Page 62 of Her Reborn Mate

This was around 1941, when Hitler’s forces were in full swing, and the war was seemingly going in his favor. We were just young brothers back then, brothers with two different ideologies about the world. There was Fred, ever the pragmatist, looking for the best in the worst situation. And then there was me, who knew that evil was evil and that there was nothing subjective about it. Hitler, the Nazis, and the SS were all abhorrent. The hunting of the Jewish folk, the gas chambers, the concentration camps, and the destruction of Germany from within. It was all downright abysmal.

Fred did not see it like that.

Fred, younger than me, believed that Hitler was a prophet, a manifestation of divinity sent to wipe the earth free from all evil. Fred wanted to join the Nazis. For a while, he was working for them as a part-timer, spreading their propaganda in the streets, recruiting soldiers to the cause, and even hunting down those that the Nazi party dubbed reprehensible. There was no stopping Fred. With our mother and father both dead, I was the head of a family comprised of just two people, and there was no way Fred would ever listen to me.

Even though I was the Alpha.

I had explicitly prohibited the Grimm pack from taking part in any of the Nazi activities. While all the pack had agreed, Fred had chosen to rebel. He strutted about, doing as much as he could without ever formally signing up for the Nazis. This was his way of mocking my authority. He was showing me that he could always get away with whatever he wanted to do.

At first, the damage he was doing was not serious. It wasn’t so bad that the pack deemed him an outcast. But when on a few occasions, he nearly murdered some poor villagers who were in the way of the Nazis, we, as the pack, called for a tribunal and judged Fred for his crimes.

He asked for one last chance. I, being his elder brother, saw the good in him and hoped that he’d turn right from then.

Fred quit working for the Nazis and even helped in rebuilding our village as best as he could. But by then, the war had waged so terribly that there was no chance of repairing the village back to its old splendor. The war crept closer and closer till the bullets were flying over our heads and our village was being used as a battleground in a fight against the British.

That’s when I made the move.

No one initially knew where we were going. Not even Fred. It was only after we had traveled several leagues that I disclosed that we weren’t heading to some reclusive part of Germany to escape the war, instead, we were headed to America, the land of opportunity and freedom.

There had been a terrible argument between Fred and me on the ship. He even threatened to question my leadership, but the other pack members calmed him down. He was never the same as me after that.

Once we reached America, Fred and I pretended that he’d never lashed out at me. That he hadn’t worked for the Nazis. For a while, I even forgot that Fred had an evil streak in him.

If only I had known then what I know now, I’d have saved myself.

I’d have lived another life entirely.

***

“You pardoned his war crimes?” Alexis asked, inquisitively looking at me, her eyebrows cocked speculatively. “Everything that Fred did, the pack just forgot?”

“No one forgot. We just pretended to forget. You weren’t there. You don’t know how it was back then. So many Germans moved from Germany and came to America after the war, many of them being Nazis who wanted a second shot at life and wanted people to forget who they were. I gave Fred one last chance to prove himself, to see if my brother wanted to redeem himself or not. It turned out that he did not. Back in those days, before political correctness and the distinction between the right and left wings, it was easy for someone to hide. This was before the era of computers and phones. People could take on another identity. I just hoped that Fred would change, be better,” I said.

“And for the most part, he has been an exemplary citizen, hasn’t he? I mean, if no one found out about his ruse, he’d have fooled everyone into believing that he was a redeemed man,” Alexis said.

“It boggles my mind. And to think that the man is sitting there, just a few feet away, in his cottage. I cannot kill him in cold blood, knowing very well that he’s so sickly and old. Yet I also want revenge. No. More than revenge, I need justice,” I said, battering my closed fist on the coffee table, making everything on it shake.

“Vincent needs to know this before anyone else. He’ll be able to help us,” Alexis said.

“You go and look for Vincent. Tell him everything while I go confront my brother,” I said, heading out of my home.

As I took the steps to Fred’s house, I saw the lights were out. It could be another ruse. He could be hiding in there for all I knew. There was no point knocking. I kicked the door open and went inside, not caring that whoever saw me do such a thing. The pack members would be made aware of Fred’s treachery sooner or later, and we’d have a trial for him. A proper tribunal, in which we’d punish him for his crimes. For all of his crimes, past and present.

But Fred was not in his home. I scoured the entire house and looked into every room, but there was no sign of where he was or where he had gone.

I stormed out of his home, unclear as to what I was going to do next, when suddenly Alexis and Vincent came rushing to me.

“I heard everything,” Vincent said. “But there’s something that you have to know too.”

“What is it?” I asked, heading back into my house.

“Tonight is the election’s result call,” Vincent said. “All of the towns are going to be assembled in the town square. Already, there’s a huge procession going on with people parading in the streets and everything. It’s fucking mayhem out there, and we can’t just sit idly by. The pack needs to be mobilized into the town. Anything can happen.”

“What is going to happen that hasn’t happened already?” I asked grimly as I sat down on the couch, racking my brain about Fred’s whereabouts.

“Will, my love, now is not the time to feel morose. We need you. The town needs you. Vincent just means that the entire population of the town’s assembled in one place, and anyone, such as the vampires or even Blair, might attack them. Both the vampires and Blair have ample reason to do such a thing. Blair might retaliate with some chemical agent. The vampires might want revenge for us having killed Ralph. We did strike them pretty hard, what with killing their leader and ending their smuggling operation,” Alexis said.

What she said made sense. Nights like this didn’t come by often. This would be the first time in a long while that the town would be gathered in a single place, making the people vulnerable.

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