... He trained off. Why didn’t he think of it sooner? The Eclipse pack was the perfect one. By the time he was done with her, Angela White would eye the day she was born.