Chapter One Hundred and Thirty Nine
I wondered how bad his parents might have beer for him to be ashamed of them. I knew Axel, maybe not as much as Thane did, but I know he was kind, even more than he would like to
admit.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you aren’t ready to.”
“No, I want you to know,” he insisted, and I was very curious to discover more about him. When I was younger, I thought I had the perfect family; my father was the Beta, and back then, the pack faced so many threats; he was always at war, so he was rarely around, but when he was… he spent his time on me.
I hadn’t realized how jealous my brother had been; I had been so caught up in my own stuff, I didn’t realize that he spent less time with his own mate and even lesser time with brother
my
Adrian.”
Axel had a brother; never once had he mentioned or talked about him, and that was indeed strange. There were so many questions on my mind, but I chose to keep silent until he was -done narrating.
“Adrian had been close to my mother; he was only three years younger than I was. I never really noticed how distant I and my mother were until the day the soldiers came back with the news that my father, The Beta, had died in the war. My father was the one person I had looked up to so much; I wanted to be like him; he taught me so much, and it had been sad, but that was only the beginning of it all. My mother stayed away from me, it was almost like I wasn’t even a part of the family. Things got worse; my mother became ill–famed, she was known in the pack as a… whore; no one called her that out loud, only out of respect for my father, but that was exactly what she was. I had tried talking to her one too many times, but she told me I wouldn’t understand; she believed Adrian was the only one who could understand her, and so… I let her be. That had been my mistake.
That day I was to pay a visit to the neighbouring pack, but there was a storm and we cancelled, postponing the trip to the next day. I had returned home only to discover my mother and my brother at it.”
I couldn’t hold back my gasp.
“Sick right?”
“I’m… I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to say.”
A surge of pity filled me; maybe that was why Thane and Axel had easily bonded; they had a lot in common; they both had really, really crappy parents.
“I had thought it had been my mother forcing my brother into having sex with her, but no. She said she loved him; she said she loved her own son and she wanted him, not all in a motherly way; she said she never cared about the sick old man that had been obsessed over his favourite son. I sometimes think it was my fault; if I hadn’t been so full of myself, I would
+25 BONUS
Chapter One Thundred
have noticed how lonely she was; she longed for companionship in the hands of the only one who could ‘understand her‘. And as twisted as it could be, my brother claimed to love her too. I think he is just plain stupid; he had been fed by all the lies she told him; he was totally brainwashed. That had been their secret; she had been openly flirting around to divert the whole pack’s attention away from their little abomination. I tried talking sense into them both, but they were determined.
I had threatened to banish them from the pack, not that I would, but I had wanted to put some sense into them; the next thing I knew, they were gone, they left no note telling me where they were off too, nothing.
I didn’t give up on them; I searched for them for a whole year and I found them; my brother had made a name in a new pack, far away, and they never did split up. My mother had begged me to leave them in peace; she said l’always took her happiness away, just as I did with my father; she said this was best for us all, and so I let them go, it was a lost cause.
“When was the last time you saw them?”
“Five years ago, when I–decided to let them be.”
“You know, it is not your fault; you did your best.”
“Sometimes I feel like blunting them off my life; that’s why I rarely speak about my family, my father had been a good man, but starting a conversation about him would inevitably lead to talking about my mother too. My mother never loved me, but that I could bear; what I couldn’t was the knowledge of what she was doing to Adrian; perhaps she had already borne him a child.”
“Axel, you do not have to blame yourself for anything; if she truly loved your father, then she would never have done this; the fact that she did only entails that she is indeed greedy and self -centred.”
“You are right, the only thing I blame myself for is not discovering it all earlier; if I had, then maybe I would have been able to save Adrian in the least.”
Chapter One Hundred and forty”
