Novel Palace
Chapter 17 - Mira and Nikolaos
Chapter 17 - Mira and Nikolaos
13:50 PM
/“I’ll send Josef on an errand and take Nikolaos away for the day. At exactly 2 PM, the warriors switch
out patrols and the camera room will be left empty for about three minutes.”/
Josef has healed and even with extra patrols around, I can see them all itching to switch out patrols
already. True to his word, Maxim has taken Nikolaos out for the afternoon; I saw their car leaving about
five minutes ago.
One thing Alpha Nikolaos didn’t think about when he told everyone to stay away from the pack house,
was the fact that no one knows how I look. So, dressed to leave, I wait for 2 pm to hit before I walk
downstairs.
I thought about it and if I want no one else to get hurt through this, then I need to go. I cannot be here
to put them all in danger. For all I know, Maxim might go straight to Mikhail and tell him I am here.
That would immediately take Nikolaos out of the equation.
14:00 PM
/“Three blocks away from the little town is an abandoned warehouse; you’ll find a gym bag filled with
fifty thousand in cash, a plane ticket to Italy, and a new identity.”/
Dressed in black leggings, a black t-shirt, and trainers, I scale the boundary gate like a cat, making
sure no one sees me. The second I am out of the gate, I make a run for the warehouse with the hope
that no one spots me.
Out of breath and keeping to the shadows, a stitch develops in my side but I do not slow down. I can’t
afford to let anyone see me right now, they’re all SilverCrest wolves and I am dead once I’m caught.
The warehouse Maxim spoke about is up ahead and a smile breaks across my face. There’s no other
person in sight, so when I finally reach it, I stop to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my brow.
Freedom is a few steps away.
I slide the lock from the warehouse and walk inside, spotting the black duffel bag over to the left. My
heart is sitting in my throat but a sense of relief hits me so hard that I can feel tears pricking my eyes.
But even as I get on my haunches and open the duffel bag, spotting the money, plane ticket, and new
identity, something feels off. My escape was way too easy, especially considering the pack house was
attacked two days ago.
Why would Alpha Nikolaos not station another bodyguard outside my door? In fact, why would he allow
Josef to go out on an errand if he’s healing?
“I guess it’s true, then,”
His voice sends a shiver of fear up my spine and I jump to my feet without turning around. How does
he know I’m here? Did he follow me all this time? Was my freedom just a mirage?
“And they call me the heartless fucking bastard,” Maxim’s amused voice follows Alpha Nikolaos’ and I
slowly turn around to face them both.
“I told you, a small sacrifice was needed and this was it,” the Alpha says in a cold tone.
Maxim is wearing a smirk, whereas Alpha Nikolaos is standing with his hands in the pockets of his
slacks. He has a look of anger and disappointment in his crimson eyes, and I nearly falter being under
his gaze.
I take a step back. “What-”
“What are we doing here? Was that what you were about to ask, Mia?” Alpha Nikolaos says and I
frown before looking back at Maxim.
Why is he still calling me Mia?
Alpha Nikolaos walks towards me with a murderous look in his eyes. “I think the real question is, where
the fuck do you think you’re going, Omega?”
He glares at me, pinning me with that cold stare that sends a shiver up my spine. What is he expecting
me to say, that I wasn’t planning to escape? “Or rather, where the fuck do you think you’re going with
my heir?”
Oh, no. No, no, no, no! I am in big trouble! There is no way I am getting out of this alive!
“I…I don’t understand. Maxim-”
“I asked Maxim here to set up a trap for you, something that would give you away immediately,” Alpha
Nikolaos says. My heart sinks even further….this was his idea, not Maxim’s.
“He tells me he set this up because he threatened to expose you, the real you. He said he threatened
to tell me who you really were and the fact that you’re attached to Mikhail and know his secrets,” he
then moves close to my face.
“He said if you take the bait, you’re guilty. Is that right, Omega? Do you know something I don’t?”
I look wide-eyed at Maxim and realize he didn’t know a damn thing about me. “You called me by my
real name!” I exclaim, to which he chuckles.
“I overheard you chastising yourself and using the name Mirabella; it was a guess,” Maxim says while
rolling his eyes. “We don’t fucking know who you are since your records are completely erased. We
made a calculated guess and it turned out to be correct.”
The gravity of my situation hits me and I nearly sink to my knees; this was a trap set up for me. They
don’t really know who I am… They made a guess and they were right.
