The Alpha Twins

Chad. (9)

"How did it go?" I asked as Phoenix walked into the kitchen, his face scrunched up, and horrified.

"I feel disgusting. I'm more certain she'll run now. She had a bag packed," he slammed himself down on to one of the seats.

"I've got a bag packed," I told him, pouring him a cup of coffee.

"Thanks" he murmured his gratitude for the coffee.

"We should talk to him about it," I told Phoenix after he had a sip of his coffee.

"That won't go down well," he scoffed.

"I know, but we have to do something," I told him.

"She wants us to teach her how to throw a punch, and walk her through this new regime, so that she has a little bit of an understanding," Phoenix told me.

"We can do that," I replied.

"Yeah, but that's if she decides to stay. I don't think she will," Phoenix said, as he grabbed his coffee and walked off.

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It was two A.M. when I heard the noise I was expecting to hear all night.

I waited, as I heard a door being shut quietly, and light footsteps walking down the stairs.

I waited a minute, until I heard the front door open, and when I got up to look out the window, there was Iris sneaking away in the night, with a small bag over her arm.

I grabbed the bag Phoenix told me to pack, and walked to his room. I was in the middle of knocking when he came out with a smirk on his face and his own bag over his shoulder.

"What's the plan?" I asked him as we walked down the stairs.

"Just follow my lead and agree with everything I say," he told me as we followed behind her.

We followed slowly behind her as she approached the border. Phoenix eyed her curiously.

It was only when she sprinted into a run as she got to the edge of our pack border that he seemed surprised by her actions. "Follow her, I'll cut her off," he told me as he sprinted to the right side of the trees on the edge of our border.

I chased after her. She was faster than I expected. I saw Phoenix dart into some trees and when I looked back to follow Iris, she had disappeared. I didn't want her to know that we were following her, in case it scared her off. So, I began slowly searching around for her, being as quiet as I could.

What felt like an hour, maybe two hours later, she was standing in a river, violently washing her face and arms.

She was incredibly angry, and I knew that face, for I had seen it a thousand times in Phoenix, and I knew the feeling myself.

She was arguing with her wolf. It must have been an intense argument, because she kept stopping what she was doing to argue back, and she looked like she wanted to scream or shout.

She began washing her hair when I realized she was trying to wash away her scent.

It pained me when I realized it.

"She's washing her scent off in the river," I mind-linked Phoenix, for the hundredth time tonight.

"I can see her," he told me. Phoenix was a much better tracker than I was, and he was much faster. He probably got here just before me. I looked around but I couldn't see him.

"What do we do?" I asked him, as there was no doubt we were both watching her.

"Wait until she gets out, and then go over to her. If she tries to run, I'll stop her," he told me.

Seconds later she began getting out of the water. I walked over to her slowly. "Iris?" I called, and she froze as she recognized my voice.

I walked closer to her, and she still stood frozen on the spot.

"Iris?" I called again, and she turned around to face me.

"Chad?" she said as she looked at me. Her eyes filled up a little, but she swallowed hard.

"I'm sorry, I can't stay," she said, and turned around to walk off.

"Wait!" I called in panic.

"Iris, please"

She stood, rooted to the spot again, but didn't say anything.

"We don't want you to leave, we don't want to be without you," I told her, ignoring the pleading I heard in my own voice.

"I can't stay," she whispered.

My guard was down, all I wanted to do now was hug her and tell her that everything would be alright, and that it wouldn't be that bad. And as my body went limp from the amount of sympathy I had for her. She noticed my moment of weakness and bolted away from me.

Knowing that Phoenix would catch her, and he was harsher and more brutal than I was, I walked to the river, and washed my face with the icy cold water, angry at myself.

Phoenix brought her back, kicking and screaming, a little while later.

He dropped her down next to me, and she scrambled herself to get back up.

"Just let me go!" she demanded, and I had never seen her so angry and so fiery.

"Will you just calm down!" Phoenix roared at her.

She was taken aback, shocked, and I think a little scared of the way Phoenix sounded. She looked at me for help, but I crossed my arms and sided with Phoenix. When she realized I was of no help, she looked back at Phoenix, waiting for him to say something.

