Chapter 100

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 100 CHAPTER 97 – PAYING THE PRICE?

Badru “You ok?” Tamlyn tapped her cane to find me, resting her hand on my shoulder.

“No,” I swallowed down the lump that seemed firmly lodged uncomfortably in my throat. “But I will be.”

“For what it’s worth, you handled it like a pro. I’d high-five you but that seems inappropriate, so an awkward support hug it is,” she felt me out and squeezed me around my middle briefly. “I’m actually surprised. You held it together and Aste lost his s**t. Guess it’s always the quiet ones.”

Astennu!

“I need to go. I think he went to pay Fin a visit.”

“That boy’s losing more than some fingers,” she uttered, switching to mind-link as I rushed away. ‘I’ll catch up with you, just go.’

It was two and a half hours to Seattle by car. In my wolf form, I could be there in just under two.

Running from the prison building and shimming through the perimeter gate before it had fully opened, I stripped as fast as I could once I was in the treeline and wrapped my clothing into a bundle. Baniti was quick to come forth, shifting in the blink of an eye, grabbing up the bundle within our jaws and following the yank on the bond to our twin.

The forested and mountainous landscape of the pack quickly melted and bled into the manicured greenery of the human territory. On the outskirts of the suburbs that sprawled below us, our paws stumbled, a blinding mash of rage and all-consuming vengeance doubled us over. Our shoulder burned out of the blue, as though the ghost of a blade had passed through our fur and split apart our skin… our brother… he was hurt.

‘Astennu,’ I tried to reach out, but it was no use. It was as if my voice rattled around my head, unable to find its target.

Baniti pushed us to our feet, staggering our paws forward towards our bond that flashed like a hotwire strung out on more power than it could channel.

‘He’s alive,’ my wolf reassured and fixed our sights ahead. ‘He’s just very pissed.’

‘No shit.’

We felt each other’s emotions all the time, to the point where we were unsure whose it belonged. This was a first where I had been crippled by the onslaught of hostility, so strong its acidic taste gagged at the back of my tongue.

While we remained under the cover of the shrubs of a nearby mansion, I shifted so I could dress and not have to be naked where the humans could see me. Werewolves didn’t bat an eye to nudity, humans did.

I recognised the street that led to the swank apartment building, but I also knew the sounds of panicked cries when I heard them, those of humans, running from the source of their fear.

The gates were wide open and the building’s courtyard was a ghost town, except for one figure. Naked, covered in blood and staggering down the outer stairs in a daze, Astennu looked like a character from the very slasher movies he hated. The blue of his irises were dulled and vacant, staring at an unknown point behind me. It was as though he didn’t recognise me or acknowledge I was there.

‘Whoa, I think he went beyond being pissed,’ Baniti muttered, as rapt in shock by our twin’s state as I was.

“Aste!” I rushed forward, steadying him as he slumped to the smooth and polished stone steps huffing for breath. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

The scent of the blood on him wasn’t his. The hint of ginger told me whose it was, whose all of it was, except for a small dab that my nose instinctually picked up on belonging to my wolf’s other half. Pulling my sleeve over my palm, I rubbed around the spot where I had felt the injury, smearing away the sticky crimson stain and finding a long thin gash. There were no signs of healing, the edges rumpled where his skin had been singed, but not from a flame, from a metal.

“Aste?” I whispered, grasping the sides of his face in hopes that I could pull him from the murk his consciousness had dissolved into. “I know something that might make you happy… the pup, it’s a boy.

Evie’s carrying our son.”

His eyes finally flickered to mine, the small shimmer of the luminous midnight blue returning that ran in our family.

“She is?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And I just know he’s gonna have her eyes.”

His tiny smile lingered, but suddenly upturned in a grimacing frown.

“Toulouse, France,” the sound barely left his mouth in a murmur.

“That’s where Marceau is?”

“It’s where one of the fight rings is, near Pont Neuf. That guy’s base is in mountains somewhere. Finley didn’t know where,” my brother’s brows scrunched, his eyes hardening. “I made sure he didn’t lie.”

“Does he need a morgue or a clinic?”

