After I Died, the Alpha Went Mad Holding My Body Chapter 09

After I Died, the Alpha Went Mad Holding My Body Chapter 09

Ten minutes in, they carried Isabella back out.

My parents, kneeling, looked up on instinct.

One look, and they collapsed.

Isabella’s face was mine.

Even the hair. The makeup. The dress. Every detail of how I used to look.

Kaelen stepped forward. Red around the eyes. Hand trembling as he touched the face.

“Evelyn…”

“Alpha.”

She lifted her head, weak-and the second she opened her mouth, his hand closed around

her throat.

He shushed her, soft. There was an obsessive, terrifying madness in his eyes.

“Quiet.”

“My Evelyn doesn’t talk in that voice.”

He waved a healer over. Another bowl. Down her throat.

That day, in some grotesque parody, Isabella completed the Luna ceremony wearing my face.

Kaelen had destroyed her voice.

From then on, he treated her as my shadow. Nothing more.

If she let one expression slip that wasn’t mine, he flew into a rage. Made her learn me.

Practiced me into her. Whatever it took.

A few days in, she broke.

While the maid wasn’t watching, she took a hairpin to her own face.

When Kaelen got there and saw what she’d done, he killed several of the guards on the spot.

Watching the rage in him, Isabella-on the floor-started to laugh.

She laughed like she was mocking him. His madness. His powerlessness.

The voice the medicine had wrecked came out rough and slurred.

“You can torture me all you want. That bitch Evelyn isn’t coming back.”

“Do you even know what happens when she fails her mission?”

She lifted her ruined face to him.

“All she had to do was keep one pup alive. One. Then she finishes the mission. Then she

lives.”

“And the whole time, she had no idea-not one of her five pups was ever going to make it. I

made sure of that.”

“And after they died-you let me have them. You let me do that to them!”

“Shut up!”

His voice tore out of him.

He took two unsteady steps back. Eyes red. Staring.

Every word out of her cut him open again.

“I’ll say it. I want to say it.”

“Admit it. The one who killed Evelyn was you. The whole time. It was you.”

When she said that, something in him snapped.

He had her silenced. Permanently.

And then he killed her himself.

When Isabella stopped breathing, it was like he came back to himself. He dropped the blade.

Grabbed his head. Started howling.

“It wasn’t me.”

“Evelyn-it wasn’t me.”

He went down on his knees. Tears coming like a wound that wouldn’t close.

“Evelyn-my head. My head won’t stop.”

“Come back. Just look at me. Please.”

“I’m begging you.”

I watched him fall apart. Nothing in me moved.

[HOST. THIS WORLD’S RECKONING IS COMPLETE. PREPARE FOR DEPARTURE.]

The system came back. After all that time.

I closed my eyes. Felt nothing but the quiet of being let go.

Kaelen’s crying got farther and farther away.

My mind went under, into deep, dark water.

I don’t know how long.

Then I was sitting up in a hospital bed, gasping for air.

“She’s awake! Sweetheart, she’s awake!”

“My girl. My baby girl. You’re awake.”

Even after someone pulled me into their arms, I couldn’t quite catch up.

Memories of the modern world came back like a tide.

I called the system inside my head.

“System-wasn’t I supposed to be erased? How am I back?”

Silence.

Just when I thought it was gone for good, the voice came again.

[HOST-A CHANGE OCCURRED IN THE PRIOR WORLD. KAELEN ENDED HIS OWN LIFE. HE

AND THE SILVERCLAW COUPLE SACRIFICED THEIR SOULS. IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR

MISSION SUCCESS.]

I couldn’t process it.

Then it spoke once more.

[MISSION REWARD ISSUED. IN THIS WORLD, YOU WILL HAVE A LONG, HEALTHY LIFE. AND A

FAMILY THAT LOVES YOU. GOOD LUCK.]

The tears came late.

I looked at my parents-the real ones, the ones in front of me, with worry all over their faces.

I held them tighter.

I smiled. From somewhere deep down.

Thank God.

Thank God it wasn’t too late.

This time, I would live the life I should have had.

The End