The Assassin

The room was shrouded in darkness, a sanctuary of tranquil peace. The air thick with black smoke, wafting from a big cigar lodged in between two fingers.

He brought the cigar to his lips, took a long drag and puffed it into the smoky air, obscuring his vision of his darkened office.

Smoking was a last resort. It pulled him into a deep sense of serenity when stress rattled his mind and anger boiled his blood.

Tonight it was sadness that threatened to send him spiraling into a killing frenzy and though Cayden Wilder could afford ripping fragile humans to shreds he found no joy in it.

In the silence broken only by his puffing of smoke into the tranquil air, a shrill sound pierced through the smoky calm.

With a certain level of measured grace, or maybe fear of what was to come, his hand reached out into the darkness broken by the silvery light of a phone on the table.

He picked up the phone and a second later, his rumbling voice thick and ragged sounded. "Speak."

"She…she h-has passed Alpha," the hoarse anxious voice on the other end of the line said.

The silence that followed was like a cloak falling over the room. He brought the cigar to his lips, took a long drag that would be impossible if he were human and didn't puff out. The smoke burned in his chest, hot and familiar like the pain slowly making its way into his heart and blood.

He crushed the cigar between his fingers before he demanded. "When?"

"N…now. I-I watched it happen. I'm sorry Alpha." The anxious voice was truly sorry, Cayden heard it in the sharp intake of breaths and the frazzled tone of voice.

It didn't matter, by the time he was done, the entire world would be sorry.

"The doctors c-couldn't take out the silver fragments lodged in her heart," the voice added. "They tried, Alpha. They really did."

"Have you called my mother?" He watched the remains of the crushed cigar fall away through his fingers and land on his lap.

"N-No."

Of course they wouldn't call her before him. He was the Alpha, the chain of command and he just lost the one true friend he ever had.

"Call her and bring my sister home." He ended the call and placed his phone back on the table.

He should've been there with her. When he heard the news of her accident, his first instinct had been to abandon everything and fly to her but things didn't work out that way. His sister was a Lycan, his worry easily abated until they began to fill him in on the specifics of her accident.

Eleven hours after her 'accident', she was dead.

He leaned back into his chair as the first tear slipped out from his eye and ran down his cheek.

A deep chasm quaked open in his heart and he knew nothing would ever fill it.

Not even revenge.

But as the smoke lingered in the weighted silence of the room, a swirling pit of fire opened in his chest.

He closed his eyes and opened a mind-link.

'Kio,' he called into the void between linked minds.

A response came swiftly. 'What do you need, Alpha?'

'The Fox.'

A short beat of silence followed his command, before the disembodied voice filtered into his mind.

'What has happened? Has Amelia—'

'Kio. Get. Me. The. Fox.'

He closed the mind-link and opened his eyes into the darkness. More tears ran down his cheek, the sadness so palpable he tasted it and it choked him.

His sister had died.

A wide black vacuum where she once existed and he wasn't even fucking there! To hold her hand, to assure her he would kill those responsible, to see her cool ocean eyes once more before they closed forever.

Revenge was the only word that played in his head and chilled his skin.

He bolted up from his chair and was out the door in a flash as rage consumed him.

The room returned to its perfect darkened peace, thickened with cigarette smoke.