104. Lovestruck Killer

*All I want is nothing more*
*To hear you knocking at my door*
*’Cause if I could see your face once more*
*I could die a happy man I’m sure*
*When you said your last goodbye*
*I died a little bit inside*
*I lay in tears in bed all night*
*Alone without you by my side*
*But if you loved me*
*Why’d you leave me?*
*Take my body*
*All I want is*
*And all I need is*
*To find somebody*
*I'll find somebody like you*
*So you brought out the best of me*
*A part of me I've never seen*
*You took my soul and wiped it clean*
*I’ll find somebody like you*

*- All I Want*, Kodaline
__
Kiran struggled to rationalize for hours on end.
He’d brought a basket with clothes and other small belongings for his stay with the infamous young Luna Selene Hilal.
One of those belongings included an oil painting of Zinnia, which he had hoped to share in an effort to be amicable.
Never did he think that it—*she*—would seem to come alive in the form of someone else’s mate.
And reincarnation was not a sound rationalization. And it did make him seem insane.
But that’s what love made them all.
“Get the hell out of my harem before I kill you.”
Kiran looked from Selene, who he knew wouldn’t be able to kill him, to Calla—Zinnia’s exact replica, down to the little birthmark by her ear.
It was impossible, but what if Calla could remember her past life?
If that was even remotely part of his theory.
“Remember the cabin?” he asked desperately, taking a step toward her. “How high the snow rose? Or the leaf piles you would gather to push me into? Or—”
Selene’s palm shoved into his chest, halting him halfway to Calla. Her expression was remarkably flat, but her profoundly deep blue eyes were those of a true killer. “No closer, Kiran. Leave.”
Love made lovers insane—and reckless. He tried to push past her. “What about the mountains? You tried to catch that goat—”
Calla was shaking her head emphatically, familiar green eyes unfamiliarly fearful. “Kiran,” she whispered, “please leave.”
No. He couldn’t. Now when there was a chance that—
Kiran was slammed so hard he nearly fell.
“Kiran, *leave*,” snapped Selene.
He stared at her, suddenly wondering how far she would go to protect her mate. And then decided, after briefly realizing that he’d come to appreciate the sinful Luna who now had betrayed him…that she had to die.
Without warning Kiran lunged at her, Shifting into his wolf form with the explosive sound of ripping flesh, and went straight for her throat.
He almost forgot that she was battling-hardened. She Shifted and avoided perfectly, launching a counterattack that wouldn’t have caught him off-guard under normal circumstances—but she managed to barrel into him, tumbling over each other to push him into a large rosebush.
Thorns stabbed into his skin, drawing blood, but the pain was nothing.
“Please stop!” he heard Calla yell distantly, but he was already leaping onto Selene’s back, jaws snapping at her head.
Selene dropped her weight. As Kiran staggered, his claws managed to rake down her side. She yelped and keeled, and Kiran lunged one last time.
He pinned her on her back. She thrashed, but he crushed her body under his. He opened his jaws, glimpsing the terrible sight of swift death reflected in her eyes.
“No!” A tiny body took him by surprise and he whirled to see Calla shielding Selene in her wolf form, glaring with a ferocity that matched Zinnia’s.
But he was drawn to Selene’s look. She was staring at her mate with a whirlwind of emotion…and Kiran realized he was seeing himself in her as he had viewed Zinnia. Such love and fear and it was all for the females they would do anything for.
Jealousy. Anger. That’s what he felt. And it made Kiran decide out loud:
“If I can’t have her, neither can you.”
It was too easy for him to knock Calla on her back with his paws. Too easy to ignore her scream and struggle. Too easy to act quicker than Selene’s outcry.
Too easy to swipe his claws across her belly.
They scoured deep enough to snag at least one organ. Something came off in a small chunk.
Calla Shifted and lay on her back, hands pressed to her shredded abdomen as dark blood pooled out of her in a copious amount. Within seconds she was bathed in it.
