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 inmon; 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


    Chapter One Thundred


    have noticed how lonely she was; she longed forpanionship in the hands of the only one who could ''understand her''. And as twisted as it could be, my brother imed to love her too. I think he is just in 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 thest 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 me 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 me 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"