Accepting My Twin Mates

Chapter 97

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 97

CHAPTER 94 – AN INTERNAL STRUGGLE?

Badru

Acting on a brief glimmer of common sense, I ran from the pack house through the main door, choosing not to follow my brother through the shards of glass still hanging precariously. Any other time, I would have taken a moment for self-congratulations that I had thought first and acted second, but given all that I had on my plate, self-congratulations were a world away.

It wouldn’t stop replaying in my head, over and over again against my will, ricocheting around my mind like a stray bullet in a metal can.

How had I never seen it?

All those signs; why he was so against Elan being in charge of our finances. How calm he was that Evie was our mate when our mother wanted to burn the house down. And most importantly, why it felt that, deep down, he thought Evie wouldn’t return… because he f*****g knew she wouldn’t.

I steadied myself on a tree that blurred past, the number of times my father had seen Astennu and me at our breaking point were too numerous to count. Did he feel guilty in the slightest, even once? All those looks of pity and commiseration… were they all fake?

There was no way he did this on his own. When it happened, he was with us at training, very happily letting us lead a troop full of warriors away from the scene and giving his accomplice an even greater head start. It had to be Finley. We may have been wrong that he was the ringleader, but we were spot on that he was involved. I knew it, without a doubt in my body, that chelb (dog) had played a part in this to take my nour el-ain.

This was why no one was allowed outside of the pack. Isaac knew there was no danger; an invention of his own making to look the part of a dutiful Alpha and to cover himself. Because he didn’t want us to go after Finley and discover the truth.

Which left me with the next sickening question: did Kate know what her son had done? A rogue had killed her youngest, but she hadn’t ever objected to rogues being welcomed into the pack, even petitioning Isaac to let them stay. She, too, had been banned from leaving the pack, from visiting Finley, but was it part of a cover? Damian had followed her and her mate and found nothing, and it wasn’t from lack of skill.

Had I made a monumental mistake in leaving her alone with the ledger and my mother?

‘If she’s involved, what’s she gonna do? Burn the evidence and erase our memories?’ Baniti rolled his eyes at me, pushing me forward to find our twin. ‘With all the best will in the world, there’s no covering any of this up.’

The bond with my brother grew stronger the closer I came. He had run clear past the lakes, leaving the mountain landmarks far behind, and all the way to the coastline of the pack. I huffed for breath after hours of running, cutting through the treeline that bordered the pebble beach. The snow had faded, retreating the closer I came to the coast. The gentle sounds of the lapping waves breaching the shore and the moonlight highlighting the whites of the surf drew my line of sight to the solitary figure loosely hugging their knees with their chin resting on top of folded arms.

The moonlight highlighted another detail, the dampness running down his face now that he shifted back to his human form, bare-ass, not caring for the frigid wind blowing in off of the sea.

His watch remained fixed on the dark horizon, giving no acknowledgement of my presence as I approached and sat by his side, keeping as close as I could to share what little benefit my warmth could provide.

“Cold not bothering you?”

He shook his head, his voice thick and rasping. “Don’t even feel it…”

I wasn’t sure what to say and the silence stretched, leaving us only with the sounds of waves breaking and trees rustling against the breeze.

“I brought that rogue in,” Astennu broke the sombre quiet, his pitch barely above that of the world around us. “I might as well have sold him into slavery myself. I never once questioned where any of them were sent. I just assumed they were either relocated, released, or sent back to their pack to face justice. I never once questioned anything, when I should have.”

“Neither did I,” I rolled on my chin resting on my wrists, angling my gaze to my brother. He continued to look out onto the ocean, stewing in his head. “Neither of us could even conceive that our father would do this. He played us, all of us. This is not on you. Please, don’t go down this road, blaming yourself. Not again.”

He had kicked himself for so long, thinking he was to blame for our mate’s abduction from right under our noses. Blame that should have been directed elsewhere, chiefly at the man that had implied it from the beginning.

“She was the only one who was ever really honest with us… Evie.”

Our mate’s name left him and with it a deep weight crushing both our insides, twisting them in our shared bond.

