June 15 2026, 7:05am.
"They were sent by your precious little Alpha, Flynn."
Those words stayed with Nyx’ara for far longer than she would have liked them to. They echoed in her mind again and again... and again until it began to make her head ache, and her eyes burn.
Deep down, she was curious to know why Flynn had sent people to the Stormborn pack shortly after sending her there, but no matter how hard and how many times she tried to think about it, she could not shake out the fear that he had sent them for a completely different reason than what the quadruplets think.
They think he’d sent them to save her.
She thinks he sent them to destroy her. To cover up Elara’s lie once and for all and to make sure that the truth never surfaces.
Nyx’ara had spent the rest of that night with her eyes wide open. She could not sleep, and I am sure as hell that you wouldn’t be able to either if you were in her shoes.
A small choking sound slipped past her lips when she thought back to a couple of hours ago. To the moment when...
After the Alpha brothers decided that they wouldn’t waste any more of their precious time on their sister’s murderer— mate or not mate— they ignored her and moved on to the men that were said to have been sent by Flynn.
For a moment, she had stood rooted to the floor, with tears burning at the corners of her eyes while she watched Alpha Azriel rain down blows on the face of one of the tied-up men.
This particular one had sandy blonde hair— hair that now looked more sandy than blonde with each blow he took to his face. After about four punches, his left eyebrow cracked open. Thick blood oozed from his busted lips and his forehead. His eyes were swollen shut and blackened, and the horror that once shone in his eyes as sparkling lights had now dimmed into something that looked more like resignation.
Like he had slowly accepted his death.
For the other one, his torture was quite different. Rhys had picked up a red-hot branding iron, and when the auburn-haired man refused to state the reason he was found hovering around the palace with poisoned darts, Rhys angrily burned the branding rod against his skin over and over and over again until he slowly lost his voice from crying incessantly and a puddle of urine had formed under his chair.
It was a terrible sight. Horrific even, if anyone would want to add.
—And she had witnessed it all.
Nyx’ara, unable to continue watching this happen, slowly turned on her heels and fled the room with tears streaming down her face, but even after several hours... even after reminding herself that she had successfully escaped them, the images still burned at the back of her retina. They were still etched somewhere deep inside her bones.
Corrupting her soul.
And reminding her of the kind of men the quadruplets are, in case she had forgotten.
Morning came with a dose of clarity, and with that clarity came the sound of loud alarm bells that nearly split her skull into two.
Because she hadn’t slept a wink the previous night, her head hammered painfully as the alarm continued to blare through the air.
From her room, she could hear the sound of people scampering down the hall. She could hear the panic hanging in the air as mothers called out to their children... and the tension rising with each passing moment as the sound of heavy footsteps outside her door grew increasingly louder.
Her heart raced in her chest, threatening to break through her ribcage. Her hands fisted, clenching into the sides of her dress. A scream split through her lips when her door was suddenly pushed open with so much force that it was ripped off its hinges.
BOOM!
The sound echoed, followed by the daunting silence that suddenly rang in her ears.
She shot to her feet, hand in chest and eyes so wide, they nearly looked like saucers. And goddess, she felt her heart drop to her rectum when she came face to face with two burly men standing by her torn-down doorstep.
The two men were both about seven feet tall with chests so broad they vaguely reminded her of ’Mountain’ from Game of Thrones. Their eyes, despite the fact that they were indoors, were hidden behind dark sunglasses making them appear even more daunting than they already were. Their heads were shaved clean and not even a strand of hair was in sight, and they were dressed in crisp dark suits.
She gulped. "W-what is it?"
Her heart raced violently as she spoke. Even her hands trembled, but deciding not to let her fear show and to perhaps not appear like the scaredy cat which she was, she hid the hands behind her back and met their eyes squarely.
"Alpha Draven asked us to bring you to him... You are to follow us and you are to cooperate."
’But who wouldn’t cooperate with men like these?’ She thought to herself. However, she was jolted out of this thought by the sound of heavy footsteps. She blinked up at the man approaching her and held up her hand.
"S-stay back!"
"We do not have all the time in the world." He answered coldly, his tone clipped.
Nyx’ara tried to reason with him or to perhaps, plead with him, if that was what was needed in this situation, but just as her lips parted, the words in her mouth soon turned to a screech when his fingers closed around her upper arm and he began to pull her out of the room.
Gosh, his grip was like a vice. Tight and suffocating. And he seemed not to care that she was fragile as he dragged her out, ignoring her screams and pleas and everything else in between.
Seconds into being dragged away like a sacrificial cattle, Nyx’ara went from afraid to mad and from pleading to fighting.
She dug her heels into the floor, refusing to move. She bit the man’s arm whenever his grip became a little too tight. She slapped him when she tried to pick her up like a doll. Bit his ear when he lifted her onto his shoulders.
Her screams echoed through the air as he carried her all the way to the throne room, and by the time they finally arrived, everyone was stunned to see both of them looking all battered and messy.
If Nyx’ara was going to die today, then she would make sure that she took someone to the afterlife with herself.
Nyx’ara’s hair was a mess. Her clothes were disheveled and her eyes were wild when the bodyguard roughly let her off his shoulder and let her stand.
But for the bodyguard... he was an absolute mess.
His bald head had scratch marks. His ear was bleeding from being bitten. The back of his neck had jarring red marks and blood dripped out of his sleeve, probably from when she had bitten his arm.
The quadruplets watched the two people standing before them with mild curiosity. Their eyes trailed from the large man to the tiny woman, and still... they could not believe what they were seeing.
Draven was the first to break the silence. He asked; "What the hell happened to you, Jasper?"
Jasper lowered his head in respect but no one missed the fluster and the frustration in his beady gray eyes before he rasped out;
"She happened to me, Alpha. She is a fighter... this one, and she attacked me."
The crowd gasped in unison as many people turned to look at Nyx’ara. But this time, beyond the hatred that was directed towards her, there was a bit of something more... fear. Disbelief.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is fear.
"So you mean that this girl, Nyx’ara... she attacked you?" Draven asked again, disbelief slipping into his voice.
Jasper nodded. He looked very frustrated. "Yes, she did, Alpha. You can even ask Dominic."
Silence settled in the throne room, one that was so dense, it pressed down on people’s chests. But while everyone seemed surprised, Rhys was not. He was only glad that this time, he was not the one on the receiving end of her wrath.
He was only a spectator.