Chapter 4 04|I want revenge

“I hate you, mommy. I hate you so much. Why didn’t you protect me? Why do you have to be so weak… why, why!”

A strangled gasp tore from my throat as my eyes snapped open, terror gripping me as the white ceiling above came into view.

“Our son… our son’s death wasn’t your fault… It was Mary who pushed him down the stairs… by accident.”

My heart pounded wildly against my ribs, my chest tightening as a suffocating wave of pain crashed over me, those words echoing again and again in my mind.

Before I knew it, my vision blurred, the ceiling dissolving behind the sting in my eyes as tears slipped silently down my cheeks.

Tears for how utterly weak I had been.

Tears for how I couldn’t protect the one thing that was truly mine.

A strangled sob slipped past my lips and, for a moment, I shut my eyes, wanting to drown in it, countless what-ifs flooding my mind. But the most damning question of all lingered—if I had never allowed myself to be weak, would things have been different?

I didn’t know. I wasn’t certain.

But right now, when I thought about the sister who had pushed my son to his death, and my husband and family who had covered it up… there was only one thing I wanted.

Revenge.

I wanted them all to die.

My eyes squeezed shut, more tears spilling freely, but before I could sink deeper into that rage—

“Who would have thought the extraordinary Luna of the Bloodthorn Pack could cry so well.”

The voice slid through the space, deep, slow, almost amused. The moment it reached my ears, a cold shiver raced down my spine.

I knew that voice.

Instinctively, my eyes snapped open, my head jerking toward the sound. My breath hitched when I saw him sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, only his back visible as he crossed one leg over the other. I didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.

And just like that, the memory from before I passed out came crashing back.

“Do you want them to feel it, that same helplessness… the same crushing despair of watching everything ripped away, piece by piece, just as you do now? Tell me, Eleanor Blackwell… just how far can you go for revenge?”

Something inside me snapped.

In the blink of an eye, I was no longer lying on the bed. I lunged forward, grabbed him, and slammed him back onto the mattress, straddling him as my hands wrapped tightly around his neck. My fingers tightened, choking the smiling bastard beneath me as I hissed his name out like a curse.

“Alexander Blackthorn.”

Ethan’s older brother.

The very man the late Alpha had asked me to protect Ethan from. The very man I had tried to kill three times—the only man who had ever defeated me in less than a minute.

And as I crushed his neck beneath me, the rage from last night surged back, hot and violent, as I spat, eyes narrowed in a glare,

“You were there yesterday. You were working with Ethan and Mary, weren’t you? You knew about my son's death!”

I screamed, my breathing unsteady as I poured every ounce of strength into strangling the man beneath me. But all my fury earned was a chuckle.

A slow, low chuckle.

Alexander met my eyes, a grin spreading across his face as though he wasn’t being strangled at all. And when I saw that amused glint in his eyes, like all of this was nothing but a joke to him, my rage spiked, ready to snap his neck—

But before I could…

“Ah, I am deeply insulted, Miss Eleanor,” he hummed, his voice a deep purr, long black hair falling effortlessly around him as he tilted his head slightly. “I mean, how could you think I was working with those fools?”

I froze for a split second, confusion flickering through my mind as I tried to process his words, but before I could, the door to the room cracked open.

“Boss, I have told the cook to—”

My head snapped toward the voice.

A man stood frozen at the doorway, staring at the scene before him. My eyes widened slightly in surprise.

A blond stranger… but it wasn’t his appearance that shocked me.

It was his voice.

“If you want to leave here intact, you must confess a secret your wife doesn’t know yet. A secret that involves the two of you.”

The masked man from last night.

Just as I was struggling to piece everything together, he moved.

Alexander was no longer beneath me. In a blur, our positions reversed, and suddenly I was staring up at the insane man above me. His hand reached for my throat, sending a sharp tingle down my spine but instead of choking me as I had done to him, his large hand slid from my neck to my chin, forcibly tilting it up.

He leaned in, so close there was barely any space between us, his breath warm against my skin as he drawled lazily,

“Do you think if I worked with them, you would still be breathing now, Miss Eleanor?”

A slight smirk played at the corner of his lips.

And as I stared at him, the world around us seemed to fall eerily still.

He wasn’t joking.

How could a monster like him joke, when he had done far worse?

Even his late father had feared him. Ethan and his mother knew better than to cross a man like this.

Alexander Blackthorn was Ethan’s older brother but they did not share the same mother.

No, Alexander’s mother was dead.

No one knew the exact details, but when he was six, she began to fall seriously ill. They said she went mad, that her mind had deteriorated rapidly, and not long after, she threw herself off the packhouse roof, right in front of the devil now looming over me.

His father remarried almost immediately, bringing in the new Luna along with four-year-old Ethan, a truth that made it clear he had been cheating long before her death.

And from that moment on, Alexander changed.

He grew into something terrifyingly powerful, being the human of the nearly extinct white wolf. He should have been the perfect heir, the strongest candidate for Alpha but his father didn’t want him.

