BETA TIM’S POV “And for you, Mildrid, for all the atrocities that you have done, you will rot and be eaten by termites to the very last piece of your bone,” the queen said. It was all like magic to me. First, it was Luesa and Eval, I watched them turn to dust and vanished into thin air, and now she wants to take Mildrid too. I don’t care how anyone wants to look at it, but I know that the next would be me. I am her father and there is no denying that. However, it would have been better if she should take my life but I doubt she would want to. She wouldn’t take the lives of her brothers even when she had every reason to, more less that of her father. She is a very jealous queen and this fact is obvious for all to see. She wants only loyalists with her, she doesn’t allow any form of opposition. She will definitely see me as an opposition to her throne. With the extent that I have gone to reclaim our Packs, anyone should see me as an opposition. Since she would not want my blood on her hands, she would decide to turn me away. She would send me off to the woods, to a distant land where none would want to talk to me. No Pack would want to harbor a beta with a crime as grievous as treason, especially not one done against the great and fearsome queen of Pixolands. At last, I would have no other alternative but to turn rogue. Me, beta Tim, a rogue? That is unbelievable, it can never happen. Not even with a sword placed between my throats would I agree to that. Soon, Mildrid screamed and dropped dead on the floor before my very eyes. Now she looked old and wrinkled. She looked nothing like herself, right before me is a woman that has every single day she had lived telling on her. Indeed, she was a gory sight to behold. “My lady” I screamed. I could not bear to look at her, but I could not take away my eyes from her. Now I know exactly what to do, I must end this before the queen makes any verdict on me. I must die a free werewolf. I must die an honorable beta of our prestigious Pack as it is better to die free than to live a hundred years as a rogue. Having decided on what to do I grabbed the knife in my pocket and held it to my throat. I am going to take my life right before all present. Right here and now, I will end it all and it will happen before I am proclaimed a criminal. With the knife on my throat, I thought to myself. ‘It has been my ego from the very start and now I die by it. I went to the witch, I started the war, and I brought this upon us all. I wish I can say that I am sorry but sorry I can't’I was about to push the knife into my throat when I heard Scarlet scream, finally acknowledging me as her father. “Father...” she called with her hands held out to me from where she stood. Father... do I really deserve that from her, have I done anything to take on such a title from the queen. Maybe she was going to let me go, maybe she was going to wipe off my sins and give me a second chance at life, maybe she was willing to give me the privilege to be the father that I have never been to her, maybe she needs me now that she has a huge responsibility on her shoulders. But would I be able to go on even after Mildrid is no more? I know she has been selfish all along, but she is the one person that has truly understood me and made me almost achieve something that I would never have dared to dream of. Thus, I am better off with Mildrid. She is dead now and I must join her too. “Tim...” I heard Patricia’s scream and then I landed on the floor with a heavy thud. I already slashed the knife through my throat, and the blood gushing out was like an endless flow of the river. I made sure that the slice was deep enough to prevent any chance of resuscitation. I want to go, and should be allowed to go be with the one person that gave my life meaning even when it felt like I was already surrounded by darkness. “Father...” As I breathed my last, I was hearing the rumbling noises around me and so I opened my eyes for the last time, and surrounding me were the members of my household, Patricia, Sam, Carl, Hadrick, and Dawn. I am sorry if I failed them, but I have discovered a different meaning to life, one that is contrary to what I had taught them all these years. With my eyes closed again, I said the final goodbye to them in my mind. And to Scarlet, I give her the blessings of a father and wish her a glorious reign. If I can, I will protect her even in death. My prayer is that she finds it in her heart to forgive every other member of our family. I breathed my last, and then I was no more. SCARLET’S POV What was he thinking? I was never going to be a judge to him. I know he was terrible as a father to me, but he was one person in the mansion that never completely gave up on me. He was never the best, but he tried as much as he could to make my wolf and me stronger. Of course, I know that all this he did for his ego as he would not want to present a completely incapacitated werewolf as his daughter, but there is no denying the fact that his actions gave me the push I needed. “Father...” I cried to him as I saw him hold the knife to his throat in a suicide attempt.He was the one that brought Rich to me even when I never believed I could throw a punch at anyone. He did not stop the family seamstress from making clothes for me as part of the family. I might not have been told, but I know that it was a part of his benevolence. He allowed me into the school of the elites in the Pack. This would not have been so if in a part of his heart, he did not still want to one day recognize me as his daughter. He was one person that would not try to deride me for standing up for myself. On the contrary, he applauds me whenever such happens. All he ever wanted was a daughter with a beta wolf, or at least an ordinary one. And I am sorry that I failed him back then, but he should have known that it was no fault of mine. He should have fully accepted me just the same way I was willing to fully accept him with every fault in him. I stretched forth my hands to him in the hope that he would see through me and not go on with his decision but no, he was having none of it. Soon he was lying on the floor in his pool of blood. I could not believe or understand what had just happened. How could a father that had taught me the value of strength all through my life be a coward to take his own life? My tears could flow no more. He is gone and there is no having him back. He left at the point that I felt I could show him just how strong I have become. I wanted to make him watch me just so I could see the pride in his eyes. Or maybe I did not let him see my true intent. Maybe if I had been a little nicer to him all this while he would have longed to stay with me a little longer. “Daughter” I looked to where the call had come from and saw that it was ma Patricia. As I saw her I had this heaviness in my heart. Deep down somewhere, I wished she was the one instead of my father. She was never a mother to me in any sense of the word. I turned my face away from her as she has no right to refer to me as her daughter. I might have an egoistic father, but I never had a mother. “Don’t worry, mother, I know that one day she will see you as her mother. This might take forever, but it will happen someday” I heard Dawn whisper to her ears and lead her away. Dawn is right. Ma Patricia might as well wait forever to see that day come.