Selene’s keening punched Kiran in the chest. He backed away as horror filled his veins like cold water. She Shifted into her human form and held Calla in her arms, hands hopelessly trying to stanch the bleeding. They were both weeping.
“No,” whimpered Selene, searching Calla’s mangled body as if it held the answer to its own problem. “No, no no no no… Oh, gods. Fuck. Please…please no… Please…please stay with me…”
Kiran’s back paw hit a stone and he spooked backward straight into the rosebush. Instead of escaping, he dropped his rump so the thorns pricked and scratched.
Calla’s bloody hand clasped Selene’s weakly and whimpered her mate’s name, and Selene croaked, “I’m here. Shh, shh, I’m here. I’ll…I’ll fix this—”
“It’s okay, Selene…”
“No it’s not—”
“We had our time together. We knew it’d come to an end sometime.”
“Not so soon. Not yet, not like this.”
“You can’t…can’t change fate.”
“*Fate*? This isn’t fate, this is *murder*—” Cutting herself off, Selene’s head shot up and found Kiran punishing himself silently. The rage and pain in that single look were enough to make him want to offer him his own death.
Calla’s head turned toward him too. Her skin had blanched underneath the blood and the light in her eyes was dull. “Don’t be angry,” she begged softly, and Kiran couldn’t tell which Alpha she was speaking to. “Just let me go. Live forever for me. I love you, Selene.”
She faded then. The light left her eyes, her chest stopped rising and falling, and she went limp in Selene’s arms.
Selene Hilal’s mate was dead and it was Kiran’s fault.
When a werewolf killed another’s mate, it was more than acceptable for the surviving mate to enact revenge. It was a death sentence and it was justifiable.
Kiran glimpsed movement in the corner of his eye: Calla’s Magnolia companion Clover trembling behind a tree, clutching the hours to her chest. If she found the courage to move, she would carry the news through the halls of Castle Night, and there was a chance the entire harem could overwhelm him.
It was time to leave.
He was still in his wolf form, struggling to his feet, feeling thorns stick in his skin or fall out and heal. Selene was resting her forehead to Calla’s and weeping. Kiran hadn’t seen a single weakness from the young immortal until now.
But weakness turned to strength, and pain turned to revenge.
He learned decades ago not to apologize for the monster he was. Sympathy was just another weakness. Regret and guilt? He left them buried with his innocence.
But he had lost his own mate and the pain and been unimaginable. How could he have been so cruel as to inflict the same punishment?
Kiran staggered a step closer.
Selene screamed at him, “Get away from us, you bastard! Leave! Leave or I will rip your throat out!”
He still didn’t believe her, but he wouldn’t risk it. Shaking his pelt free of thorns, he fled the garden like a coward. But he needed Zinnia’s portrait—he ran through the open gate to where he had hidden it in one of the birch trees.
“You’ll regret this!”
Kiran looked back at the shout; Clover was standing at the threshold. It was a foreboding promise he would never forget for years to come.
Going back to Apollo’s Keep was a foolish move. If Selene was hellbent on killing him, she would go there first. It was also considered a shitty move. His consorts would be left undefended, waiting in vain for their Alpha to return.
Kiran did exactly what he didn’t want to do: make an immortal enemy.
Having enemies made forever interesting. Part of that fun, however, came from mortality—enemies died one way or another, and after that a new rival challenged him, and so the cycle went. But Selene could haunt him until the world was dust.
-
Kiran did not return to his harem for two months, in which time he spent at the cabin where he and Zinnia used to call home. He only did what he needed to survive.
When he did return, he found that its completion made great progress…but everything else was unchanged. His loyal Delta had ruled in his stead and protected all the Omegas. He found that two of them he impregnated had given birth to twins. The news of what he had done was common knowledge and had spread to werewolf packs far and wide. The legend of his brutality was sealed in bloody stone.