Page 121 of Claimed By My Fiancé's Brother

“It’s…cold.”

I heard Alexander yell my name, but it felt distant, and my eyes refused to stay open.

Then everything went dark and blissfully silent.

CHAPTER 20

ALEXANDER

Iwas nine years old when I discovered what it truly meant to be a Hawthorne.

Werewolves usually got their wolves when they turned thirteen, but I’d had the monster as far back as I could remember.

I’d felt that presence within me pushing and pushing, until one day I pushed back and shattered everything.

Father’s treasured glass replica of our pack’s boundaries laid in pieces at our feet.

“You didn’t see anything, did you?” I asked Dylan’s tutor, and the man’s jaw clenched, anger sparking to life in his clear brown eyes.

But beneath that anger, I easily detected the undercurrent of fear.

He was a mature wolf, and I was only a child barely half his height, yet he was terrified, and he didn’t know why.

I knew why, but at that moment, I was more focused on the broken replica.

If Father found out Dylan had broken the replica, the beating he’d given him last time would be child’s play.

“Alex,” Dylan’s soft, broken voice came from behind me. “I’m scared.”

Dylan was barely five years old. I was his older brother, so I had to keep him safe…by any means possible.

With only that thought in mind, I let go.

I blacked out.

When I came to, Father was in the study and Dylan was crouched next to me, his cheeks red and tear-streaked, and the tutor…the tutor lay lifeless on the floor, without a single mark on his body save for a nosebleed.

I’d later found out I’d crushed his mind with my thoughts alone.

My first kill, at only nine years old.

Father was proud. Ecstatic, even.

That was the day he told us about my legacy and my curse.

I realized two things that day, as whatever I had left of my childhood was ripped from me.

The first was that I was never going to be a good Hawthorne.

The second? I would never use that gift again.

But I did use it—again and again.

Father raised me to be an alpha who’d eclipse his own older brother’s legacy. He forced me to hone my “talent” and control over the monster, using Dylan as leverage toencouragemy learning process.

I hated him, but I did as he commanded until the day I knew no one could stand against me.

That day, I pinned Father to the wall of his study and tendered my resignation as alpha heir of the Nightshade Pack.

---