Chapter 32: Appetite.
June 17 2026, 9:03am.
The Alphas who had all heard the commotion by the door rose to their feet in quick succession; but as soon as they did, the confusion flickering in their eyes soon morphed into a mixture of irritation and curiosity when they found two women sprawled on the floor close to the door.
Keiran frowned. "Seraphina?"
Azriel gulped. "Nyx’ara?"
But none of the women answered right away. While Seraphina was clutching at her head, crying and screaming out in anguish, Nyx’ara stayed quiet. She looked way more battered than her counterpart. Her hands were bruised, and an angry red patch was blooming on her right knee.
Yet, she never cried out.
However, they were snapped out of their frozen states when Seraphina pointed to Nyx’ara and cried; "She pushed me! This vile woman pushed me! She almost hurt the cat too! She wants to kill me just like she killed the princess!"
Even a blind person could see the shift on Nyx’ara’s face as soon as Seraphina said those words. They could see the color drain from her face... they could sense the helplessness in her eyes, smell the fear in her heart... until something in her blue eyes shifted.
She rolled her eyes and snapped; "You filthy liar!"
Draven was shocked when her words came out clean and clear, and he couldn’t help but notice the way her breath hitched as if she surprised herself. She pressed her hand into her chest, cleaned her hands against her dress, and continued;
"You pushed m-me!"
She frowned.
"Y-you pushed me and no-now, you’re claiming t-to be innocent? I’ll gi-give you something to-to really cry about!"
Before anyone could respond to her or make sense of what she had just said, she lunged. She was like a fiery cat— one minute, she was all timid, bruised and hurt, and the next.. Well, let’s just say she was throwing punches, pulling at dark curly hairs that were silkier than the dress she was wearing and at the same time, she was protecting the cat, Coco, the cat, who for some reason was trying to fight Seraphina as well.
The four brothers tried to break this fight. They pulled the girls away from each other, carried them when necessary... but still... When all their attempts began to prove futile, Draven stopped having it.
He growled;
"STOP!"
His voice was so powerful and so fierce that it made both girls stop almost instantly. The chandelier above rattled perilously at the sound and even the paintings on the wall vibrated in such a way that Nyx’ara feared they were about to fall.
"How can you both act so despicably?!" He continued. The sound of his voice vibrated through the room, coming to settle deep inside her bones. Goosebumps spread across her skin and her tongue which had been sharp only seconds ago suddenly felt heavy and stuck to the roof of her mouth.
However, even though the girls had stopped fighting, Coco hadn’t.
She seized that moment when everyone was frozen in shock to claw at Seraphina’s sandalled legs.
Sera’s cries of terror echoed through the room, followed by her unreasonable attempt to try to kick the feline in the ribs, but just as she attempted to do that, Nyx’ara jumped in, fell to her knees, and cradled the cat just as Seraphina’s feet clipped her ribs.
Not Coco’s ribs but hers.
Kieran’s eyes flashed angrily; he knew just how much Leilani loved that cat. Azriel frowned. Rhys continued to watch.
"Ouch!" Nyx’ara cried out, but for some reason, her arms wrapped around the cat remained intact. She rose to her feet on staggering limbs, held the ball of fur against her chest, glared right at Seraphina, and hissed;
"Yo-you’re so inconsistent."
Seraphina’s nostrils flared. "What do you mean, bitch?"
"Y-you just told yo-your Alphas tha-that I-I had tried to-to hurt you and Coco. Yo-you said th-that I-I attacked you for-for no reason, yet, yo-you are the-the one actively tr-trying to send Coco in for an emergency vet visit."
Seraphina froze just as the color drained from her face.
"You!"
"Save it!" Nyx’ara snarled, cutting her off abruptly while setting the cat down to allow it to walk freely. "Yo-you also cried like-like I had bro-broken yo-your bones earlier, y-yet, here yo-you are, completely fine. I-I have see-seen your kind before. In fact, you-your kind is-is the re-reason I am here i-in the first place, s-so y-you can suck my-my fat one."
The way Seraphina’s face went from smug to completely mortified was a sight to behold. It was so instant that it almost made Kieran chuckle.
Almost.
That is until the sound died in his throat and came out instead as a muffled snort.
Azriel however wondered what she meant when she said: ’she was here because of Seraphina’s kind’ but shoving that thought away, he worried instead about the angry red bloom swelling around her knee.
Then there was Rhys who was mad that she had said ’your Alphas’ instead of ’Alphas’ meaning she doesn’t recognize them as her leaders or herself as one of their subjects.
The look on Seraphina’s face was all that the quads needed to know the truth. She had lied. Against Nyx’ara.
But why?
Why would she stoop to such low theatrics? Why would she try to soil her hands with the blood of a criminal?
They collectively ruled off her misbehavior as jealousy and turned to Nyx’ara who was still actively protecting the cat with her body— without even realizing.
Which was strange for someone as heartless as she was supposed to be
Draven’s voice rumbled through the air. "It’s dinner time." He announced in that same commanding tone that Nyx’ara’s body had come to recognize now, "Let’s all return to the table before our food grows cold."
She stilled.
For a moment, Nyx’ara was stunned into silence. She could not believe that they would simply let it go even after knowing that Seraphina was in the wrong. She wondered if they would do the same if she was the one at fault. And this thought made her so flustered that her legs wouldn’t move even as everyone began to walk towards the table.
"Nyx’ara?!" Someone’s clipped tone snapped her out of her train of thought. She turned to regard who it was— Rhys— not realizing how coldly she was staring at him until he shifted on his feet.
"Come."
But still she wouldn’t move. She had suddenly lost her appetite. She could not believe that they were just as biased as the people from her pack.
"Would you come or do you want us to force your hand?" Draven hissed from the front and the subtle threat in those words finally made her break. She rushed forward with her heart pounding against her chest.
But just as she was about to look for a chair, Seraphina rushed forward to sit on the one closest to Azriel. Her eyes flashed with malice and victory when she noticed that the only remaining empty chairs were the ones beside Rhys and stretching downward to the rest of the remaining seven empty seats on the twelve-chaired dining set.
But Nyx’ara was undisturbed by her childishness. If anything, she found it funny as she would do anything to be away from them.
She walked down to the eleventh chair, the one furthest away from everyone, and sat down, her eyes lowered as she stared at the rich steak on the plate in front of her.
Her actions made both Seraphina and the quads shift uncomfortably.
Kieran seethed; "Why did you choose to sit there?"
If he had thought that he could bully her into scurrying closer then he was wrong, because she then lifted her head, looked him dead in the eyes, and answered; "Be-because I want to-to be as far away fr-from all of-of you as possible."
Silence stretched on the table.
"Be-because I don’t want yo-you ruining m-my appetite."