"Well…" Ethan looked carefully at Selene. He had expected resistance, denial—maybe even her turning the gun on him again.
Even if she didn't believe him fully, he knew she wasn't a fool. Doubt would be there now. Doubt was enough.
Lucian let out a low, humorless scoff.
"That son of a bitch is truly twisted," he said, voice edged with old hatred. "He burned his own daughter alive and thought keeping someone who looked like her would ease his guilt."
"Yeah," Ethan replied flatly. "He is twisted."
His eyes shifted back to Selene.
"So," he asked quietly, "do you want to kill Viktor?"
"No."
The answer came without hesitation.
Lucian's brows lifted slightly. Ethan didn't interrupt.
Selene's voice was steady, but there was something beneath it now—something colder than rage.
"I want the truth from his own mouth," she said. "After that… I will kill him."
She stepped toward Viktor's coffin.
Without another word, she activated the mechanism and the heavy lid began to rise, stone grinding against stone as centuries of authority prepared to wake.
As Selene reached for the blade to slice her palm to wake up Victor, Ethan's hand caught her wrist.
"Wait," he said lightly. "I brought something better."
She shot him a sharp look. "Better?"
Ethan reached into his coat and pulled out a sealed blood packet, holding it up between two fingers like a sommelier presenting fine wine.
"For him," he added calmly.
He wasn't going to let Selene waste her blood on Viktor.
On their way here, Ethan had slipped away for a few minutes. A hospital wasn't hard to access for someone who could move faster than human sight. Storage rooms. Refrigerated units. Labeled blood packs lined in neat rows.
He didn't take randomly.
He chose deliberately.
Blood from patients with advanced diseases—, late-stage cancers, severe infections. The kind of blood that even humans handle carefully. He gathered them, returned without a word, and mixed them together into a single packet.
As a vampire, Ethan knew blood wasn't all the same.
Healthy blood tasted clean, steady, almost rich. Impure blood didn't just taste bad—it felt wrong the moment it touched the tongue. Sour. Distorted. It left a lingering disgust that even an elder couldn't ignore.
And Viktor, who had spent centuries drinking only the finest blood, would recognize it instantly.
That was the point.
If Viktor was going to wake up tonight.
It would be to the most disgusting blend Ethan could prepare.
Ethan genuinely wanted to see Viktor's face when he tasted it.
Ethan tilted Viktor's head back and poured the blood into his mouth, letting it slide down his throat. Then he stepped aside, waiting.
Then the second coffin shifted.
Marcus's eyes snapped open.
He did not rise with grace. He fell.
His body slid out of the coffin and hit the stone floor with a dull thud.
For a moment he lay there like a corpse dragged from a grave—skin tight over bone, movements stiff and dry. Then his fingers twitched. Slowly, he began to crawl forward, dragging himself across the floor, joints cracking faintly as strength struggled to return to his limbs.
He looked like something mummified and barely reanimated.
His gaze lifted—and locked onto Lucian.
Shock cut through the haze instantly.
Lucian. Standing in the core of the coven.
Marcus's expression twisted, confusion turning to fury.
"What is this?" he rasped, voice rough from decades of silence. "Why is that Lycan here?" His eyes shifted to Selene.
"I order you to hunt him down," Marcus rasped, fixing Selene with a sharp glare. "I order you to retrieve Amelia."
Selene did not answer.
"And Selene," Ethan said calmly, "this is the one who killed your family. Viktor gave the order. He carried it out."
That shifted everything.
Selene's gaze turned toward Marcus. She bent, picked up her fallen gun, and raised it steadily at him.
Marcus stilled—not out of fear, but disbelief.
"Selene," he said, attempting to push himself upright, but his weakened body betrayed him and one knee remained pressed to the floor. "Lower your weapon."
"Answer me," she said instead, her voice controlled but tight beneath the surface. "Is it true?"
Marcus's eyes flicked toward Ethan for a brief second, suspicion flashing across his face. He clearly did not understand how this stranger knew what had been buried for centuries.
Then his expression hardened.
"You dare question me," he said, tone sharpening. "After all that has been given to you?"
"Is it true?" Selene repeated.
Marcus held her gaze.
There was no remorse in his eyes, only calculation. He was weak—barely awakened, body still adjusting. In this state, even normal bullets could end him. And looking at Selene now, he understood something clearly.
She would pull the trigger.
"It was Viktor who ordered it," Marcus said quickly, irritation cracking into urgency. "I only did the muscle work."
The words echoed in the chamber.
Selene did not blink.
For a heartbeat, she simply watched him. Watched the creature who had torn her family apart reduce it to "muscle work." Watched him try to shift the blame as if that absolved him.
Then she fired.
The first shot snapped through the air and punched into his skull.
Marcus's scream tore out—"No—!"—but it cut off mid-sound.
She didn't stop.
She emptied the entire magazine into him, each shot precise, controlled, final. Bone shattered. Flesh split. His head burst apart like a crushed watermelon, blood and fragments spraying across the stone floor and coffin behind him.
The body twitched once.
*****
A/N: The Patreon version is already updated to Chapter 132, so if you'd like to read ahead of the public release schedule, you can join my Patreon
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