The Alpha Princess They Destroyed Chapter 09 (Continue)
The first thing she saw was his polished shoes, and when she looked up, she met a pair of sharp, merciless, terrifying eyes.
“Liam…”
“Ah!”
Before she could finish, he kicked her so hard she flew backward and slammed into the floor.
She shrieked as pain exploded through every bone in her body.
He didn’t stop.
He strode over, planted his foot on her back, and ground down hard.
While she screamed beneath him like an animal, he spoke in a voice colder than death.
“Zoe, you lied to me. You have a death wish.”
Pinned to the floor by terror, she was finally, truly afraid, because she understood at last that the man standing over her was insane.
He really could kill her.
Tears, spit, and snot dripped down onto the floor.
He lifted his foot away with obvious disgust.
“Tell me,” he said. “What really happened with that so-called kidnapping?”
Zoe shook violently.
At this point she knew it was all exposed.
Staggering to her feet, she looked at him with madness in her eyes.
“So you’re not completely stupid after all.”
She laughed coldly. “I did it. The kidnapping, the injury, all of it. I planned everything.”
“Why…” he asked.
Her smile widened until it looked deranged.
“Because once Ember was gone, I could finally replace her and become the true Alpha princess. I could live above everyone else.”
There were tears in her eyes as she looked at the stunned man in front of her.
“Too bad, Liam. I barely had to do anything, and you believed every word. Do you blame me? You should blame yourself.”
I clenched my hands so hard my nails cut into my palms.
I wanted to rip that face apart.
Liam lowered his head, then suddenly laughed.
The sound made Zoe’s scalp prickle with fear.
“Good,” he said softly.
“You liked those straightforward men so much, didn’t you? Then from now on, Zoe, you can spend the rest of your life with them.”
Her whole body shuddered.
Her lips trembled as she stared at him in disbelief.
“What are you going to do?”
The thought of those men made her sick.
“No, Liam, you can’t do this to me! I was your sister for five years! Liam Sullivan! You can’t do this to me!”
She screamed, struggled, begged.
It made no difference.
At one look from him, the bodyguards dragged her onto a helicopter.
Then they flew her toward the mountain I had feared more than death.
Zoe was knocked unconscious.
When she woke up, she was in a cellar, her wrists and ankles bound with the same iron chains I had once worn.
She screamed in horror.
And what answered her were Luke and the others, cracking their knuckles as they came toward her.
“No…” she whispered, shrinking back as far as she could.
There was nowhere left to go.
Then her scream ripped through the dark.
On this side, Liam carried what remained of my bones home.
At dawn the next morning, the sky was gray and heavy, like a bandage wrapped around his grief.
Holding my urn in both hands, he climbed the hill step by step and laid me to rest beside our parents’ graves.
“I’m sorry… my sister.”
His brows knit tight as he murmured the words.
Every beat of his heart seemed to hurt more than the last.
He couldn’t stop thinking about our parents’ final instructions before they died.
Take care of Ember.
Protect your sister.
And what had he done instead?
He had been fooled by a clumsy liar and let her turn him against the only blood family he had left in this world.
Kneeling before the gravestones, he let the rain soak him through.
Mud splashed over his clothes and clung to him from head to toe.
“It was all my fault…”
His eyes were red with hopelessness.
Rainwater and tears ran together across his face until there was no telling them apart.
Beside him, my chest still ached.
The system appeared.
[Host, this is the end. It’s time to go.]
I nodded.
Then my soul was torn away, and everything went black.
When I woke again, I was back in my original body.
The true Alpha princess of Shadowpine Pack had only ever been fated to live for two years.
She was supposed to die in an explosion at age two.
But I had gone into Ember’s body and extended her life to twenty-five.
That had been the trial the Moon Goddess gave me through the system.
Now it was over.
“Your sealed mission is finally done?” my maid Ella asked, her face bright with joy.
She was already used to my disappearances.
My throat tightened, and I wrapped myself around her arm like a child.
“I’m back.”
When I stepped into the bathroom and looked at my reflection in the mirror, I stood there for a long time.
“And Ember,” I whispered, “it’s over now. All of it. You don’t have to go back to them ever again. That’s for the best.”
A month later, my life had returned to normal.
Then one night, the system appeared again without warning and startled me badly.
[Don’t be alarmed, Host.]
[This is the last time I’ll appear. I only came to tell you that Liam is dead.]
[He died by self-immolation in that estate. Nothing was left.]
My expression froze.
For a moment, I just stood there in silence.
Then I pulled at the corner of my mouth, all mockery and nothing else.
“Good,” I said. “That’s exactly what he deserved.”