Chapter 32: Will

Chapter 32: Will

Amid Fred’s rant, I heard Alexis’s voice calling out to me, telling me that she loved me now and forever. I concluded that this was her way of telling me that she had successfully found all of the bombs and that they were not going to be a threat any longer.

“How is it possible that the bombs have not exploded?” Fred glared at me, his eyes fiery red with rage.

“Perhaps people have gotten wiser to your plans after all this time,” I said, feeling relieved that the bombs had not exploded. Now I could capture Fred and take him back to the commune to answer for his many crimes.

“What did you do?” Fred was curious, genuinely so. Even his tone had turned from angry to inquisitive. “I had always assumed you to be a dumb leader, incapable of contrivance, planning, and masterminding situations. This is not your doing. There’s someone else behind it.”

“I will admit that I have never been one to showcase my intelligence. I prefer wisdom over cleverness. Wisdom is deeper, slower, and long-lasting. Being clever gets a person in trouble. But yes, on that front, you are right. This was not my doing. The entire Grimm pack did it with Alexis’s help. This was her idea,” I said, giving credit where credit was due.

“I should have known,” Fred said. “I had a chance to get her killed along with her parents. It seems foolish that I let her live back then. Look what pitying a kid gets me.”

“That was probably the only good decision you ever made. You spared her life and gave me a mate in return. Other than that, Fred, your track record of mistakes, errors, and malicious mischief has not a single good deed in them. How can someone related to me be so evil?” Now that the bomb wasn’t a matter of urgency, I stepped up to Fred. He saw me coming towards him and reclined in his wheelchair.

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. I had placed a failsafe in case the bombs didn’t go off using the detonator. They’re all rigged to blow with a timer. You cannot stop the chaos that will happen tonight. That’s the thing about chaos. One way or the other, it always prevails,” Fred said.

I shook my head as I approached him. “You’re wrong about chaos. When the world was nothing but a sea of chaos, humans gave it order. With tools and community, and education, we learned that we were more than mere brutes capable of speech. We learned that we could ascend to divinity through order. Sadly, that’s a lesson you never learned, and it’s too late for you to start learning. What is it that they say? You cannot teach an old dog new tricks,” I said. “Now come, I’m taking you to the commune.”

Fred slapped away my hand and reversed his wheelchair till it was just by the cliff’s edge.

“I am not going down there without a fight. It’s kill or be killed. Either I’ll fulfill my lifelong dream of smiting you tonight, or I’ll go down fighting. If you think you can simply order me to come quietly, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for,” Fred said.

“I don’t want to fight you, Fred. It’s over. Look around. No bombs are blowing up in the night, and no one is coming to save you. It’s for the best that you come with me,” I said, holding out my hand. He refused to take it again.

“And what precious future awaits me if I do decide to come with you? It’s not like they are waiting for me with garlands in their hands. I will be tried, and then I’ll be hung by the neck until I die. There is no redemption for me, Will. Do not presume to fool me,” he said.

“Most of your crimes are against me. I won’t be forgiving you anytime soon, but I will see to it that you get a reduced sentence,” I said. As bad as things were, I needed to save my brother. There was no off-switch for such feelings. He was my brother. Our parents had raised us together. He was my last living relative. I could not just have him killed.

“Imprisonment, then,” Fred said. “I am well over my nineties. Do you think I’ll let them leave me to rot in prison for the last part of my life?”

“You will have to pay for your crimes somehow.” Fred was being obstinate as he had always been. Sometimes, I wondered if he enjoyed bickering with me and did it for the sole purpose of triggering me.

“As I said, I will not go without a fight. Be a man and fight with me. It’s the least you can do. If there’s some punishment that you wish to dole out, dole it out here and now. Fuck the tribunal. We end this now. Like men,” Fred said.

“Your right to call yourself a man got revoked the minute you started conspiring against the pack and me. You’re not a man. You’re a coward. People like to try to usurp things from others, thinking that the world belongs to them. It doesn’t. If you don’t come with me, I will drag you back to the Grimm Abode by force. Would you like that?”

“Fuck you!” Fred said and flung himself out of his chair, charging at me with as much speed as his old body could muster. I had no heart to fight him, so I just stepped aside as he came near me. Instead of stopping, Fred slipped and fell forward.

It happened so fast that I did not have any time to react. Fred’s foot caught on the cliff’s edge as he slipped, and he looked back at me with terror in his eyes as he realized that he had made a fatal error. His hand reached out in the air, but I was too far away.

Fred tumbled back and fell down the cliff.

“No!” I yelled helplessly as I raced over to the cliff and looked down.

Fred was freefalling, his arms flailing, his body writhing.

I latched onto his hand at the last second, holding him by his fingers. I pulled him up, hoping that he’d assist me with some of his body weight, but instead of helping me, Fred slashed at my hand with his other hand, cutting deeply into my skin. I winced with pain and retracted my arm, letting go of Fred.

He fell for five straight seconds, colliding with the cliff’s jagged edges as he fell. When he reached the end, his body smashed against the rocks. Maroon blood leaked from his body as waves crashed against his corpse, taking him away into the sea.

My brother had just died. I had reached out to save him, and he had deliberately cut my hand to end his life. I stood there, looking at where his body had collided with the rocks, feeling hollow from the inside.

