Bled By My Alpha Parents Adopted By The Lycan King Chapter 06
The Fire
Alpha Cassius wrenched his sleeve out of her grip. His face was carved out of stone.
“Enough. Not another word. Today is Vera’s mating day. Today, this family holds its head up in front of the entire Ashborne Pack. If she’s dead, then just let it be. She was reckless. She wandered off when she was still a pup. It’s no one’s fault but her own.”
He turned to his son. “Rowan. Go carry your sister to the mating altar. We are not late for the ceremony.”
Rowan didn’t move.
His face had gone the color of ash. “Father. It wasn’t Nova’s fault she wandered off. Fifteen years ago. It wasn’t her.”
Alpha Cassius’s head whipped around.
“…What?”
Rowan’s jaw worked.
He remembered himself standing in the middle of the capital square on Bonfire Night, and his little sister Nova tucked against his hip, her tiny fingers curled around his thumb.
She was three. She was in silver silk. She had a moonstone pendant that caught the light of every torch.
She looked up at him with those wide bright eyes and she had trusted him completely.
He had told her to wait for him by the trellis. Just for a minute. He wanted to see the pups in the middle of the square unravel the puzzle-lantern.
When he turned around, she was gone.
He’d searched. Called for her. Screamed her name until his throat gave out. Tore through the crowd until dawn.
She was gone.
He’d come home. He’d looked his parents in the face.
And he lied.
He had said Nova threw a tantrum. He had said she pulled away from him and darted into the crowd. He had said it wasn’t his fault.
They had held him while he cried. They hadn’t blamed him.
And the Ashborne Pack House had gone quiet, and stayed quiet, for four whole years.
He couldn’t take it.
One afternoon he had wandered out past the estate wall, and there on the road he had seen a small girl in rags.
Skinny. Dirty. With eyes as bright as Nova’s had been.
He brought her home.
She had made the Luna and Alpha smile again.
She had become Vera.
And every gift he’d ever given Vera, every laugh he had ever coaxed out of her, every night he had sat by her sickbed reading her stories, had been him paying off a debt that belonged to the sister he had lost.
Then three years later, his father had come home carrying a Purebred blood slave from the Rogue traffickers.
A silent, hollow-eyed thing with a red crescent birthmark on the inside of her left arm.
And Rowan had known.
The instant they rolled up her sleeve, he had known.
His sister was alive. His sister was ten years old. His sister’s eyes were dead.
And he had said nothing.
He had told himself Fifteen was just a blood slave. He had told himself Vera was his only sister. He had said it, over and over, until he almost believed it.
He had thought he could live with it, watching her go to the Vaughn Pack as a hidden tribute. Watching her disappear from his life for good.
He had not been prepared for the smoke rising over the estate wall.
He had not been prepared to lose his sister twice.
His knees hit the ground beside his mother.