Taking another step back, I shake my head, “N-no, that wasn’t the reason I left!” I exclaim, knowing it’s
all futile. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt! I didn’t want Josef-”
Alpha Nikolaos chuckles and nudges Maxim. “She was trying to protect Josef, are you hearing this?”
Maxim nods. “Oh, sure she has a bleeding heart right now, but let us be realistic. The look of fear when
I threatened to tell Niko what I supposedly know, how you reacted when I called you Mikhail’s cumbag -
they all add up.”
“Exactly,” the Alpha says, then gestures with his hands. Two men step out of the shadows, one of them
an angry-looking Josef. “Take her to the SUV.”
“No! Wait!” I exclaim as they grab me from behind, but Alpha Nikolaos is no longer looking at me.
“Gag her, I don’t want any screaming on the way home,”
“Yes, Alpha,” they say in unison as duct tape gets slapped over my mouth and my hands are bound
behind my back.
I try to wriggle free and will the Alpha to look at me, but to no avail. I made a big mistake, I left thinking I NôvelDrama.Org owns this.
would be keeping everyone safe, only for me to end up a prisoner in another Alpha’s pack house.
What am I going to do?!
***
Nikolaos
/“You’re a heartless fucking bastard, you know that? And here they all think I’m the bad one.”/
/“I used to think you weren’t like him, but you’re every bit as heartless,”/
Both Maxim and Ariadne called me heartless in one day, and I agree with them. I do what needs to be
done while looking like my hands aren’t dirty. Maxim looks like the one who is always out to get me, but
he’s as loyal as they come.
They know our history and assume Maxim wants the title of Alpha; we use that to the fullest extent to
weed out the fakes and backstabbers.
This is how we’ve fooled countless people who want me dead, this is why I keep my circle small.
“I almost feel sorry for her,” Maxim says as we listen to Josef and Sam drag her away. “She looked
surprised to see us here, so that means she trusted my threats.”
“It needed to be done,” I reminded him again. “She knows something about Mikhail she’s trying to hide
from me and I am going to find out what it is. I just fucking wish we’d done this before I chose her as
my fucking surrogate.”
Maxim chuckles and picks up the duffle bag. “Gotta admit, she’s a survivor, though. Makes you wonder
what the fuck that bastard put her through,” he says, picking up the bag.
I don’t want to wonder, that would mean that I care and after what she made me feel the other night, I
know that I have zero fucking room for those emotions. A woman can easily manipulate you with a look
or a touch, and pretending to be vulnerable.
I won’t fucking allow that again.
That Rogue the other night wasn’t sent by Mikhail, and I have a sneaky fucking suspicion it's the
Elders’ work. They never wanted me to succeed; they wanted me to fucking fail. Now I have even more
reason to hate them.
I just need to kill Mikhail, then I’ll deal with them.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft for those brown eyes,” I growl, but Maxim simply chuckles.
“Not as soft as you went for them the other night, asshole,” he says, biting me right the fuck back.
He was the one who told me Mia, or rather Mirabella, was making me soft…and he was right. I ripped
that Rogue apart so badly that you could barely make out his face. For all we know it could have been
one of our own since they had SilverCrest blades.
But I allowed my emotions, my rage, to cloud my judgment. Now we’re back to square fucking one.
“Let’s go home, we have an Omega to question,” I say and walk out to the two SUVs outside the
warehouse.
She had an opportunity to come clean, she had all the time in the world to tell me what she knew.
Instead, she tries to play up to my emotions, pretending to be helpless and knowing exactly what she
does to men.
Things would have been so much easier if she just told me who she was; she wouldn’t have been my
surrogate but I would have offered her the freedom she wanted.
When Maxim told me what she called herself, I knew she was lying. Then he decided to play good wolf
/ bad wolf to see what she would do and she chose the easy way out.
/“You couldn’t have known, old friend. She deceived us both,”/ Knox laments. I know he liked her and
dare I fucking say, that I liked her too. I touched her and felt no disgust...it was different but now I know
her game.
This should teach me not to trust innocent, warm brown eyes… Now I’ll have to break that innocence I
used to find so alluring.
“What do you think she means to Mikhail?” Maxim asks when I start the SUV.
I shrug. “They followed her over my boundary, that should say a lot already. I’m not going to speculate
anymore, that Omega needs to come clean herself.”
Maxim remains quiet after this, I think he can sense the anger coming from me. I have never felt so
fucking betrayed before, not by someone I tried to help. Mia better has an answer for me, or there will
be hell to fucking pay.