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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.