The Queen's Conquer

Chapter 60 : Hellfire

It's finals week so you already know I'm hella behind on updates, but it's okay :,).

Achroous • [ah-crow-is]
Colorless.

🖤

~+~

Nature has never been stiller.

I lift my head, not letting myself linger against Max's dead body any longer. The streaks of tears stain my cheeks, but they don't hinder my ability to see clearly through the fog of my mind.

I rise to my feet, fists clenched at either side.

My father drops Eira, a sick smile creeping over his scarred face. The female is frozen on the forest floor, not sure if she should move away from the menacing beast of a man likely in fear of being executed on the spot.

Remembering how all of his warriors had been staked, thrown, and mutilated by the magnitude of my powers only moments ago has me wondering how he lived past the explosion. Perhaps a piece of Serofina protected him, too? Or maybe we've all underestimated his strength since the beginning of this war.

"Excellent," he snickers. "It's good to know you're wise enough to not let the weak pull you down."

"Don't you DARE forget that you are the reason he's dead!" I scream out, that familiar, deep sickness cutting me open and letting all of my ugly thoughts turn verbal. I can't even stand to look at the body at my feet—the person I cared for and loved who once lived, who once had a beating heart—because it makes me feel responsible. Because I am responsible.

I'd promised Max so many things. I promised him a better life. But now, there's nothing left I can save him from. It's an endless cycle of broken promises and construed hope I've been holding onto since the beginning of all of this.

"You didn't actually care for him, did you?" Maddox says, walking closer as his heavy boots crush through the debris.

I can't help the sob that suffocates me for a moment as I say, "Did you forget the part where you seduced and raped my human mother? Or the part where you kept her first-born from her and raised your daughter to become some sort of emotionally-void assassin machine? Or when you left the other child you had with a human royal to live an oblivious life only to learn that she has a satanic beast for a father?!"

Maddox laughs at me before something in his face grows cold. "Your oblivion is even more proof that you have no idea what it takes to survive in this cruel world," he mocks, overstepping a large chunk of foundation left in pieces. "You will never survive with them." He gestures to the warriors around me—the people who hold my trust as I do theirs. "They don't give you what the life I live does, daughter. I can see it clearly enough; look at where it's led you." He gestures to the catastrophic scene surrounding us.

The warriors around me now stand, as well, becoming acutely aware of the general's proximity to me. Reed whispers in my ear, "De-escalate this now, Anastasia."

"You're no man," I go on, ignoring the alpha with my blinding-white rage. "You'll never be the king you want to amount to. You could never—"

"I AM YOUR KING!" he bellows. The trees seem to shake with his volume. The rogues along the tall timbers grow silent, too, at their general's anger. "All of you!"

"You may have the title of King of Wolves, but you're not a leader. Not a true one," Lilith says a few feet behind me, gaining the courage to speak, her voice shaking—perhaps from fear or uncertainty. "You disgrace the packs. You had to kill and humiliate others just to get what you want."