Chapter 504

Enzo

The leather punching bag felt like steel under my sore knuckles, but I kept punching. No matter how out of breath and tired I got, I couldn’t stop. Not when something so important was on the horizon.

Mila.

It had been almost two weeks since our escapade in the dread queen’s obsidian palace, and yet I still pictured every detail perfectly in my mind whenever I closed my eyes. I could see her face, the lines around her eyes when she grinned, the way her teeth seemed to flash when she laughed at our pain.

Everything. I remembered it all as clear as day, and I wouldn’t stop remembering it until she laid dead at my feet.

Nina said that it was wrong to kill her. Nina and her kind heart, the one who always tried to see the good in everyone, questioned whether Aldric’s decision to take Mila out was the right one.

“But maybe we can save her,” she had said. “Maybe if we get her out of there and get her the help she needs, she’ll come around.”

Oh, Nina. She always wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt, even when they didn’t deserve it. It was one of the things that I loved most about her.

But this wasn’t her decision to make. Aldric had made his choice to take Mila out, and I was the fist that would carry out his orders.

Or at least, that was my goal. Aldric had made it very clear that he would choose the ideal three candidates for assassins once our training was finished. Despite being the Alpha of our ragtag little pack, there was no guarantee that I would be one of his choices. Especially not after I had lost to him during our sparring match.

And so, I would train day in and day out, relentlessly, until my fists were bloody stumps and my heart was full of rage.

“No rest for the wicked, huh?”

Matt’s voice suddenly caught my attention over the flurry of my fists beating against the punching bag. I stopped, my body caked in sweat, and turned to see Matt walking into the weight room—a small gym we had set up in our headquarters beneath the campus.

“Nope.” I crossed over to the table and wiped my sweat away with my towel. “Not when our official training starts in two weeks.”

Matt nodded and plopped his bag down on the floor. “Two weeks. Feels like a lifetime, doesn’t it?”

“It’ll come up sooner than we realize,” I said. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Matt leaned down to tighten the laces on his shoes; the two of us had plans to be chosen together. I needed my Beta by my side, and he was one of the best fighters out of all of us. I could give a damn who got picked as the third assassin, so long as Matt and I were together.

There was a bit of a silence between us as Matt prepared for his own training that day. I finally allowed myself a break for the first time all morning and perched on the edge of the table, chugging my water in silent brooding.

Matt raised his gaze to meet mine. “You’re still pissed,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

I let out a low laugh. “Pissed about what, exactly?” I asked. “Pissed about a psycho dragon queen trying to use me as her breeding stallion or pissed because I got beaten up by an old man the other day?”

Matt smirked. “Maybe both.” He stood, folding his arms across his chest. “How are you and Nina holding up?”

I shrugged. “About as well as one could expect. Her father insisted on guards watching our house at all times, so there’s that. Oh, and then there are the nightmares, but that seems to be our fate lately anyway. Not to mention…”

My voice trailed off. I didn’t want to say it, but I didn’t really need to; Matt knew what I was talking about.

“It’s okay to be angry, Enzo,” he said softly. “Just don’t take it out on her.”

“I’m not. You can trust me on that.” I ran a hand through my hair and sighed.

Truthfully, ever since the pure shit that had gone down in Mila’s underground palace, I had developed some… anger issues. The punching bag helped, but only so much. Lately I had caught myself having to refrain from snapping at Nina over small things, and I felt like shit for it.

“I haven’t yelled at her or anything like that,” I said. “I don’t even think she knows how angry I get sometimes.”

“She notices. Nina notices everything.” Matt met my gaze squarely. “But she loves you, even if you’re beating that punching bag to a pulp.”

I swallowed and looked over at the punching bag; there was a sizeable dent in it now that hadn’t been there just days prior.

“Heh. I guess I should give it a break,” I said with a laugh.

Matt smirked. “How about a spar, then?” he asked. “Switch it up a bit.”

“Yeah. A spar would be good.”

…

Matt and I circled each other, fists raised in front of our faces. Despite our outwardly sweaty and out of breath appearances, we were in high spirits. With music playing over the bluetooth speaker and our usual banter filling the air, it felt no different from a casual hockey session or a run in the woods.

“Come at me,” Matt teased, egging me on. “I know you can do better than that.”

“Oh, do you?” I lunged forward and went for an uppercut beneath Matt’s ribs—avoiding the face for good sportsmanship. I got a couple of good jabs in, and then Matt whirled around me, going for the back of my knee with his foot.

It was just a spar. Something light-hearted to get the blood pumping. That was all it was supposed to be.

But then something happened when Matt’s foot met the back of my knee. I whirled around, and when I looked in his eyes…

They were no longer his eyes.

My smile faded, as did everything else around me. Matt was gone, replaced by… by the bear that I had fought in Mila’s sickening arena. Only, he was no longer in his bear form. He was in his human form, and very much alive.

Aside from the fact that his skin was rotting off of his bones.

“Come at me,” he said, beckoning to me. “Come on, I know you can—”

I don’t know what happened next. All I know is that I utterly lost it. My breaths came out in enraged growls, my chest heaving, my fists flying. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Not until he was nothing but pulp on the floor. Not until…

“Enzo! Enzo, it’s me!”

His hand caught my fist mere inches before it hit his face, and that was when I saw what I had done. Matt—my dear, loyal friend Matt—stared up at me with one wide eye while the other was swollen shut, blood spilling out of his cracked lips and his nose broken.

What had I done?

I instantly scrambled away, looking down at my bloodied hands. I had done that; I had attacked my friend, and now he was sputtering up blood and rolling over to his hands and knees. How could I…?

Suddenly, the door swung open. “Hey guys, I brought—oh my god!”

I jerked my head up to see Nina standing in the doorway. A tray of coffee and donuts lay discarded at her feet, and her hands were clamped over her mouth, shock written across her face.

“Enzo… What have you done?!”