"Do you remember what we talked about yesterday?" he asked her, and he was ticked off that he had to remind her too.

She looked at him for a minute, and we saw the memory of the conversation dawn on her face. She then looked worriedly from Phoenix to me, and then glared at the bags hanging over our shoulders.

"Absolutely not," she said as she began to walk off again. Phoenix grabbed her hand and yanked her back, a little harder than even he expected.

"If you go, we go," he said.

"What if I don't want you to come?" she asked. We both knew she was trying to hurt us into not going, but it wouldn't work.

"You won't be able to make us angry enough to abandon you," I told her, furiously. She looked at me shocked, and it dawned on her once again, that she had truly pissed us off.

"Okay, fine. But you can't come with me. You both have lives here, family here. I have nothing and no one, it's easy for me to runaway, and it does not affect anyone. If you guys come with me, it'll affect your entire pack, your entire lives," she told us frantically. She didn't really understand just what she had said that had upset us. I looked at Phoenix with a twinge of sadness, and he looked at me the same way. When she noticed, she stared at us confused.

"Iris..." I began, softly. "You do understand the meaning of mates, don't you?" I asked her, trying not to sound patronizing, but with a question like that, it was hard not to.

"I- well yeah, I-" but as she was in the middle of blabbering, Phoenix cut in.

"I don't think you do!" he said angrily, and I held his shoulder to calm him down.

"Iris, as your mates, we make it our job to protect you, to make sure you're safe, and more importantly, we never want to leave your side," I explained to her. She looked confused again.

"So, it's incredibly hard to hear you say that you have no one here to care for you, no one to stay for, and that you simply don't care that we are your mates," I finished, and now she looked shocked and guilty.

"Chad, that's not - that's not what I meant at all," she looked up at me pleadingly.

"Then what do you mean when you tell us you don't care?" Phoenix butted in furiously.

"I was just trying to run away. I didn't mean anything by it when I said it. I wasn't thinking about anything other than getting as far away as possible," she pleaded with Phoenix now.

"And what about you having 'nothing and no one'?" Phoenix snapped again.

She looked on the verge of tears. It was clear to me that she felt horrible, but both Phoenix and I knew why it was easier for her to say these things to us, and why we were affected by them. We had completely accepted her as our mate, and she hadn't us as hers.

"I'm sorry, that's not what I meant. I was just trying to get out of here, and I don't want you both ruining your lives for me," she began, but Phoenix cut her off for the third time.

"You truly do not understand the mate-bond, Iris," he took a deep breath "But surely you understand what's happening here?" he snapped, and she was taken aback, again.

"Iris, Chad and I accepted the mate bond, and you haven't. We want you to stay because we have feelings for you. Everything is heightened when you accept the mate-bond. We'd rather die than be separated from you. Can you honestly say you feel the same way?"

With big watery eyes, Iris looked up, a couple of tears dropped onto her cheeks, even though she knew it would be painful for us to hear. "I haven't accepted the mate-bond," she replied.

"Do you want to?" Phoenix asked her, and I knew why.

"I do, but I'm scared!" she fought back, angrily. Finally, opening up to us about her true feelings.

"I was already mated once before, remember? That didn't work out, and I didn't accept it then either, and that saved me a world of hurt, but it was so shameful and so embarrassing, and I don't understand that if a Gamma of the pack I was raised in, didn't even want me, how in the world of the goddess can TWO soon-to-be Alphas?" she stepped towards us now, looking, searching for answers in our eyes.

"We aren't him!" Phoenix spat, disgusted. "Just because he didn't appreciate you, doesn't mean we won't!" he gritted his teeth.

"Phoenix, I think we should go, leave Iris to it, until she's ready to decide what she wants, and if she wants us," I told Phoenix with a huge pang in my chest.

Phoenix looked like he wanted to say more, but he glimpsed Iris, and decided otherwise.

Turning our backs from her, we followed the river home. It might be something we regretted, but somehow I knew she'd come back to us.