Alpha’s Hybrid Cinderella
Chapter 46

"The decontamination team reported the sight is... not what you might expect, Alpha." "Talk clearly."

"They purposely placed him in the center of some heavy gears... he moved along the conveyor belt and his body stopped the machinery, which was how the workers found him." "Whoever killed him tried to dispose of his body like that?"

The Deltas shook his head as they proceeded down the concrete walkway. "No. I only heard the description since I haven't seen it myself yet either, but I suspect the intention was to be found. There are ways of disposing of a body that would have been more efficient and less likely to be discovered. There are bladed machinery pieces here, after all. But the attacker placed him deliberately where any interruption of the usual manufacturing process would set off the alarm and draw as much attention as possible." Evan glowered. "A taunt. They're taunting me."

"... I believe so. But there was something else the decontamination team reported, though I'm not sure if you would rather see it for yourself instead of hearing it..."

"Just say it."

"They... defaced the corpse, they believe. It's hard to tell with so much blood, but with your superior senses, you will be able to tell, I think."

Defaced the corpse? What was he talking about? Evan let out an impatient noise but let the subject drop. He would be seeing for himself soon anyway.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He glanced down, withdrew it, checked the screen. Peelle. He was almost here? He had already picked up Claudia a while ago, but it should have taken him at least half an hour to get here, even breaking all the speed limits. He really was the craziest driver in all of Scarlet. A good thing. If it meant Claudia would get here all the sooner, so be it.

From now on, Evan was never letting her out of his sight.

***

The Delta had been right. This was not the place to dispose of a corpse. As soon as the conveyor belt had met with resistance, Osborn's body had stopped everything in its tracks, jamming the sensitive gears ahead. But his body wasn't intact for it. Besides the missing hand and the injuries inflicted before death, or even the ones after, the rough treatment of the factory machinery had twisted him a little into an odd position... And yet, for all the world, Evan almost expected him to sit up and complain about a bad night's sleep.

They had never been close as friends, but their working relationship had been almost unmatched. Osborn was a man who put all of himself into his work, taking pride in every measure, every method. He had never given less than all of himself to the job. Now, to get away like this from his responsibilities, to let the enemy do him in... How was he going to help Evan forge his empire now...?

Liar. He had pledged his loyalty and then gone off and gotten himself killed. Evan gritted his teeth. If he had come here sooner, if he hadn't let his guard down...

And now he knew what he meant by the 'defacement'. The stench had struck him as soon as he caught sight of the body. It overpowered even the coppery scent of the blood and the chemical fumes lingering around the factory. This stench, acidic, jeering, taunting... Whoever had killed Osborn had urinated on him. They had humiliated his corpse, degraded his existence, mockingly asserted their dominance over his dead body and left it for Evan to find.

The message was clear, aimed like a dart straight to the gut. It wasn't even a challenge, merely a hideous, laughing, ugly taunt that they had scored a victory against him.

Evan's Alpha capability meant nothing, the stench said. Evan was useless. Evan was incompetent. Nothing Evan did mattered. He was so pathetic he couldn't even keep his subordinates alive. He was so pathetic he couldn't even stop the enemy from relieving themselves on his subordinates and marking them like a dog would its territory.

Evan clenched his jaw, fighting back the violent snarl threatening to explode out of him. His Alpha instincts raged, clawing at the walls as it tried to take over, shoving aside all logic and sense. He wanted the enemy. He wanted the trespasser. He wanted the blood of the man who'd dared to do this.

He wouldn't rest until he was bathing in their screams of agony.

But what was worse was that it wasn't only the stench of one enemy. There were multiple disgusting ones twisted together, a gang of them who had defiled Osborn's corpse. It hadn't even been a one on one altercation, but a cowardly ambush by a whole group upon one man. If Evan had been there instead, they would have all met bloody, agonizing ends, but Osborn alone...

They were lucky to think of everything. With the stench mingling and contaminating itself, Evan couldn't even begin to identify the murderers.

f*****g cowards. f*****g weaklings. f*****g sons of bitches who would have regretted ever being born had Evan been here.

They wouldn't get away with this. He would rip their heads from their necks, tear their eyes out of their skulls, smash their bones and shred their limbs to strips-

"Alpha? Alpha!"

He ignored the Delta's cries of alarm as well as that of everyone else he rushed past in the factory. He no longer cared about setting up a perimeter or investigating or being patient and waiting for the enemy to finally show their cowardly faces. He would go out there and find them, hit the ground and tear up every little foxhole they might be hiding inside until he had them by the throats.

When he exploded out of the entrance, he was still in human form, but that didn't last long. He ripped open the buttons of his dress shirt and let them clatter to the stone walkway, fur already sprouting everywhere the skin was exposed. The seams of his dress pants tore when the bones of his legs snapped and repositioned into wolf's haunches, and then he was on the ground on all fours.

"Alpha! Alpha, where are you going-"

A sea of alarmed shouts. But none of it mattered. Evan let out a wild howl and raced toward the main road, not caring who got in his way. That was where all the damned people of this city were. That was where his enemies hid. If he had to rip out the flowers to get to the weeds, he would do it. He had already spilled a sea of blood, what was one territory more? Claudia's face floated across the abyssal darkness crowding his mind, and her voice was faint in his ears, begging him to return to his senses. But it was too late. Too late. Far too late.

It wasn't until he was on his back that he realized he hadn't been imagining it.

Claudia?

"Evan! Evan please, don't do this. Come back to us!" Her voice...

And he was struggling. Not fighting, not trying to hurt whoever had tackled him and pinned him to the ground, but simply thrashing to get away from the restraining hold. Whoever was holding him back, Evan knew he could kill in an instant, but there was still a spark of rationality in his brain that told him he absolutely must not. Evan! Pull yourself together! Are you an Alpha or are you a crazy rogue! Come on!

Peelle... It was Peelle, in wolf form just like him, struggling to hold Evan's larger size against the ground. It would be no difficulty at all to hurl him off, but that would hurt him... And Peelle was a comrade. No, Peelle was a friend. Peelle was his closest friend, perhaps his only one now. Osborn had ridden that line between acquaintance and confidant over the last several weeks, had even stepped a foot over onto the side of friendship. But now he was gone. Only Peelle remained.

This was why Evan spurned friendships. This was why he didn't bother letting anyone get close. Those he tried to protect most always, always slipped away.

"Evan! Evan, stop it! Stop, you'll hurt Peelle!"

Claudia's sobbing voice was what stopped him. He must not have been as crazy as he'd thought after all. The stench of taunting enemies back in the factory, the hideous scent cloaking Osborn's mangled body, he'd thought it had driven him insane. But out of the void, there was Claudia's voice. Sweet and soft, lovely like cream. And now here were here fingers carding through his thick fur, her gentle words drifting into his ears as his struggles calmed.

"It'll be okay, Evan," she said. "Trust me. It'll be okay. Everything will be okay."

Everything would not be okay. Nothing ever would. Nothing ever had been from the very beginning when he had had to watch as they slaughtered his father and r***d his mother before his very eyes, and now he had enemies doing the same thing to him once again. Nothing would ever be okay.

But if Claudia said so, maybe he could let himself believe it for just one moment.

He closed his eyes.