Chapter 256
Chapter 256
Dane.
“You see it too, right? I mean you have to. You are our older brother. You are his Alpha.” Raven is leaning on my desk, staring at me with her dark eyes while Damien has his hands on her hips, trying to calm her down.
“Which one do you think it is? It can’t be both. He can’t be trapped and trying to kill his Wolf’s spirit.”
“What if it is both?” Mallory mutters from the chair in the corner. She rises to her feet and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her brows are almost knitted together. “Like a weird cry for help. He knows that his Wolf and Raven’s Wolf are twins. What if it’s his way of asking for help? What if he is doing it in a way that means Blair doesn’t know.”
“That!” Raven points at Mallory as she glares at me. “That is what I mean.”
“Raven….” Damien starts.
“No. I love you Damien, but I am not giving up on him yet. My gut is telling me this is wrong. He is skin and bones. He speaks differently, yet uses familiar terms, he even laughs differently.” She pleads with me.
“Jenson chose to mark her.”
“It’s not like you have never made a mistake, is it? Are you forgetting about all those women that you dragged into contracts before Neah came along?” She snaps, smacking her palm against my desk. “And what about if things changed after that?”
I see Damien cock an eyebrow at me.
I lean back in my chair to look at her. She had pleaded with me over the years for all sorts of things. But nothing like right now.
“You’re the Alpha.” Damien mutters. “Your decision.”
My brother had caused so many problems over the years. I had bailed him out on multiple occasions when he had fucked up or gotten himself into trouble. For years I had put up with his excuses, letting them slide over my head until my mate walked into my life. And even now, he is still getting himself into shit situations. He hadn’t learned anything.
“He’s hurt too many people.”
Tears spill down Raven’s face. “You promised. You promised that you would look after us. You promised mum and dad.”
“Raven, he isn’t a kid anymore. He hasn’t been a kid for a long time. Sometimes, the decisions we make will live with us for the rest of our lives.”
“So what you are saying is that you are giving up?”
I sigh and fold my arms across my chest.
“She’s killing him. I don’t know what she is doing to him, but she is killing him.” She shakes Damien off of her hips and storms out of the room. Damien follows her as she stomps up the stairs which is followed by multiple doors slamming shut.
“She loves him.” Mallory mutters.
“I know. He is her brother.”
“He is more than that.” She frowns “I know it’s complicated and I know you are probably going to tell me to keep my mouth shut. But even you must see that he should have woken long before you chucked him in the dungeon. Wolves can heal just as quickly as us and those with Alpha blood, even quicker. But he didn’t, which is weird in itself.”
She blows out her cheeks. “I’m a watcher, Dane. I like watching people. I like learning how people work, how they hide things. It’s something that I’m good at, most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
“Yeah, though trying to read Neah is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
I laugh, because it was true.
“Something just isn’t adding up.”
“You took her mate. That’s why she shifted.”
She cocks a brow. “I don’t think so.”
“Damien said you were pushing her.”
“She had already shifted long before then. Probably the moment she realised that me and…. That I put Jenson in the car.”
I cock a brow at her, she was trying so hard to keep her mates identity a secret. Though I’m pretty sure I know who it is.
“I already know you had help, Mallory. Honestly, I’m not bothered who you are mated too as long as you don’t try to kill him.”
“What if he tries killing me?”
“Has he?”
She scrunches up her face like she has said too much.
“That’s how you ended up with the mark on your stomach and not your neck?”
She nods. “He has been ignoring it for a while and just snapped. He attacked and somewhere along the lines, he claimed me.”