Accidentally Mated To Four Alphas

Chapter 298: _ Take The War Home

Morgan tosses the phone onto the ground and stares up at the moon. He feels a bizarre sense of amusement. The pain Darien is feeling right now... the soul-crushing, gut-wrenching agony is a symphony to Morgan’s empty heart.

He finds it fascinating. How could a strong creature be so fragile? How could one little death cause so much internal damage?

It’s for the best, he tells himself, leaning back against the tree. I’m doing them a favor. I’m showing them how useless feelings are. I’m teaching them the peace of the void.

He contemplates for a moment. He could kill Darien right now. When the older brother arrives, broken and grieving, Morgan could simply reach out with a whip of black lightning and end the Bellamy lineage right here in the dirt. It would be efficient. It would be clean.

But then he thinks of Tobias.

He thinks of the look on their father’s face when he sees his "perfect" Alpha heirs returned to him as corpses. No, the finale needs an audience. He wants Tobias to watch as everything he built; every lie, secret, and every "necessary" sacrifice is dismantled by the son whose mother was the only partner he never bothered to love.

"Heidi," he muses, testing the name.

He remembers the way her skin felt. He remembers the way her laugh used to make his stomach flip. Now? She’s just a silver chess piece. He realizes with a start that he doesn’t even want her anymore. The mate bond was a chain, and the Demon Core had given him the bolt cutters.

He waits.

The forest is quiet, save for the occasional twitch of a rogue’s dying limb. Morgan spends the time counting the leaves on a nearby branch. He gets to four hundred and twelve before the sound of crashing brush announces Darien’s arrival.

Darien bursts into the clearing like a cannonball. He isn’t in wolf form, but his eyes are glowing a violent, pulsating red. He’s disheveled, his shirt torn, his face filled with agonizing pain that even Morgan’s shadow-soul finds impressive.

Darien’s gaze lands on Morgan, then snaps to the carnage. He sees the blood, the viscera, and the empty space where Grayson’s body had been.

"Where is he?" Darien asks.

"Heidi took him," Morgan says, sitting on the ground with his head hanging low, playing the part of the traumatized survivor. "She wouldn’t let me touch him. She just... she took him and ran."

Darien walks toward the nearest rogue body. He stares down at the mangled, half-disintegrated corpse. "These? These are the bastards who touched our brother?"

"Yeah," Morgan whispers. "That one there... the one with the missing head. He’s the one who did the final blow."

Darien doesn’t scream. Instead, he lets out a sound that is more animal than man and begins to stomp.

It is a display of absolute, mindless brutality. Darien brings his heavy boots down on the rogue’s remains again and again. The sound of cracking bone and squelching flesh fills the clearing. He is trying to kill something that is already dead, trying to vent a grief that is too large for his body to contain.

"You’re already dead!" Darien roars. "You’re already dead, you piece of shit!"

Morgan watches with interest. Physicality as a coping mechanism, he notes. Fascinating.

After a few minutes, Darien’s strength seems to fail him. He sags, his chest heaving, his hands covered in the gore of a dead man. He turns toward Morgan, his eyes streaming with tears.

"What are we going to do, Morgan?" he asks, sounding like a lost child. "What are we going to do without him?"

This is the moment. The performance must be flawless.

Morgan stands up in a slow and "shaky" movement. He walks toward Darien, closing the distance between them. He reaches out and wraps his arms around his older brother.

Darien collapses into the embrace, his head falling onto Morgan’s shoulder. He begins to sob, his entire massive frame shaking with the force of his grief.

Morgan holds him. He can feel Darien’s heartbeat—hard, fast, and brimming with a love that is currently poisoning him. Morgan closes his eyes and pulls Darien closer, burying his face in his brother’s neck.

To anyone watching, it is the most heartbreaking sight in the world: the two surviving brothers, clinging to each other in the wreckage of their family.

But inside, Morgan is cold. He is a block of black ice in a furnace. He rests his chin on Darien’s shoulder and looks out at the dark forest, a small, invisible smile tugging at the corners of his mind.

"It’s okay, Darien," Morgan whispers into his ear. "I’ve got you. We’re going to go home. We’re going to find Tobias. And we’re going to make sure everyone gets exactly what they deserve."

"Especially you," Demon Core pipes in his skull.

Darien clutches him tighter, unaware that he is hugging the very thing that destroyed his life. He is looking for comfort in the mouth of a shark.

"I love you, Morgan," Darien rasps through his tears. "I’m glad you’re here. I don’t think I could do this alone. Amias might not want to join the war now that he’s Alpha."

"I know, brother. I know. I’m never going to leave you."

It is the first time Morgan has ever seen Darien cry. He wonders how he would have missed such a sight had he not let the rogues kill Grayson.

They stay like that for a long time, two Bellamys in the dark. One mourning a brother, the other celebrating a kill.

The city lights twinkle in the distance, oblivious to the fact that the Alpha King’s line has almost been completely severed, and that the thing walking toward the throne isn’t a wolf at all.

Morgan pulls back eventually, wiping a fake tear from his cheek. "We should go. Heidi will be at the pack gates by now. We need to be there before Tobias tries to spin this into a lie."

Darien nods. "Right. Let’s go. We’re going to end this tonight."

"Yes," Morgan agrees. "Tonight, everything ends."

They walk out of the clearing together, side by side, leaving the dead rogues and the ghost of Grayson behind. Morgan matches his stride to Darien’s, perfectly simulating the gait of a grieving brother, while inside, the serpent coils tighter around his heart, waiting for the next meal.

The forest is silent again. The wind whispers through the trees, carrying the scent of blood toward the Duskwind pack, a herald of the nightmare that is coming home.

Grayson’s blood on the dirt begins to dry, turning black in the moonlight. The lucky one is gone, and the smart one has finally found his voice.

And it is the most terrifying sound in the world.