It was a pointless question to ask because I knew the answer.

“We’ll need a few wolves to clean up the mess… Kate will already know but we should formally notify her.”

I looked up the stairs, in the direction I knew the apartment was. He had killed Finley and, by the amount of blood, not cleanly. The way he spoke, so detached and devoid of emotion, he wasn’t back to me fully, not yet.

“Aste,” I gave his face a little shake, trying to be his anchor and not knowing entirely what to do to be that for him. He was my anchor, not the other way around. “Are you ok?”

“Ru, I’m fine,” he gripped my wrists tightly, but I could sense it in him, his actions were yet to fully register.

Behind me, tires screeched, the sound of rubber on tarmac losing its grip and burning in acceleration, approaching fast. A pack vehicle spun into the courtyard, bouncing up on the curb and knocking over a small whip of a tree.

“-ver getting in a car with you again!” Tamlyn climbed out of the passenger seat, halfway through a rant and looking frazzled.

“Tam? How the hell did you get here so quick?”

She should have been at least another thirty minutes, possibly an hour, behind me.

“Because I drove,” an all too familiar smug and antagonising woman’s voice spoke. “You’ll be getting several speeding tickets, by the way. Sorry about that.”

‘That smirk doesn’t look like a sorry,’ my wolf narrowed his eyes, already pre-agitated with Catalina’s presence.

Lucy’s shaking figure was next to stumble from the back seat, teetering over to the bushes and hurling with all her might. Why in goddess’s name had they let her come along?!

‘You brought Lucy? This could’ve been dangerous! What’s wrong with you!’

‘She insisted,’ Catalina sliced me with a glare, rubbing the back of the small she-wolf. ‘What was I supposed to do? Tell her she can’t come because it’s big wolf issues?’

“I’m glad you didn’t drive like that when we went up to the mountain,” Lucy groaned, steadying herself on Catalina’s side, only to pale again when she saw the state of my brother.

Tamlyn turned to grab something from the footwell of the vehicle and held them out for me; a bottle of clear liquid and a large dark towel. “Looks like I was right to bring these, judging by that sharp iron smell.”

“We need to notify human authorities too,” Astennu wiped himself with the towel as I poured the water over him. “I think most of the human neighbours ran, but they’ll have phoned their police.”

Speak of the devil.

The sirens grew louder and flashing lights would be appearing soon. I had a naked twin covered in blood, humans who had fled their homes and f**k knows what Finley’s body looked like upstairs. Our pack was our own, no human laws applied to us except when we were on their land, but we were technically on pack business dealing with a cast-out member. I doubted they were going to try and arrest an Alpha wolf, however, we were probably looking at some hefty fines.

“The Washington governor is gonna be on our asses for this,” Tamlyn’s head twitched in the direction of the high-pitched alarms.

“We’ll add it to the list of problems,” I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, and decided on our best course of action. “Ok, Tamlyn, meet with the authorities out front and tell them we are dealing with a pack traitor which we are well within our rights to do, remind them of that. Lucy, there should be some clean clothes in the back of the vehicle. Grab them. Catalina, help my brother get cleaned up. I’ll go check the scale of the problem upstairs.”

I bolted up the steps before I could receive a griping protest from the annoying one. The door to Finley’s apartment lay in splinters with an obliterated hole carving it in half. Pushing what remained of it open, the scent of warm fresh blood hit my nostrils. A war had been waged between two wolves, claw marks gouged the floor, furniture was upended and there, slumped and lifeless, hanging from the wall by his hand; Finley. Deep penetrating slashes had hacked his chest, neck and face apart, mauling his features beyond recognition were it not for his scent. I would be forever thankful Astennu hadn’t dismembered his body and scattered it around the place.

If it were up to me, I would have dragged his body clear of the city limits and dug his grave with my own paws; a final curse on his soul for what he had done to my mate and my father-in-law, to all of us. But that decision would destroy Kate and I had to remind myself, in a short space of time, she had lost everything. All she had left was her mate and the pup that she was carrying.

Like many of us, she was innocent in all this and paying the price.