After being blinded by those sworn to protect her, Artemis trades her vision for her ability to have a mate. Only things are not as they seem when she's taken in by a pack where everybody already seems to know her face and the brooding Alpha keeps a...
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Truth became lies. Lies became truth. Lines were blurred and lines were erased. New lines were drawn. Lines were crossed.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
I couldn't help the way my hands shook, or the way my voice trembled as I spoke the only word that echoed through the cavernous empty space between us. "What?"
I envied his self control, his body was riddled with the stress and tenderness of trying to hold it all back. He took a long draw from the cigarette. "I killed her." He said with sneer of cold command. "It's my fault."
Instead of breaking down like anyone else would his walls only grew greater, he became harder. Colder. Emotionless.
I wasn't sure if he was just good at hiding it or if he had gone past the point of pain. Like the one time when I was eleven, one of my earliest memories of my capture. The white coats tied me down with metal wires and send shocks through my body. Just to study the reaction. At first it was the most agony I had ever felt, pain beyond belief so bad I couldn't see. And then... I felt nothing. The shocks continued but the pain was so much so that I barely even felt it anymore. My body just gave up and shut down. I almost died.
"H-how?"
The man before me wasn't hiding anything. He was just broken beyond belief. So much so that he simply didn't feel anymore.
"I had her executed, for her crimes against the pack." It was clear he remembered every second. Every pained moment. He was reliving it now. "And I watched as she hung from the end of a rope."
A chilling stab of pain shocked my heart. Like an icicle being plunged into the supple organ, his coldness was infectious. The permanent winter inside him reaching across the desk to invade my body, making me cold and hard in turn.
The air was cold. Everything was cold. The air seemed to have dropped in temperature. Everything was frozen, turned into fragile ice, one knock away from shattering into a thousand shards of glass.
The fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end, my body shook. With cold or grief I couldn't tell. Maybe both.
"I don't understand." I heard his words, but they couldn't settle in my mind. I couldn't process them. I couldn't accept it as truth.
"What part of it don't you understand?" He said angrily. "I killed her!"
Anger was the only thing he felt. The only thing he wanted to feel. He used it to push the others away, he scared them all away so he didn't have to feel anything. Well he didn't scare me.
"She was your mate, wasn't she?" I said carefully. It made sense, my sister had always been so beautiful, at least... that's how I remembered her. Being jealous of her beauty, her long hair, her shocking violet eyes. An unconventional beauty.
He let out a short and sharp laugh. "Well done."
Darkness settled in his eyes, a swirling blackness. His soul was dark, he was drowning in his grief and he didn't even know it. He was beyond the point of saving yet somehow that only made me want to accept the challenge anymore. I wanted to help him. - To heal him and his broken heart. I frowned at his sarcasm. Just another test to see if he could get inside my head. "Theos." I tested his name on my tongue, and it scared me how much I liked it. His eyes grew hooded, and his piercing amber eyes seemed to bore lustful holes in me. Whenever he looked at me, it was almost as though he saw straight through me. Past any clothes of preliminaries. He was me for the bones of who I was. My truth, all of it. He was straight through my lies and walls. He knew who I really was. The thought of it should've scared me, but instead it only fuelled me more. He murdered my sister. I should hate him. I should want to kill him. But I didn't.
I could hate him, condemn him to hell and send him there myself. But what would that achieve. His blood would only transfer his pain to me, sure, I would feel better for a short while but anyone could see that this man was hurting for the people he lost. They manifested inside his mind like they did mine, and soon the drink and the drugs won't flush them out. "I forgive you."
For a moment I thought I saw a tear brimming in his black gold eyes. The light shining through the darkness for a split second... before the blackness swallowed it whole. A dark laugh echoed off the wall, and he stunned his cigarette out in the half filled ashtray.
He never once broke eye contact as he leant forwards, leaning on his forearms and getting as close as the desk that separated us allowed, I resisted the range to back away, I wouldn't let him intimidate me. That was what he wanted, to push me away. "I don't need you're forgiveness." He hissed, slamming his fist on the desk with a colossal crash and split of wood making me jump, my heart thundered in my throat and every fibre of my being prepared for his attack.
"Are you afraid, Artemis?" He whispered, my name slipping off his tongue like a fine wine.
Honestly. I was terrified, but I hid it well, taking on an anger of my own, "No." I hated the frailty of my voice that gave me away. He smiled maniacally, causing my stomach to jolt and twist in horrid ways. He cocked his head, every move was slow and deliberate.
He knew exactly what he was doing to me. "You should be."
*** Sorry for the late update, my GCSEs are in less than a week so I've been focussed on revision:( Anyways... Any thoughts? Theories? If you're enjoying THE FALL OF ARTEMIS don't forget to check out some of my other works! Don't forget to vote and comment! -🍟