Alexander was cruel.

A man who would pierce his claws into an enemy’s chest and laugh while watching how long their heart kept beating before it finally stopped.

The kind of man who let his enemies believe they could live, only to kill them at the very last second.

The kind of man who felt nothing—no kindness, no sorrow, no pity.

People called him deranged.

They whispered that he had inherited his mother’s madness.

But no matter what they called him…

Everyone feared him.

And most of all, yesterday’s events had been because of him. He had kidnapped Mary, Ethan, and me. It was because of him that I knew the truth about my son’s death.

As I stared at him, confusion and disbelief clashing within me, my gaze slowly shifted. It sharpened, filled with suspicion as I asked without flinching away,

“Why did you do it? What do you want, Alexander?”

I knew he was planning something. For him to go that far and still leave me alive… there had to be a reason.

I had tried to kill him three times on Ethan’s orders. Ethan had said Alexander was a nuisance to the pack, that he was evil, that he needed to die and I obeyed. Even though I knew I couldn’t win against a beast like him, I still tried.

And despite losing every time, he had spared me.

Despite knowing exactly who I was, he had let me slip out of his hands three separate times with a smile.

Our relationship had always been that of enemies.

So why had he done all this?

My question seemed to amuse him. The next second, he released my chin, and before I could even react, he was off me, now sitting on the nearby couch. His speed was almost frightening.

As I slowly sat up, I realized the blond man was no longer in the room. He had left without a sound.

My gaze returned to Alexander. He wore nothing but a pair of trousers and a loose robe that barely concealed the hard lines of his muscles. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, long hair falling effortlessly past his shoulders as he watched me with an amused grin, head placed on his hand.

“This is why I like you, Miss Eleanor,” he said, his voice light, teasing… yet edged with something darker. “You are always sharp.”

His eyes glinted, the smile on his lips deepening.

“It’s a shame, though… you never used that sharpness around my younger brother, around your family. You were too trusting, too weak, too pathetic. That is why you could never protect yourself or your son.”

My eyes narrowed at his words, a bitter surge of emotion clawing up my throat.

He was right. So right that my eyes stung with tears again. But before a single tear could fall, he continued, his smile never faltering.

“But you are mistaken. You are not weak in strength… only here, right now.”

He reached out, tapping a finger lightly against his chest, right where his heart was. My eyes widened slightly as his voice lowered, turning almost eerily calm.

“Despite not having a wolf, you are far stronger than those who do. Your sister. Your brothers. Even your husband.”

His gaze locked onto mine, sharp, calculating.

“Yet you chase that fleeting emotion called love. You crave it so desperately that you believe proving your worth will make others love you. You believe obedience will make them love you.”

His smile sharpened,

“But it didn’t. You were betrayed, lied to, and almost killed by those you fought so hard for. Oh, how sad… how touching.”

He shook his head slowly, as if taking pity on me. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my skin as I lowered my head, blood tickling my palms, trying desperately not to cry. I didn’t deserve to.

Then, abruptly, he clapped his hands, a sharp, almost manic sound that echoed in the room.

“However,” he said, his voice laced with an excitement that sent shivers down my spine, “I will help you get your revenge.”

I jerked my head at him, surprise flashing through me but before I could react further, he moved.

In a blink, he was standing in front of me. His hands slammed onto the bed on either side of me, his body looming over mine, muscles tense, his eyes wild, a crazed glint that made my pulse spike. I froze.

“Do you think revenge is death, or mercy?” he asked, voice low, dangerous, almost hypnotic. “Why not make them feel exactly what they made you feel? Why not strip them of everything? Make them wish for death? If you agree… I’ll help you. A new identity. A new name. A new face. You’ll become someone else entirely. An enemy to those you once protected. What do you say?”

My heart raced, the words hammering through my mind. I struggled to process them, images flashing how my parents and brothers had treated me, how my mother-in-law had despised me, how my husband and sister had betrayed me, how my son had bled on the ground while they watched, blaming me for everything.

And then, in an instant, something inside me hardened.

The desire for revenge surged through me. The desire to make them feel tenfold of what they had done to me.

I looked at Alexander, no doubt he was a greater evil than those who had hurt me, yet…

“Why are you helping me?” I whispered, voice tight.

He didn't respond, then…

“Just because…” he trailed off, as if thinking, before flashing me a smirk “I'm bored?”

That was all he uttered.

Yet, if it meant working with a devil or becoming one to get my revenge, then so be it.

It didn’t matter why he was helping me.

At that moment, everything shifted.

I knew right then that Eleanor Blackwell, the protector, the obedient daughter, the wronged wife had died. In her place stood someone else. A woman who no longer protected… but ruined.

Finally, when I unclenched my hands, something in my gaze had changed. The hesitation, the softness, it was gone.

Without another second of hesitation, I spoke.

“I will do anything… as long as you help me get my revenge, Alexander.”

The world seemed to freeze as soon as I uttered those words and the next second…

His smirk widened like the devil he was.