The Love of a Lycan

"What happened?" Calleb looked at Raine, and Torak through the rearview mirror. Meanwhile, Raphael was sitting on the passenger seat right next to him, seemingly busy typing something on his laptop.

Raine recalled the encounter that she just experienced inside the cake shop before. 

That moment when the argument between the three girls, and the store manager was going on, she saw two Lycans were putting the cakes inside their bags. Since the two lycans were invisible to everyone there, nobody knew about their doings. Of course that didn't apply for Raine, and Torak.

It must be Torak, who ordered them to put those cakes inside their bags. 

"Nothing." said Raine mysteriously in response to Calleb's question. Her mysterious answer only made Calleb frown disappointedly. "Oh! Before I forgot, here, I bought something for you two." She pulled out the chocolate cakes with cute wolf characters on its surface.

"Chocolate cake!" Calleb was excited when he saw the wolf.

"Thank you Raine." Raphael smiled gratefully, and took the cakes from Raine, because Calleb was driving.

"Do not eat my cake Raph, I'm warning you!" Calleb glared at Raphael beside him. Meanwhile, Raphael could only roll his eyes in response to his warning, because of how ridiculous it sounded to him. The Beta would never fight over a cake.

"How do you know I like sweet things?" Calleb asked again.

"She didn't know. She bought these random cakes unintentionally. So don't make it sound so intimate." Torak glared at Calleb through the rearview mirror.

"Yes, Alpha…" Calleb gulped hard in fear, afraid of Torak's sudden outburst. In each and every passing time, he could feel that his Alpha was getting more and more possessive toward his mate.

It started with his demand to be with Raine twenty four hours, now his severe jealousy, which was simply unreasonable. However, when Calleb thought about it again, he couldn't help himself to wonder. Would someday I act the same way if only I was put in the Alpha's shoes, and faced with MY own mate?—he thought inside his head.

On the other hand, Raine was giggling after witnessing their brief interaction. She opened the bunny cake, and ate it. "Try it, it tastes good." She brought a piece of the cake to Torak's lips, offering it to him.

Torak opened his mouth, receiving her offer and bit the sweet cake. Although the truth was that, unlike Calleb, he didn't really like sweet things. But since it was Raine who fed him the cake, the taste was fine in his mouth. 

The traffic jam was awful, because apparently there was a car accident ahead of them. It was supposed to take only fifteen minutes for them to reach home on any other day, but now, it took them more than an hour and half before they could finally arrive home. 

By the time the car stopped, Raine was still sleeping soundlessly. The exam was around the corner, and there were many things that she had to learn for the examination entrance.

Sometimes she would read her text book until late at night, and then fall asleep while reading it. 

In all honesty, Torak didn't really want to let her enter the University. Because he knew that he wouldn't be able to be near her to keep her safe. He couldn't lie to himself that he needed to fulfill his protective side, in a sense of protecting her personally out there, or anywhere. 

But, seeing how she had been nothing but determined to study, and he had actually seen all of her efforts now, how could Torak have the heart to forbid her from doing something that she wanted to do?

Torak felt these complicated feelings. He was deeply conflicted because of this matter. 

On one hand, he wanted to give Raine a normal life like what other girls had. But on the other hand, somehow deep inside him, and he felt it strongly, he knew that it was impossible for her to be as normal as them. It was not that he couldn't accept her the way she already was as is, nor did he mean to try to get her to be 'normal'.

Suddenly Raine mumbled something in her sleep, and nestled her head on Torak's shoulder. 

Carefully, he brought her upstairs while Raphael was holding the door for him. Torak carried her and let Calleb bring her backpack to their bedroom.

Raine was still sleeping so soundly even after Torak put her down on the bed. Then he covered her in a blanket, Today's lesson must've been especially hard for her—he thought.

"Good night my love." Torak kissed her forehead, and then he walked out of the bedroom.

Outside his room, Raphael and Calleb had been waiting for him because Torak had asked them to come through mind-link. 

"Is there any progress about Jen?" Torak asked them straight to his main concern. He had ordered Calleb to get someone to follow Jenedieth, especially since she came in the most unwelcomed circumstance like the last time.

"According to our people, it is believed that she has been living inside an old house in the outskirts of this city. But, they couldn't confirm whether Jen is living alone, or she is with Lilith or Belphegor. They couldn't smell their scent at all." said Raphael, reporting only the most crucial information for Torak to hear. 

"Anything else?" Torak leaned his body against the door of his bedroom. 

"We found something strange about the scent that we smelled from her…" Raphael said, hesitatingly with a furrowed in his face. The Beta just couldn't find the right words to describe what he was trying to tell his Alpha. 

"What is it?" Torak stared at his Beta, this was the part that he wanted to know. 

"There's something about the smell of it. It's the smell of a dead lycan." Calleb answered it. "That's what Raphael was thinking." He added.

"What is that supposed to mean? What are you trying to say?" Torak frowned. "The last time she was here, she looked pretty much alive to me."

"Yes, she is alive. But not the wolf inside her. Somehow it was no longer there." said Raphael, trying to explain. "An extremely rare case was found in the past, where the wolf of the lycan was no longer inside the body. It could be because of being killed, or any possible unknown extermination. But the strange thing about it was that the owner's body stayed alive."

Torak had never heard this kind of thing. "How could a lycan live without their wolf?"

The inner wolf of a lycan was like their own soul. What would happen if someone lost their soul? 

Not only Torak, Calleb and Raphael also confused with this tiny information that they just found. Because apart from that, there wasn't any record about it.

"Shifter without their inner beast…? Huh…?" Calleb was lost in his own thoughts, mumbling about how confusing the matter was.

"It's almost like they had sold their soul to the devil." Torak thought about it. It was the same method that was used to sell someone's soul to the devil. And in this case, it must be Belphegor who did it, since Jenedieth had mentioned him.

"What would happen if you sell your soul to the devil?" Calleb asked his Alpha.

"That person would be the devil's slave." Torak replied rigidly. 

That was why, no matter what Jenedieth would offer to him, in the end, she would put her loyalty on Belphegor. 

Everything had been neatly constructed. Belphegor must've thought that by doing all these—and on top of that, using Jenedieth—Torak would show some mercy on the female lycan whom he had known for decades.