“Honest?” I echoed, a faint smile ghosting across my lips. “She practically slapped us across the cheek with her opinions.”

…And I loved it. If she had slapped me for real, I probably would have swooned.

Where others found her indifference and bluntness rude, I found it enchanting. I loved how she could cut me down with her tongue and her claws faster than a hot knife through butter. Just like she had when we were wrapped in our little world in our mountain lodge.

“We’re Alpha. We ask, we get.”

“Ok, rich boy on a power trip,” Evie had effortlessly popped my bubble. “Spare a thought for the poor person who would be pulled into work.”

I was on a power trip and I hadn’t spared a thought, but Evie did. She repeated constantly that she wasn’t friendly, that she wasn’t kind or nurturing, yet she worked every Solstice so that other pack members could celebrate with their families. She never celebrated one for herself and not a single person ever acknowledged it.

The one Solstice she should have had the freedom to celebrate, however she wanted as future Luna, had been stolen from her.

But it would be the last she missed.

“Let’s go home and figure out our next move,” I pushed myself up from the pebbles, noting that the sun would be replacing the moon in a few hours.

“Home,” Astennu scoffed bitterly. “That place isn’t home anymore and it hasn’t felt like it for a while. Our home is Evie…”

“We’re not gonna find her here,” I offered him my hand, tugging him to his feet. “You’ll need to shift. Unless you want to haul ass across the frozen pack, naked.”

I followed my brother, stripping first to shift with him. We took off in a kick-up of gravel behind us, the last remnants of moonlight streaming through the trees and disappearing as the minutes ticked by.

‘I think I kinda announced us as the reigning Alphas now,’ I kept up with my twin’s accelerated pace.

‘You think?’

‘I said it in the heat of the moment. I can’t be too logical. I do have my impulsive i***t persona to keep up.’

He huffled a short burst of laughter for the first time in a long time.

‘A smart impulsive idiot.’

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I clicked the door quietly behind us, not wanting to disturb any wolves or the few humans that lived on the floor. By the time we had arrived back at the pack house, the first soft shards of pale blue were poking over the mountain horizon. Astennu had wanted to march to the prison, uncaring that he would be naked, filthy and covered in blood, but what he needed was a warm shower to wash as much away as possible. And, while we were exhausted, neither of us would sleep a wink, not when we needed answers that only Isaac could provide.

But first, checking on our mother.

As soon as the door to the Alpha wing opened, our father’s scent hit us with no escape from it. Every good memory I had of our childhood, of our father reading to us at night and playing, chasing us through the house, was soiled. I wanted to throw up while a deep scowl twisted my brother’s face.

Our mother’s figure stood by the window, a blanket around her shoulders and a steaming mug in her hands. The damned ledger that I wanted to shred to pieces lay on the floor, upended as though our mother had thrown it after rereading the damned book to insanity.

“You’re back…” she croaked quietly, hastily setting her mug down to rush to us, only to stop abruptly at Astennu’s low growl.

Her already red-rimmed deep brown eyes brimmed with more tears that looked to sting her skin. “I swear, I didn’t know.”

“I don’t know what to think,” he grimaced. “I didn’t think that f*****g man would do this!”

“Aste-”

“No!” He snapped at me and turned his wrath on our mother. “You hated Evie. You even told us to reject her!”

“And I was wrong! I wanted to make amends as best I could. That’s why I wanted to get to know her. I always believed you’d find her again. That’s why I bought everything for the pup, so Evie had everything when you brought her home.”

“She wasn’t involved, Aste, and you know it,” I wasn’t used to being the peacekeeper, being more adept at rattling the cage. “You want to be angry at someone and you’re directing it at the wrong person.”

‘I feel very deep all of a sudden,’ Baniti puffed his chest out with some pride, even though they were my words, not his.

‘We have our moments when the brain cell dings.’

Our twin looked at war with himself, his cleaner-shaved features unhidden and warped in his internal argument with Aasim. He was never the one to erupt and act rashly, but he was the more expressive of the two of us; two sides that were now in a battle.

But how much of a battle would he be in for when we faced Isaac again?