Chapter 120
Faith’s Pov
The first thing I felt was the dull, heavy throb behind my eyes. It tasted like metal and fear.
I opened my eyes slowly. Everything was white and smelled like antiseptic. I was in a hospital bed. Again.
The moment I tried to shift, I felt it his warm hand gripping mine. I turned my head to look at
him.
He looked absolutely wrecked. His dark hair was messy, and his eyes normally and sharp were clouded with worry and a deep sadness. He was leaning over me, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand.
“Faith,” he whispered. His voice sounded like relief and pain mixed together.
I tried to smile, to tell him I was fine, but before the word could even leave my mouth, the air snapped.
It was like someone had thrown a switch inside my head. The sterile room vanished.
I wasn’t there, but I could feel the cold, damp dirt under my knees. The air was thick with the smell of blood and I saw a man, older, maybe in his late forties, on the ground. He was trying to crawl away, his face pale and slick with sweat.
A shadow loomed over him. It wasn’t just a shadow, it was a wall of muscle and hate. The shadow laughed a dry, horrible sound and then raised something heavy. The man on the ground begged. His voice was thin and broken: “Please! I didn’t do anything! I have children!”
The weapon came down. Not once, but again and again and again. It was brutal. Gruesome. I felt the force of the blows in my own chest, making it hard to breathe. I saw bone splinter and blood spray like dark rain. This wasn’t a fight, it was an execution. It was pure, deliberate
torture.
A sudden, sharp jerk pulled me back to reality just them.
“Faith! Look at me! Stop it!” Astor’s voice was loud and frantic, shaking me painfully hard
I gasped, sucking in air. The hospital room flooded back and my head felt like it was splitting
open.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the nausea. When I opened them, Astor was staring at me, his eyes wide with terror.
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Then I felt something warm and sticky running down my face. I reached up slowly and touched my lip. My fingers came away covered in deep red. My nose was bleeding heavily.
I didn’t just cry, I started to shake violently. The tears were hot and fast.
“Astor, something is happening to me!” I sobbed, my voice cracking. “I can’t stop it! It just takes over!”
Astor immediately dropped my hand and pulled me into a hug, careful not to jostle the IV line. He held me tight against his shoulder.
“Shh, it’s okay, honey. I’m here. I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair, rubbing my back.
But that just made the hysteria worse. I pulled back, grabbing his shirt.
“No, you don’t get it! This is the third time! But this one it hurt, Astor. It felt like something ripped into my head and my soul. Like I wasn’t myself. I can’t stop it!”
He kept his tone calm, steady. “I know. I know it’s bad. But we will figure it out. Everything is going to be okay.”
After maybe two minutes, the shaking passed. Astor kept one large hand pressed gently against my forehead until my breathing finally slowed down.
He wiped the blood off my mouth but the vision was still burned into my eyes.
“He was brutally murdered,” I whispered, staring blindly at the ceiling. “Astor, who was that
man? Was it was it the man who died in the pack?”
Astor’s face changed. The immediate worry was replaced by something that looked like cold,
hard realization. He nodded slowly.
“You saw it?” he asked, his voice low and tight.
I nodded, feeling sick.
“It was bad, right?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “It was horrifying. Kyle, he is not just trying to hurt us. He wants to destroy us. He will stop at nothing.”
Astor leaned in, his jaw clenched. “We know. But we are going to catch Kyle. We are going to stop him.”
“It’s personal,” I confirmed. I focused on the memory, trying to make sense of how nonchalant he was about. “And he told me why he was doing all of this. And to be honest,
Astor…”
I paused, looking at my hands, which were still trembling slightly.
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“If I lost my family in that kind of way, then I probably would have done the same thing.”
The air in the room froze.
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Astor pulled back from me so fast I thought I’d said the wrong name. The horror in his eyes was instant and complete. It was like he didn’t recognize me.
“Are you are you justifying the things he has done? The things he continues to do?” His voice was hard, stripped of all warmth.
“No! That’s not what I’m saying!” I argued, frustrated that he had missed the point entirely.” But none of that changes the fact that both our fathers were responsible for his father’s death!”
“That doesn’t justify anything, Faith!” Astor practically spat the words out.
“I’m not trying to make Kyle seem like the victim in all of this!” I grabbed his arm. “But at some point, we have to talk about the elephant in the room! Our fathers were responsible for the m******e of the Fallen Pack. Thousands of innocent lives, Astor. There is no excuse for that either. It doesn’t make our fathers any better than Kyle, no matter what they tell us!”
My own words rushed out, fueled by the terrible vision I had just experienced. I had never said it out loud before, and the truth felt heavy and sharp.
“Everybody knows the sins of the father are always visited on their children. We are living it right now!”
Astor’s face flushed a deep red. His eyes were blazing with sudden, furious rage.
“What do you think we should do, Faith?” he demanded, leaning over me, his body rigid with defense. “You want us to kill our fathers to make Kyle feel better? Is that it? Is that what you suggest?”
His defensiveness bothered me more than his anger. It was like he knew something that I
didn’t.
“Of course not, I would never suggest that!” I said, trying to keep my voice down so the nurses wouldn’t hear. “I’m trying to explain Kyle’s reasoning to the whole thing. I’m trying to understand the motivation behind it all because he lost everybody in that fire..
Astor let out a ragged breath, his voice laced with pure fury.
“Kyle’s father was a monster He deserved to die because he caused the deaths of many
more innocent people, If he had lived, a lot more would have died! Our fathers had no choice but to do what they did.
He looked down at me, his eyes cold and distant.
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“If you still want to justify what Kyle did,” he said, the words cutting deep, “then you are not the woman that I thought you were.”
