Page 70 of The Alpha's Broken Oath

The pain from seven years ago hits my chest a hundredfold as I stare at my brother again. I saw the remains. I received condolences from my pack because the family I knew was dead.

I’m frantic, I’m dehydrated from all the crying since last night, and my mind still doesn’t come to terms with the reality in front of me.

“I never had a choice, Win. He didn’t give me a choice,” Jacob says in a cryptic tone.

Seven years later, we’ve both changed.

I have kids.

My brother? The Goddess wasn’t merciful to him. He has red scars on his face, most of them running from his forehead all the way down to his upper lip.

The brother I knew has grown into a man. His hair is longer and requires a trim, an ungroomed stubble peppers his chin, and in his eyes, gone is the light that I used to find comfort in and get annoyed by all at the same time.

“Mom? Dad? Are they…are they alive, too?”

I can only hope.

“No. He made sure to kill them, too.”

“Jake, I don’t understand. He who? Who is he?”

“The fire, Win. It was a trap. They locked us in, and made sure that we couldn’t get out. They poured wolfsbane around the house to weaken us, Winter. Mom, Dad, me… we couldn’t shift. Mom was the first one to perish in the fire. She screamed for my help, for Dad’s help, but we couldn’t do anything. I…I couldn’t do anything. Dad saw mom die, and he gave up.”

There’s no putting a stop to the hot rivulet of tears cascading down my cheeks. I sob even harder than I did that night because listening to how they actually died brings in the mental image of how they suffered.

My mother was a good woman. She did not deserve that kind of death, and the fact that she got killed just like I told the pack seven years ago makes me angrier and more vengeful.

Maybe I should have fought harder for my parents’ justice. I should have fought to avenge the cruel way my parents were taken from me.

“I told Dad we had to leave, but he gave up. I remember screaming his name, and then I remember the smoke choking me and taking my air away. The fire…I can still feel it.”

I pat his shoulder, but that will not erase everything he went through. I want to say a lot to him and apologize for not being there to help him get out of the fire. Apologize for the gnawing scars on his face and probably on the parts of his body that I can’t see.

But at the end of the day, nausea for what he went through strangles me. Tears choke my throbbing throat. It’s hard to even speak.

Disgust and white-hot anger for the people who did that to him, to our family blaze like an eternal inferno inside of me.

All the pain. All the anguish I feel is somehow sated by the fact that my brother is here. Those monsters didn't take him away from me.

He’s here now, and that's all that matters.

My brother is alive.

“The next time I woke up, I was alone. The person who had rescued me told me Mom and Dad were already dead and buried, and you had disappeared. Winter, he tore our family apart, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

I should ask who rescued him.

I should ask how he found us and where he's been all this time but I focus on the one thing burning the tip of my tongue.

But my main concern is the mastermind of the fire. Who was that cruel to take away the only people I loved away from me? Who could have been that cruel to murder such innocent people in such a barbaric way, like using wolfsbane to make sure they never shifted and really died in that fire?

“Who? Jake, who was responsible for the fire? Who are you referring to as “he’?”

Pain radiating from his face alone, my brother looks at me, his gaze hard and so convinced of the words spilling out of his mouth.

“Deacon Cross.”

My feet stagger backward as I shake my head with a “no” so sure I heard him wrong.

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