Rejected

Chapter 30 - Monsters In The Dark

"You're lying." Xander said, shock evident in his voice. Aoi who was trying to calm him down, now also stood at his side wide eyed. Luca seemed unfazed, Kai just standing there.

"You don't have to believe me." Amos said. "I could care less about what you want to believe."

"Ariana never told me anything about a brother." Xander argued.

Amos chuckled and said. "Of course, she wouldn't. She never trusted you enough to tell you everything about her."

Before he was calm, unbothered. But everyone could see his calm demeanor starting to crumble.

Deep down Xander knew that Ariana is not being completely honest with him. But he loved her enough to risk everything just for her to accept him. He thought that her death had put a stop to his pain, but until now, realizing that she never really trusted him still pained him.

He could not believe that his past will catch up to him in a form of someone he never even knew existed, and now, Belle has been the one to pay the price.

Shaking of his father and his Beta whose hands are still in his arms, Xander stood straight up and looked at Amos.

"I don't care whether you are a council member or not, you will be tried here in our pack land and by our pack laws." Xander said but his brows furrowed when Amos just grinned at him.

"Goodluck with that." Amos said.

Xander was about to say something but Luca, who hasn't spoken a word for a while suddenly spoke up.

"You can't do that son." Luca said, looking at Xander.

"What?" he asked. Xander looked back at his father, he could see the older Alpha's eyes but cannot understand what's going on in there. "Why not?"

"Because," Luca started, looking away from his son. "It wasn't just Belle."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember the reports coming in from different packs about the deaths of werewolves mated to humans?"

Now his father got his full attention, even though he was wondering why he is bringing up a topic totally unrelated to the matter at hand.

"Yes of course." Xander answered. "What's that got to do with any of this Dad?"

Luca hesitated and kept quiet, wondering how he should say it. He looked up at Amos, from the very first moment he laid eyes on that boy, he could already see who it was he looked like. After all, Luca was the last person to see Ariana alive, he was the one who took her lifeless body and buried it telling no one where. If only he acted quickly, he could have stopped Belle from getting hurt, but he hesitated, out of guilt.

Amos could see the struggle in the old man's eyes. He wasn't sure if it was, regret, guilt, anger or pain that was making him hesitate. So he made it easy for him, Amos turned his eyes from the confused younger Alpha and spoke.

"Because I am the one responsible for all that." Amos said.

Slowly, Xander's eyes turned to Amos. Sure, the boy maybe angry, sure he must have hated him for what happened to Ariana, but there is no way he could have done something so evil. There's hatred in his eyes, Amos tried to kill Belle, but he knew he was the target, knowing Xander is an Alpha, and Amos being a council member, the boy knew that he could hurt him, but it was pretty obvious that he did not intend to kill him, the wolfsbane was proof enough of that.

This is Ariana's younger brother, despite what Ariana had done, she killed herself out of guilt because she couldn't live with it. Amos was just a boy when all that happened, was all that enough for him to grow the devil's horns.

"That's..." Xander stumbled a little. "That's a lie."

"I worked hard, to be a council member, for one, and one reason only." Amos started saying, so calm it was so eerie. "It's to make sure that no human would suffer the same fate my sister had to go thru in the hands of monsters like you."

"Why?!!!" Xander lost it then, he could feel his wolf Windom clawing his way out wanting only to kill Amos. "How could you? Those werewolves have nothing to do with what happened between me and Ariana."

Amos looked at Xander with disgust. He finally broke his calm demeanor.

"Don't be so conceited!" Amos said with a hissed. He looked at Xander full of hate in his eyes. "Not everything is about you. But what you did to my sister triggered all this."

"All I ever did is love Ariana, I may not have been honest with her from the start, but I never, not even once, did I lay my hands on her."

"You didn't have to. She was happy, even without you. She was content. Then you came and everything she worked so hard to build were destroyed. Because you walked in her life."

Xander stared at Amos confused. He's a werewolf, they never get sick, but he could actually feel himself getting headache. "I don't understand. None of that gives you the right nor any reason to kill all those werewolves."

"Have you ever wondered what happened to our parents?" Amos asked out of the blue making Xander look at him more confused. "Did you ever care enough to ask my sister why she was living alone in a town where she knows nobody?"

"I did." Xander said. "She only said they passed away a long time ago."

"Even that fact she kept hidden from you huh?" Amos said. "She never really did trust you."

Xander did not respond so Amos continued.

"They didn't just pass away Xander." He started saying. "They were killed, murdered in cold blood, by monsters like you. Stripped of their flesh while screaming and still trying to protect their two young children."

Not only Xander, but even Aoi and Luca stared at Amos in shocked. For the first time, they can see emotion in his eyes, his young age is finally showing.

With nobody else uttering another word, Amos did not hesitate to continue closing his eyes as if trying to remember something. "We were just kids. For the first time, my parents were finally taking us in a camping trip my sister and I kept asking for. It was just an overnight trip; we were so happy...but...we never made it back home."

Amos then looked up, looked straight at Xander, his eyes, glaring, and piercing, if only looks could kill.

"The first were the sound of howls, piercing the silent night, then eyes glowing in the dark, growls and snapping branches, and our peaceful and happy night, disturbed by monsters like you, there were so many of them, do you know how you look from a kid's point of view when you are on your true form? With glowing red eyes and big sharp teeth bigger than a five-year old's hands? You would never know how a scene like that can stay in a kid's mind and hunt his nightmares every night. But you know what's worse than that?"

Amos gripped the metal bars so tight that if he was a werewolf himself, he could have bent it and walk out his cell. No one tried to answer his question, after all, no one knew what nightmare he'd been thru.

"It was seeing those monsters jumped to attack us and watching your kind and brave father stand his ground so he could protect his family the way he knew how. The last word I heard him say was "run". Making my small and weak mother suddenly grow enough strength to carry her two children in her very thin arms and forcing herself to leave my father knowing she'll never see him again. The last thing I saw of my father was his strong back being shoved down to the ground by wolf and watching how that monster claw his way on his chest and his rabid mouth taking the last of my father's happy life."

Xander looked at Amos, more than the unbelievable fact that he is spilling the past that Ariana never told him about, he could not believe he'll be looking at the boy's eyes with tears threatening to spill from it. And yet, he isn't done talking.