It was a sadness of a different sort, a bitter sadness that dwelled deep in my heart. I was angry at him, and needed to bring him to justice, but at the same time, he was my brother who had, in his last moments, chosen to lash out at me and choose death over life.

Here I stood, mourning a man who had betrayed me all my life. The man because of whom I had spent seventy years in a lightless prison, tortured and tormented. The man who had stood against me every step of the way. The worst part about this betrayal was that I had never suspected until the last moment that it had been Fred all along. If I hadn’t known, I would have loved my brother all the same, talked with him on the weekends, and drank tea with him while reminiscing about the old life we used to live in Germany.

That would never happen again. My only living link to my family had passed away.

Before I could wallow much more in my sorrow, I saw my ship sailing out into the sea. The only person who knew where I hid the key beside me was Alexis. What was she doing out in the sea at this time of night? What had she done with the bombs?

Alexis? I called out, but I got no response in return. I took out my phone from my pocket and dialed her number, but the signals were down. The pieces of the puzzles clicked all at once, and I realized what was happening.

I love you, Will. Now and forever, she called out.

“No! No! Tell me you’re not doing that!” I yelled as I raced down the cliff and headed into the forest. Before I could even finish my descent down the cliff slopes, I saw a huge explosion burst from the sea, forming a mushroom cloud of smoke in the air. My ship was burning, flames enveloping it from every side.

Before I could think about what had happened, I had to go down there and hear it from the pack members myself. Maybe it wasn’t Alexis. Maybe someone else had chosen to sacrifice themselves. Maybe they had figured out how to operate the ship without a captain. I just could not imagine the possibility that it was Alexis who had taken all the bombs out to the sea and had sacrificed herself to save the lives of the townsfolk.

I shifted into my wolf form and stampeded down the slopes and into the forest, my heart racing like a jackhammer all the while. Whenever I called out to Alexis, she did not respond, which deepened my worry and made me think that something terrible had happened to her. When I reached the Grimm Abode, I shifted back into my human form and went to my garage, where the Jeep was parked. I reversed it out of the garage and raced it down the road, heading for Fiddler’s Green. I raced past the parked cars and headed down the main road, honking my horn so the bystanders and pedestrians would get out of my way.

When I reached the crowded town square, I got out of the Jeep and raced down to the docks, colliding with several of the crowd members and almost falling over as I struggled to keep up with my feet.

Standing at the docks were all the pack members with their faces looking morose. At the end of the dock, Vincent stood with his face in his hands. I looked around the crowd that had gathered there to see any signs of Alexis. She wasn’t here.

I went to Vince and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Tell me this isn’t true!” I yelled.

“I tried to stop her. She didn’t listen,” Vince cried. “She took all the bombs onto the ship and steered it to the sea.”

It had all been for nothing. All the promises that I had made her. Pangs of regret throbbed in my chest as I remembered all the times she had asked me to take her away from this town. I had always promised that I would, and now it was too late. Perhaps some part of her knew that if she didn’t leave this town, she would meet her end here. And now, all thanks to my false promises, that had happened. Now I would never be able to take her on a world tour honeymoon. We’d never get married.

The worst part was that there wasn’t even a body to bury, given how huge that explosion had been.

“At least the town is safe. Not a single bomb went off in the town square. We got them all,” Vince said, sobbing.

I turned around to face him and then hugged him. He needed to be consoled as much as I did. Bitter pain accumulated behind my eyes, causing tears to flow down my cheeks.

Everything that we did, it meant nothing. My coming back alive from the dead, our reunion, our trip to Vermont, and our attempts to save this town—now, with Alexis gone, none of it meant a thing to me.

Who was an Alpha without his mate?

What would I do now?

There was no place for me to go, no one to go to, and nothing to do now that she was not here anymore.

“Maybe she flung herself off the ship. We need to swim out and see for ourselves,” I said, attempting to jump down the docks. Vincent held me back, and the rest of the pack joined in, each of them holding me back no matter how hard I tried to break free.

“The water is ice-cold, Will! You’ll die in that water!” Vince yelled.

“Then let me die in the same water where my mate met her fate!” I yelled back. “Let me go. I need to see it. I have to make sure that she’s not there in the water!”

Eventually, they all let go, but at the same time that they let go, my strength also left me. I fell on my knees, unable to move, and just looked desolately at the surface of the water and the flames burning away on the horizon. Black smoke rose from my ship’s burning carcass.

I got up and faced the members of the pack.

“She gave her life for all of us. Not just the wolves, but every single soul that lived in that town,” I said, my voice shaking. I could see in the periphery that the cops had gathered on the beach to see what was happening. People from the square had come down the steps and were crowding the docks, all of them commenting on what could have happened out there in the sea.

They didn’t know. None of them knew their lives were saved by the girl who had been treated like crap in this town all her life. They would never find out that the person who wished to break free from this cursed city came back to sacrifice her life for the people who lived in it.

“Will, there’s a crowd gathering. We have to leave,” Vince said as he wiped away the tears from his eyes.

“I will not leave. I’m never leaving this spot,” I said, looking out at the sea. “I will wait for an eternity if I have to, hoping for her return. One day, she will return to me.”

The pack members attempted to drag me back from the docks, but I broke free from their holds. I walked over to the edge of the docks and looked at the sea, my tears falling into the water below me.