“What about me?” His expression turned wary.
“I literally don’t know anything about you. I know you have a cousin, which I had mistaken for your intimate friend‘ once, and I also know that you are really close to Kaius, but that’s about it; you know for a very open person, you are quite secretive.” The observation had been building for some time.
“Maybe that’s because I am not proud of my family’s situation; that’s why I do not bring it up.”
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you aren’t ready to,” I offered.
He was quiet for a long moment, seemingly weighing his options. Then his gaze met mine, a decision made. “No, I want you to know.” He settled back into his chair, a faraway look entering his eyes. “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 my brother Adrian.”
I remembered him mentioning being banished, but never a brother. I remained silent, sensing he needed to tell this story in his own
way, at his own pace.
“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.” Pain flickered across his features, still raw despite the years. “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.”
Frost rose, moving to the window where he stared out at the pack grounds, his back to me as he continued. “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.”
His voice dropped lower, forcing me to lean forward to catch his words. “That day I was to pay a visit to the neighboring 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.”
The implication struck me like a physical blow. “I’m… I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to say.” The words felt inadequate against the horror of what he’d witnessed.
“Sick right?” He turned back to face me, his expression carefully controlled despite the anguish in his eyes.
“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 favorite son.” The bitterness in his voice was palpable.
le longed for “I sometimes think it was my fault; if I hadn’t been so full of myself, I would have noticed how lonely she v 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.”
I wanted to reach for him, to offer comfort, but something in his rigid posture held me back. This wasn’t a story he’d shared before –perhaps with anyone–and interrupting felt wrong.
“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.”
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Chapter 149
His hands clenched at his sides, the only visible sign of the emotion he was carefully keeping in check. ‘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 I always took her happiness away, just as I did with my father; the 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?” I asked gently, my heart aching for the young man who had lost not only his father but, in a far more disturbing way, his mother and brother as well.
“Five years ago, when I–decided to let them be.” The slight hesitation in his voice suggested there was more to the story, but f didn’t press.
“You know, it is not your fault; you did your best.” I finally rose from my chair, moving to stand beside him at the window.
“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.” His gaze remained fixed on the horizon, as if the answers to his pain might be found there. “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.
The thought made my stomach turn. “Frost, 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–centered.”
“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.” The regret in his voice was heartbreaking.
Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him, offering the only comfort I could. After a moment of surprise, he returned the embrace, his body relaxing slightly as if releasing a burden long carried.
“I needed this,” he murmured against my hair.
“Thank you for letting me into your life. I feel like I had been selfish for never really asking all this time.” I pulled back slightly to meet his gaze.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Let’s go to the gardens; this is a place I go to clear my mind and it’s literally the most beautiful place in the pack.”
I nodded, grateful for the change of subject. “I’d like that.”
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