CHAPTER 68: CHAPTER 68: ALPHA OF THE BLACKTHORN PACK

Selene suddenly stepped back, her shadow peeling away from his as if she’d just lost interest. But the mutter that left her lips was low and dangerous.

"It seems you don’t open your mouth with beating..."

Before Kellan could smirk again, she raised her hand and bit into the pad of her own finger, deep enough for blood to well bright and scarlet. In the same motion, she seized his chin, forcing his head up until his neck strained painfully.

Her smile was sweet in a way that made Kellan’s skin crawl.

"Now... when you open your eyes again, be ready to tell the truth," she whispered. "Or I’ll show you a thousand more methods like this."

Kellan jerked against the chains, but she was already moving, her blood trailing in a deliberate pattern across his sweat-slick skin. A strange symbol began to form on his forehead, the lines sharp and exact, each one drawn with unshaking precision.

The moment the last stroke connected, the mark brightened faintly, glowing like a dying ember... and then sank into his skin, vanishing as though it had never been there.

Kellan’s composure broke. He thrashed violently, eyes wild.

"What the fuck are you doing, bitch?! I told you—I don’t know anything! We don’t have any witches! Let me go!" His voice cracked into something that almost sounded like fear.

Selene didn’t even look at him. "We’ll see whether you truly know nothing... or whether your lies just ran out of time."

She turned, already walking toward the doorway. "Come, Sara. Leave him here with his misery."

Sara hesitated only a moment before following, her steps quick. When they were far enough that his chains were just faint rattles behind them, she finally blurted, "Was that... a hallucination spell?"

Selene gave a small nod.

Sara’s eyes widened. She had been learning witchcraft since childhood with constant practice and strict discipline, and yet even she had never reached the level needed to draw that symbol. It was an advanced level of witchcraft that only some old witches were able to perform. And Selene... Selene had been studying for barely a year.

Sara felt like Selene in front of her was really worthy of being a pure-blooded witch.

It was confirmed a heartbeat later when the sound reached them.

A howl—raw, guttural, torn from the throat of a man who had thought himself untouchable. It was followed by pleading, the words tumbling over each other in a cracked, desperate voice.

Sara didn’t need an explanation. She knew exactly what Selene had done.

Hallucination spells were dangerous enough on their own, but this... this was the highest tier. A spell that didn’t just twist sight and sound but turned the mind inward—forcing the victim to feel every ounce of pain they had ever inflicted on another.

Every scream they’d dragged from a throat.

Every lash, every bite, every breaking bone.

Every night someone had prayed for it to stop.

Now, those memories weren’t something he watched from a safe distance. They became his reality. The roles reversed, and the torturer became the victim. It was a mind game.

It was the most high-grade hallucination known among witches—not just because of its brutality, but because it was almost impossible to manipulate a mind so deeply without shattering it completely. And the darker a person’s sins, the heavier the weight of what they’d feel.

Kellan would suffer more than most.

Sara and Selene already had a file on him—a collection of testimonies, names, and horrors. The things he’d done to young witches weren’t just cruel. They were... depraved. And now, listening to his choked, broken sobs echo through the stone hall, Sara knew he had been lying through his teeth when he claimed ignorance.

Bullshit. He knew exactly where the witches were.

Her throat tightened. Her eyes misted despite herself, unbidden images flashing—

The witch they had rescued months ago. She was barefoot and starved from who knows how long. Her wrists were nothing but raw rings of scar tissue from iron manacles. The way she had flinched at the sound of a man’s voice. How she had died within a week of freedom, too far gone to be saved.

Kellan’s pack had a reputation for honor and strength. But Sara knew the truth now—it was just another den of monsters. Monsters who hunted and chained and drained witches until nothing was left.

She glanced at Selene, who walked forward without a flicker of hesitation, as if Kellan’s screams were nothing more than background noise.

The sound of Kellan’s screams faded into the shadow, swallowed by the distance.

Far away from the basement’s damp chill, in a room lit by the steady glow of golden lamps, a middle-aged man sat stiffly across from another Alpha. The heavy table between them gleamed like still water, but it did nothing to soften the weight in the air.

The visitor looked no older than forty—broad-shouldered, sharp-jawed, with the kind of presence that demanded a second glance. But that was the unsettling part. He was already over a hundred years old, an Alpha whose battles were etched into the history of the werewolf clans. Even with their naturally longer lifespans, most wolves bore their age in some form—in silver hair, in weathered skin, and in the heaviness of their gaze.

Not him. He looked as though time had politely stepped aside for him, and that was enough to make most people stare twice.

Yet tonight, there was no pride in his bearing. Only strain.

"Alpha Aeron," the man began, voice low but edged with urgency. "The witches are going to rebel against us. And now she—" his jaw tightened, "—she has kidnapped my only heir. How can we sit like this?"

His hands clenched against the table, knuckles whitening. "I have already lost three sons. Kellan is my only one left. We have to bring him back."

He did not plead, but the weight in his tone was unmistakable.

The man was the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack. And he was Kellan’s father.

When he spoke, it was with the utmost respect, a deference owed to the one seated across from him. But the younger Alpha, lounging in his high-backed chair as if the entire matter was a mild inconvenience, barely bothered to glance at him.

Aeron’s gaze flicked up for only a heartbeat before dropping back to the papers in his hand.

"Your son is kidnapped," he said evenly, the words as cold as frost on steel. "What does that have to do with me?"