Page 22 of Blood Bound

Growling, I stomp back towards the dead hunters and rip off their heads, then I take pictures of the two dead innocents and leave the place with Valentine on my heels.

As soon as I arrive home, I walk up to Katherine’s room and loudly kick open the door. She sits bolt upright in her bed and looks at me with wide, horrified eyes and fear in her scent. I throw the severed heads on her bed, and she screams as soon as they land on her legs.

“Do you know who these cunts are?” I say, clenching my jaw. She looks down at the heads, unshed tears forming in her eyes, and steps back from the bed. “Answer me, Katherine.”

Her eyes flitted to me, then back to the heads, and she swallowed deeply.

“They’re… they’re my father’s… assassins. Once they get sent, the person is as good as dead.” she breathes, a dark look passing over her face. “Whoever they killed, the person deserved it.”

At this, I stalk towards her, and she backs up against the wall, her shoulders flat but her eyes not leaving mine.

“So you’re telling me that a single mother with a nine-year-old daughter deserved to get raped and killed?” I say, knowing my eyes were crimson and filled to the brim with anger.

She pales at my words. “What—”

“That’s what you’re saying, right? They deserved what happened to them because your father sent these two?” I ask in a low, raspy voice as I try to contain my fury at what she has just said.

She still thinks highly of her father and guild. Well, I am about to destroy that for her.

She doesn’t answer me, so I take out my cell phone and throw it at her. When she looks down and starts scrolling the gallery, she draws in a stuttered breath, her face pales, and disbelief crosses her eyes.

“Andreas, the Lycan Alpha’s second in command, sent us to find the VP of three of his hotels and casinos. The woman was new to the position and had taken over from three other men who were part of an uncovered child trafficking ring—”

“No…” her hand goes to her mouth, and she shakes her head.

I grit my teeth at her interjection. “Valentine and I found her and her daughter like this, the mother was killed hours before, and the daughter was killed as soon as we opened the front door. I’m sure you can tell by the state of undress that we had caught them in the middle of something.”

“You’re lying! You’re fucking lying!” she cries out with tears streaming down her face and throws my cell phone back at me. “The woman must have been guilty of something! My father would never have…he wouldn’t–!”

I wrap a hand around her throat and grit my teeth, silencing her with a glare alone.

“The woman was a 33-year-old hotel manager for over three years with nothing to her name, not even a late library book or speeding ticket. Her child was a product of sexual assault when her drink got spiked at a bar, and she has been raising her all alone. No husband, no rich family, just her working her ass off to provide for her child.”

Katherine continues to shake her head. “No—”

“Your father had her killed to send a message to Alpha Fenriz and the Vega Pack because he is part of the ring, even using churches and non-existent orphanages as their base of operations. Do St Bernadette's Children’s Home and St Claire’s Orphanage ring a bell?” I say, scoffing when I can literally see her shattering into a thousand little pieces.

“You hunters and your so-called humanity moral compass, blaming us for the wrong in the world when you are the true monsters who kill without discrimination. The sooner you realize that your father is not this saint you’ve put on a pedestal, the better it will be for both of us.” I say, then slam her against the wall before storming out of the room and locking her in yet again.

KATHERINE

The severed heads of the men I used to respect stare up at me with glazed, dead eyes. It’s been hours since Priest winded me with news that knocked everything I knew down like a Jenga tower.

The Death’s Temple, my guild, my home… is, in fact, involved with the most disgusting thing to come out of humanity since slavery and segregation. I can’t doubt what’s been presented to me anymore; the more I think of what Priest has said, the more it starts to make sense.

My father’s flight plans, the donations to churches, and those two specific orphanages…

Disgust coils in my gut, and I rush to the bathroom only to dry heave as there’s nothing in my stomach. I haven’t been able to eat or sleep since he came in here, and now I’m sitting in front of the large windows again. Even with the sunlight streaming in, a chill still sets deep in my bones.

Everything I know is a lie. If Death’s Temple is indeed part of a human trafficking ring, then what have I been fighting for? Who is the true enemy here? I’ve been raised to hate anything not human, but does that mean that I have to hate my own kind since trafficking is a monstrosity itself?

I lay down on the cold tiled floor and ask the one question that has been niggling at the back of my mind: If I escape, where do I go from here?

When Priest walked in here with those heads and showed me the pictures, he raised up and knocked the last of the hope from my system. It’s been a week with nothing, and I thought the dead hunters were killed when they were sent for me, but my father didn’t send someone to save me; he sent someone to kill an innocent woman and her child.

Priest really meant it when he said that he would torture me.

But even as I think that, I doubt the fury and disgust blazing in his eyes was fake. Whatever he saw last night riled him up and angered him so much that I knew he was close to killing me.

---