Vengeance of The Broken Lycan Prince [BL]-Chapter 475: Of Grieving Barbarians & The Fall of Grealor [3]
[GREALOR]
"You’ll deal with him, Chief... or should I?" a bloodied Akila asked as he looked between Igor and Gabriel.
Akila looked like he was ready to smash Gabriel Grealor’s head into his skull and burn his bones to crisp ashes and blow the damn things away just so everyone could have peace.
Akila was so down for whatever the fuck the Lycan chief wanted, and if Igor asked him to cremate Gabriel, Akila would do it without question.
And Igor knew that too.
So instead of saying anything, the barbarian turned to Gabe, who was not sure where life had him at the moment. It was as if the alpha was starting to see with both eyes when his entire life had been a mask and a game of catch with destiny and fate.
"I will go get the rest," Igor said, shaking his head at Akila, like he needed Akila to understand that there was always going to be more Grealor wolves to eliminate.
It was almost a trophy hut for them, but that wasn’t even hard because Igor and his barbarians were always out hunting bounties. It was an art they had mastered and were damn good at, always.
"So, you are the one who came," Gabe said when Akila left.
He looked like he had more questions than he could say at the moment. His death was not even scaring him anymore. This was his karma, and he should have learned to accept it long before the day began.
Granted, it was never going to be easy, but then life was never truly easy, was it?
"You expected someone else?" Igor taunted like he was expecting that too.
Well, to be fair, their whole lives, Tamiko and Gabriel had been enemies who wanted the worst of the worst for each other.
Tamiko had promised to burn down Grealor when the time came.
So, seeing Igor doing the prince’s dirty work was surprising, yet at the same time, it wasn’t to an extent. After all, Gabriel had experienced punishments from Igor’s hands because Tamiko had been hurt.
He had suffered at the barbarian’s hands, and yet for some reason, he was not sure if this was even an approved mission. The team only had the barbarians of Kawai, which raised more questions than answers.
Perhaps before Konstantin slapped his head off, Gabriel would get the answers he desperately needed, right?
"Why are you doing this... where is Tamiko?" Gabriel asked like he didn’t just lose everyone in his circle and had nothing left now that the barbarians were burning down Grealor too.
His father was probably already dead, and Gabe didn’t have anything left to lose. He knew that he’d never be able to protect Grealor from Kawai, truly. And in some way, he had been waiting for that day.
Of course, he couldn’t say that to his dear friends, but then his friends were dead now. What he had done would haunt him until the end of his days, but none of that mattered more than the bank space that was staring at him.
Grealor was always Tamiko’s to burn. Even the mad king knew that and never tried to kill Gabriel and his father back at the battlefield. So why the fuck was the barbarian here burning grease down?
Where the fuck was Tamiko?
"Dying," Igor said bluntly as he got off his horse and walked over to where Gabriel was. His posture was stiff, even as he tried to look as strong as he always was. But then his sagging shoulders were a bit hard to miss.
The barbarian looked like shit, perhaps it was new to him too, but then life hadn’t exactly been the best of things over the past few hours, no?
Gabe had let down his sword and spear because they were useless and pointless.
Or maybe because for the first time in a while, he wanted to have a real conversation about everything that had happened.
Conversations about how he had shamelessly breached Kawai to attack the kingdom in the name of Igor being a weakness, only for Igor to come back to Grealor smelling like a distressed omega yet enraged enough to hurt everything that was in his way.
Gabe wasn’t sure what he had been expecting for a while, but now that Igor was here, maybe that conversation could happen in the slightest of ways, right?
Besides, Gabriel didn’t have a defense.
No one was coming to save him. No one was ever going to make it any easier for him, and he understood that already.
This was not right, but what was left now?
An emptiness that Tamiko himself couldn’t fill because Gabriel knew he would be gone by the end of the day, and he would be a miserable soul who never got to see Tamiko one last time.
What kind of life had he subjected himself to, though?
"What? What do you mean by dying?? He was okay last week, wasn’t he? You... What did you do?" Gabe asked worriedly.
For a moment, Igor could swear he saw worry in Gabriel’s face. It was new for him. And the barbarian who had been expecting Gabriel to remain smug the entire time was taken aback.
This was not how things were to be, but what the hell, right?
"Why are you silent... You can’t burn Grealor... Tamiko should have been the one. It is owed to him... What happened in the last week, Konstantin? Please tell me he isn’t dead," Gabe pleaded desperately.
Igor just watched him amusedly, like he was scanning for any markers of pretense and shit.
But Gabe wasn’t pretending.
He was worried.
Genuinely worried.
He looked like he wanted to understand truly, and that his whole world burning around him suddenly didn’t mean shit to him.
"Igor..." Gabe pleaded, walking towards Igor, you would think that he did know that Thai am was going to kill him with his bare hands or even blast him to life like Ciel had been done.
"Why do you care?" Igor asked, pausing for a moment.
"What do you mean? Why do I care? I loved him first, remember? I never loved another. Sure, we’ve had our differences, and he manages to piss me off, but there is no reason for him to die or be hurt again. He was okay.
"He was fine, and now you’re here doing what he was supposed to be doing... is the king dead? We would have heard about that. Was it the Furfantes? Can’t be, I killed them all before we came to the battle...
"Or maybe he found another relationship? That’s impossible because he literally gave his life for you last... The wound... It’s the wound, right? Is he sick?" Gabriel asked helplessly.
His eyes suddenly brightened in worry as if he had managed to solve the one puzzle that he had been expecting, and the answer he had found was not making it any easier for him. Hell, that was not the answer he wanted to hear.
Perhaps the Grealor alpha was overthinking it all right?
Gabriel seemed to be deep in thought even as he got close to Igor to search the man’s eyes for the truth.
And Igor...
He was still shocked. This was not the Gabriel he was meant to come and find. This was someone else, and for some reason, it was unsettling in ways that blinded even the devil himself.
"Say something, Konstantin... I know you’re going to kill me, but please, just tell me. Me. He’s got to be okay, right?"
