Alexander looked like he had been sculpted from stone—but not in a way that inspired awe.His face, weathered and deeply lined, bore no traces of noble hardship, no echoes of sacrifice or valor.The creases around his mouth and eyes didn’t speak of battles fought with honor—they spoke of cruelty.Of blood spilled without remorse.
I didn’t need to know the stories.
I could feel the malice emanating from his very skin.
Whatever personal losses Alexander had endured, he had let them twist him, shaping him into something monstrous.Something beyond redemption.
And now, I stood before him.
A wolf in a borrowed name.
And he had no idea that I had come to bury him.
His long, dark hair fell past his shoulders in an untamed mass, tied carelessly at the nape of his neck.It might have lent another man the air of a battle-hardened warrior, but on Alexander, it only deepened the unease he exuded.I imagined it coming loose in the heat of combat, framing that cruel face in wild, unbound strands—a beast unleashed.
But his hair was the least of it.
It was his eyes that spoke the most.
Icy-blue.Glacial and bitter.Yet utterly devoid of warmth.There was no grief in them, no hint of mourning for his slain sons, no lingering sorrow for the lives he had crushed beneath his heel.
Only rage.
A seething, unflinching rage.
The kind that didn’t just ignite in moments of fury but thrived in destruction.The kind that fed on suffering.
Thomas Alexander wasn’t a man who fought for honor, nor did he kill out of duty.
He fought because he relished it.
“Lord Hassan?”His voice broke through the silence, crisp and edged with something unreadable.He extended his hand.
“Yes,” I replied, gripping it firmly.“I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
The pressure between us was a silent battle.His jaw clenched, his expression a mask of cold civility, but I could feel the violence barely contained beneath it.
This was not silent strength—this was a killer’s patience.
I recognized it.The way a wolf watches its dinner, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Alexander moved with planned grace; his every step was calculated.He wasn’t just a man who commanded soldiers—he commanded fear.And he reveled in it.
His noble attire was nothing more than a well-crafted disguise.Beneath the pristine lines of his vest and fold of his shirt lurked a man who thrived on violence—not a warrior forged by hardship, but a pillager who wore civility like armor.I could see him on a battlefield—not for honor, but for the thrill.His coat flaring behind him, steel carving through flesh without hesitation.No bloodied straps or battered scars marked his legacy.He didn’t need them.His power was in the cruelty masked behind polish.
His clothes bore no stains of war, yet they reeked of it.
Not burden.Not memory.
Triumph.
Time had hardened Lord Alexander, but not how it should have.There was no wisdom etched into the lines of his face, no quiet strength learned from suffering.Only bitterness.Cruelty.A mask of hardened hatred had consumed whatever he once was, leaving behind nothing but a man who thrived on the misery of others.
Alexander’s resolve had not been forged by hardship—it had been sharpened by the desire to inflict it.
I felt no respect as I stared at him—no grudging acknowledgment of strength, no recognition of a fellow warrior.
Only revulsion.
