Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 96

Chapter 96

Chapter 96

Rieck’s POV

:

I stayed crouched in front of him, studying the red glow in his eyes, and that was when I saw it.

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A mark on the side of his neck, raw and swollen, two puncture wounds sunk deep into the skin, still weeping faint at the edges.

“Tobias.” I didn’t look away from the mark. “Come here.”

He crouched beside me, and I heard the sharp breath he took the moment he saw it too.

“That is a bite,” he said.

“I know what it is.” I reached out and turned the man’s head gently to the side, ignoring his weak attempt to jerk away from my grip.

The wound was deep, deeper than any ordinary bite, and the skin around it was already darkening in a way that looked wrong, almost rotted.

“This man was never a wolf. I would have smelled it on him the first time we crossed paths.”

“He was bitten,” Tobias said slowly, working through it out loud, his eyes still fixed on the wound. “The venom. It must have turned him.”

I had heard of it before, old stories passed down through the Northern Faction about bites carrying enough poison to remake a man entirely, tales I had dismissed as fireside exaggeration meant to frighten young children into staying close to the pack.

I had never once seen it happen, not in thirty years of running this territory.

Whatever had done this to him wasn’t a normal wolf.

“Who did this to you,” I said, straightening back to my full height, my voice low and even. “Who sent you back here?”

The man’s head came up, his red eyes finding mine again, and a slow, ugly smile spread across his face.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I am asking you.”

“Your little wife.” He laughed, a wet, broken sound. “Shame I didn’t get more time with her in that warehouse. I would have enjoyed breaking her properly. Maybe she would be carrying my child right now instead of yours, since you clearly can’t manage it yourself.”

He tilted his head, studying my face with something close to delight at whatever he saw there. “Struck a nerve, dad !’ The great Alpha, married a year and still no heir. Tells me everything I need to know about you.”

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16:23 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 96

“Shoot him,” I spat.

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Tobias didn’t hesitate. He raised his gun and emptied the full clip into the man’s chest, the sound cracking hard against the concrete walls, echoing until my ears rang with it.

The man’s body jerked with every hit, blood spreading across his shirt, but he didn’t fall.

He raised his head again, slower this time, and laughed through the blood filling his mouth, a wet, gurgling sound that made even Tobias take an involuntary step backward.

“That tickles,” he rasped.

“Again,” I said.

“I’m out.” Tobias’s hand shook slightly as he lowered the empty gun. his eyes wide with something close to fear, an expression I had rarely seen on him in all our years together.

He had faced down armed men without blinking before, but nothing in his years of service had prepared him for a man who just refused to fall.

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the single silver bullet I always carried, a habit my father had drilled into me since I was young enough to hold a gun.

I pressed it into Tobias’s palm. “Load it. Try this.”

He didn’t ask why. He just obeyed, his hands steadier now, sliding the bullet into the chamber and raising the gun once more, his aim already fixed on the center of the man’s chest.

The man’s laughter died the moment the bullet left the barrel.

It struck him clean in the chest, and this time he didn’t get back up.

His body went slack against the chains, his head dropping, the red glow in his eyes finally dimming to nothing at all, the basement falling into a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

“Keep a watchful eye,” I told Tobias, my voice flat despite the storm still churning under my ribs. “Whoever is turning men into weapons like this, they aren’t finished. Not by a long way.”

He nodded, already reaching for his phone to call in cleanup, his face pale under the single swinging bulb, his usual steady calm still visibly shaken by what he had just seen with his own eyes.

I arrived home well past midnight.

Aurelia was waiting on the couch, curled with a blanket over her legs, and she rose the moment she saw me, her eyes catching on my face before I could turn away from the light.

“Rieck There is blood on your cheek.”

I reached up and touched the spot, my fingers coming away faintly red. “It must have been a nosebleed. It

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16:23 Mon, Aug 3

Chapter 96

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happens sometimes, out in the cold.”

“A nosebleed?” She repeated it slowly, her arms crossing over her chest, that same look on her face she wore whenever she knew I was lying but had decided not to fight me on it tonight. “You have been gone for hours,

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