Page 18
Story: May the Wolf Die
He scowled and spit on the ground. “Family? Mar, you’re mysister, and I will always love you, but our parents… Mom did nothing but lie and manipulate us, and Dad abandoned us. They suppressed our biology, kept us from our culture and our people. And for what?”
“Safety!” I shot back. “They were scared. And now it doesn’t even amount to anything, because it looks like whoever they were trying to hide us from got their hooks into you anyway. Our parents sacrificed so much for us, and you threw it back in their faces.”
“You think they sacrificed?” he bellowed. “No,wesacrificed, because they were too stubborn and stupid to understand what we were born for. Do you want to know why I never dated back in high school?”
He pulled his pants back down, gesturing towards his genitals, and I shut my eyes. “I’m an alpha, Marlowe! When puberty kicked in and I grew a knot, I had no fucking idea what was happening to me! I tried to talk to Mom about it. I was afraid I had cancer or something. But instead, she told me I couldnevertalk about it,neverbe naked in front of anyone, andneverhave a girlfriend. And you…”
I opened my eyes slightly, then turned back to face him once I saw his pants were back up. “Do you think it’s okay that Mom told me I had to be prepared to fight grown men off you? That you had a condition that made you irresistible to some people and it was my job to make sure they never touched you? And that I couldn’t even tell you about it? I was a teenager, for fuck’s sake! And then she forced you on those pills, Moons know how they’ve affected your body after taking them for so long.”
His heavy breathing created little puffs of steam in the cold air, his chest heaving in anger, while my own began to deflate. Why hadn’t I connected the dots yet? Of course Ezra had been an alpha, and no wonder he was so depressed, refusing to date anyone back in high school. And those creeps who’d started showing up when I was a teenager… I guess it hadn’t been just my boobs this whole time.
It was all making sense now. An alpha, constantly on edge and without a pack, driven and ordered to protect his sister but he didn’t know why. And it must have killed him to turn down girls constantly while watching me date half the school. To see me so happy and adjusted while he was clueless about who and what he was.
He was my twin, and while I had sensed his anguish back then, I had naively brushed it off as typical teenage angst. How could I have been so blind?
A cold wind blew straight through me, and I shivered despite my warm, heavy coat. “Ez… I didn’t know that’s what growing up was like for you,” I said softly. “And I realize you couldn’t exactly talk to me about it.”
His shoulders lowered a bit. “I don’t blame you. Even if I got frustrated with how much easier it was for you to live like a human than me, I still loved you.”
My lower lip trembled. “Then why did you leave me? After all these years, you couldn’t have even texted or emailed me to let me know you were okay? Why fake your death and…”
Ezra pulled me back in for a hug, his warmth radiating off his bare chest, and he chuckled. “Phones don’t exactly work in Vespera.”
“Vespera?” I asked. “Is that the name of the commune? Is it in the mountains or something?”
He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back, lowering his face to mine. “Why do you keep calling it a commune?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “That was what the guys call them. The fundamentalist shifter communities that…”
“Marlowe,” he interrupted. “I wasn’t living in the woods with a bunch of Mormon shifters. I was in Vespera, where all shifters and vampyrs came from originally.”
“Originally?”
“Yes, did you really think shapeshifters and bloodsuckers just evolved from humans?”
“I…”
He laughed again, that patronizing look back on his face. “Oh, Marlowe, you don’t even know! Vespera is our ancestral homeland, it’s a whole other world. It’s where magic comes from. We’re not just shifters, we’re a type of fae.”
My mind raced, and my eyes flickered nervously between Ezra’s as his excitement grew. It sounded crazy. Helookedcrazy. “Fae? What are you talking about?”
He took his hand off my shoulder and held it out in front of me. A small light began to glow from his palm, a flame growing in the darkness. It turned to blue ice, then melted into a ball of water, floating and undulating in midair. Finally, it burst into vines, crawling up his arm like snakes.
My jaw dropped as I watched the vines vanish into nothing, and I gasped. “What the hell?”
He grinned, his face finally reminding me of the Ezra I’d grown up with. It was the face he’d make when he’d beat me inMario Kart, or had gotten a better grade than me on a test. “This is nothing, simple tricks. You’re going to learn to do all this and more when youcome back with me.”
Oh boy, did he really think I was going off with him to cuckoo-ville? I shook my head. “Ez, slow down. What are you talking about?”
He continued, his voice full of excitement. “King Alaroth, he’s been looking for us ever since Mom and Dad left for Earth, when he discovered she was pregnant with twins. We’re the keys, we’re going to help him finally unite the realms and…”
Ezra jolted upright and snarled, looking behind me.
“Because you’re her brother, and we owe you for your help with the vamps, we’re going to let you run off now. But Marlowe is staying here, and you’re never to come back again.”
Camden’s commanding order cut through the stillness of the night, shaking snow that still clung to the bare branches above us. I turned around to face him, but Ezra grabbed me tightly and replied. “And while I appreciate everything you’ve done to protect her so far, just know that she was never meant for you. When the time comes, she will be taken by the king, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
My pack fanned out, stretching and rolling their shoulders, preparing to shift and fight.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18 (Reading here)
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191