Page 3 of Rogue If You Want To
“I ordered to see you, Otto. I ordered to see you ten minutes ago. Now hurry up and get in the center.”
His mood was worse than I feared. Fabulous.
I threw my clothes off and got in the ring he had laid out in stone for us when we were barely toddling. I wasn’t in the mood for this, but I had to be careful. If my father saw me throwing it, the repercussions would be grim.
All I needed to do was buy time. Buy time until I could figure a way for us to get out of this mess. I refused to fight my brother to the death, and the only way to prevent it was to get out before that day came.
My brother wanted to be Alpha more than he wanted a mate, more than he wanted riches, more than he even wanted his prized motorcycle. To him, power was a drug. He wanted it so badly that it impacted every single aspect of his life. It was sad more than anything.
I often wondered what he would’ve been like if we had been raised like normal siblings. Would we have been best friends? Would we have been opposites? One of us all about schooling and the other all about sports? Would we have been those twins who were so in tune with each other they knew when the other was hurt?
We’d never know.
All of my earliest memories involved my father teaching us how to be leaders. When we were very young, too young to shift, it was memorizing from our law books. We didn’t have a single idea what any of those words meant, but every day, we had a new passage to recite. And now I knew it all verbatim.
All those hours I could’ve been playing as a child, studying as a teen, making something of my life as an adult—wasted on memorizing a stupid book that meant nothing to me. The only benefit was that I might find a passage that could get me out of this mess. So far, that hadn’t happened.
“Today, you’re racing to the river and back.” My father looked oh-so-pleased with himself.
The “contest” was so deceptive. True, my father’s words were exactly what was happening… we would race. But what he didn’t say, what he didn’t need to say, was that the race had no rules. It wasn’t me running as fast as I could to get to the river, dunk in, and run back. It was me doing that while trying to thwart mybrother’s attempt to harm me along the way. And worse than that, I had to pretend to try to harm him.
“Lutris, please stand next to your brother.”
He came over and accidentally on purpose shoulder-slammed me on the way.
“Daydreaming again, Otto?” He spoke low, but not too low for my father not to hear.
My father ignored it.
“Something like that.” Or rather nothing like that.
One thing I had going for me was that I was fast. I would get to the river first. It was the coming back that would be a problem. I had half a plan to go in, swim down fifty or so yards, and then run back from there, possibly avoiding anything that he set in my path.
But my brother was smart. He might already be two steps ahead of me. I’d find out soon enough.
My father shouted for us to shift, marking the beginning of this test.
My shift was faster than my brother’s, and I bolted as fast as I could. I wove through bushes, around trees, running as fast as my stubby little legs could carry me.
We couldn’t keep doing this. I needed to figure a way to get my brother and me out of this fight for power, a way where we both survived and I didn’t need to stay here anymore. Because this place, it might’ve been pretty, but it was so toxic. As horribly as my father treated us, he treated the other members of our pack worse. He was awful.
I didn’t hear my brother hot on my heels, which was scarier than if he’d been right behind me. A few minutes later, I could scent the water. I was so close. I needed to decide whether to go left or right, and how far to travel by water before hitting land again and there was no more time.
I dove into the water and picked right.
It was a fucking mistake. I got caught in a net, and by the time I got out and back to my father, my brother was not only there, he was dressed, drinking some of my father’s berry wine that he made from the bush my omega dad had planted before he passed.
“I see we’re lazy today,” Father sneered.
I could have argued, but there was no point. The more I said, the worse it would be on me. “I’ll try harder next time, Father.”
“On your knees. Hands on your thighs.”
I dropped, a movement that had become automatic over the years, and I waited for the whipping to start. The sadistic bastard of a father I had… sometimes it began right away and sometimes he’d let me wait for hours in that position. You never knew which.
Today was in the middle. I needed to wait for him while he enjoyed drinking with my brother, telling him how proud he was and what a disappointment I was, first.
And the thing about it was that sometimes that was me drinking with him, and my brother was in my place. In that way, my father didn’t play favorites.
