The Forbidden Heiress At The All Male Alpha Academy

Chapter 228: The Price For Fracturing Fate

A FEW MONTHS AGO...

Liam stood in the Ravenspire path and hurled the burnt bodies away from him. Cain had told him to throw them into the forest itself, but that was a death mission even for him.

Instead, he settled on the Ravenspire path.

Then, he turned around to go back.

He didn’t want to. Staying here was much better than going out there and having to stand next to the man who had kidnapped his brother for many years. And Liam was even more frustrated having no idea if his brother was still alive or dead, and still working under the hands of the devil with just the tiny hope that his brother might just be alive.

For that, he had betrayed his best friend.

Theodora Blackthorn.

At first, he had gotten close to her as per Cain’s orders. But in a very short time, everything changed about his feelings. He wanted to protect her, he wanted to be with her, but whenever he thought about his brother and the situation they were in — he would break him apart again.

So, he stayed true as Cain’s spy.

He did as he was told.

He intentionally got himself injured in the head, and lured Theo into the forest.

He watched her every move and reported it to Cain. He was her best friend...and her worst enemy in secret.

The way she had stared at him when he had walked out a while ago and revealed himself as the masked man had broken him apart. She would never forgive him. She would never look at him the same way.

And Cain, being the devil he’s always been, killed her mates in front of her. It’d hurt when she had told him she was in love with Zeke, but it was nothing compared to how she had screamed and cried and begged when she had watched Sylas and Zeke die.

Liam was guilty. He knew that a lot. And he wanted to make it up to her somehow, even if she would never look at him again. Moreover, Zeke and Sylas can’t just die like this.

If anything, they were the one chance the werewolf realm had at defeating Cain. Cain might have defeated them tonight, but they are the only people who have never bowed down to him. Who had lived by his manipulations, and his atrocities and never bent around him.

They were the true survivors at heart. And if they were to rise again, they wouldn’t make the same mistakes they did in the past. Definitely, they would find a proper way to bury the devil.

Liam didn’t need any more convincing thoughts than that. He turned around and walked back to the burnt, unrecognisable corpses and knelt between them. He had no idea if this would work, but he would give it a try.

He’s never used his blood powers for something as deep as this, so he was a little scared.

Liam pressed a palm over what he assumed to be their chest, and sighed, "I don’t know if this will work," He whispered, his voice barely there, "But I won’t leave you like this,"

His blood stirred explosively the moment he attempted to bring them back, and his face twisted together in pain, and his whole body began to tremble.

He knew this was going to be hard.

Then, he cut his palm open with a claw.

The blood that spilled was dark, almost black, threaded with faint silver veins that pulsed like a heartbeat. It soaked into the soil, into the ash, and into the remains of two wolves who were no longer entirely wolves.

Then, he touched their bodies again and reached deeper this time.

This time, he attempted to fracture the moment they died. To split it open just enough to wedge the possibility inside.

Fate screamed at him, and pain hit him instantly. White-hot, vicious, crawling up his fingers like something alive. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to stay anchored as his blood reached for theirs, tangled with it, tore through boundaries it was never meant to touch.

He saw fragments of what they had gone through during the process.

Zeke’s refusal. Again and again. Pushing the demon back. Denying it even as it ate him alive.

Sylas screaming in the dark, Erebos tearing him apart from the inside because the merge had never been stable. Because the merge wasn’t given enough time. Because he was in a hurry to save Theo from Cain’s clutches.

Liam’s blood slipped into those fractures.

It tried to trigger them.

But something snapped and the world around him lurched. Liam gasped, collapsing forward as the pain exploded up his hand. His fingers went numb first, then he felt a strange, cold sensation riding up them.

He tore his hand away, staring in horror as the skin at his fingertips darkened, veins turning black beneath the surface.

His skin was... deteriorating. This was the price he was paying for doing something out of bounds.

When he looked back at the corpses, the ground beneath them did not move.

Their bodies did not rise.

Nothing happened.

Liam laughed weakly, breathless and shaking.

Of course, it didn’t work.

Of course, it was too much.

He wrapped his bleeding hand in cloth with shaking fingers, stood on unsteady legs, and forced himself to walk away.

He did not look back.

Guilt ate him up hard, and he told himself the guilt and the rot were the price he had to pay for what he had done to Theo.

And he would pay it duly.

..

..

..

The fire had not been kind.

It had not been merciful, clean, or quick.

Zeke and Sylas were not left as bodies so much as remains. What lay on Ravenspire Path scarcely resembled wolves anymore. Flesh had burned away in uneven layers, exposing blackened bone beneath. What skin remained was split and blistered, fused to muscle and charcoal in ways that should never have been possible.

Their faces were the worst of it.

Sylas’s features were frozen mid-agony, jaw cracked open, and his teeth were bared. Shadows clung unnaturally to the hollows of his skull, seeping into eye sockets that no longer held eyes, and pooling in the spaces where life should have been.

Zeke’s body looked wrong in a different way. His chest had collapsed inward, his ribs splintered and fused together by heat. His hands were curled into fists so tight the bones had warped, and his fingers were bent at angles that spoke of refusal even in death.