Page 110 of Claimed By My Fiancé's Brother

“Bernard, my ancestor, aspired to usurp the alpha of that pack. After he tried to assassinate him, he failed and barely managed to escape with his life.”

I wondered what Dylan hoped to achieve by telling me this run-of-the-mill werewolf pack origin story.

But more importantly, my mind was still hung up on the fact that Alexander wasdying.

I’d suspected he was hiding something, but I’d never expected this. I certainly didn’t accept it.

Was this why he’d been so intent on pushing me away? Did he think by making me hate him, he could prevent me from being heartbroken by his death?

Goddess, I was mated to an idiot.

We could have been spending all our time together trying to find a cure or a solution, and instead we’d wasted it fighting each other.

This was all my fault. I should’ve uncovered this sooner.

Dylan’s story took a turn that made my thoughts pause long enough to register his words.

“While he was on the run, Bernard met a priestess. A piety, if you can believe it.”

Pieties were a legend. No one was sure they really existed.

They had a direct connection to the Moon Goddess that made them so powerful they could bend the laws of reality. But due to that connection with the Goddess, they couldn’t utilize any offensive powers.

It was how they’d managed to be hunted to extinction—or so the legends claimed.

“Bernard saved her life, and she offered him a boon in exchange—anything he wanted. Bernard asked for power. For the strength he’d lacked when he tried to usurp his alpha. Strength to take down any foe that stood in his path. He wanted to be unopposable. Undefeatable. Insurmountable.”

An image of Alexander popped into my mind as Dylan described the attributes Bernard had asked for.

Dylan was still speaking.

“She agreed to a generational pact, warning that it would come at a great cost, as all such things do, but Bernard could’ve cared less. He was a true Hawthorne, after all.”

Dylan’s face was set in a strange mix of pride and condemnation as he said those words, and once more, I a chill raced up my spine.

“Bernard returned to his pack, challenged his alpha to a duel, and won. And so for generations, every Hawthorne firstborn son inherited the alpha position, the great pact, and its great cost, while expanding the family’s power and pack boundaries until we became who we are today.”

Allthe Hawthorne firstborn sons?

Realization about why Dylan was telling me this began to creep in.

Alexander was a firstborn son.

A firstborn son born with inhuman strength. Who had initially inherited the alpha position. Who healed faster than I thought possible. Whose reputation as the dark alpha had reached me long before I met him.

The misnomer had come about because of how he’d step onto a battlefield and paralyze his enemies with an unending wave of dominance while he cut them down mercilessly, drenching himself in their blood.

Then I met him, and while he’d been sarcastic and condescending and demeaning, I’d never seen that part of him.

Dylan’s lips were at my ear, and I couldn’t recall when he’d moved so close.

“Do you want to know what the great cost was, Eleanor?”

My stomach flipped. No. I already had an idea.

There would be no cure for Alexander because this wasn’t an ailment—it was a curse.

“The firstborn sons of the Hawthorne family couldn’t live beyond thirty years,” Dylan said. “And Alexander turns thirty in less than two months.”

---