MATED TO MY EX-ALPHA'S JILTED BROTHER

Chapter2

My body doesn't feel like mine anymore.

I'm lying on the stone with my cheek pressed against the freezing floor, and every part of me is being pulled in two directions at once. One pull comes from the empty, ragged hole Brask left behind. It's still bleeding. It's still *tugging,* like a dying thing that doesn't know it's dead.

The other pull comes from the figure in the fog. It's steady and warm, and it hums through my chest like a second heartbeat.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Two rhythms, fighting for the same space.

"STOP IT," I gasp, clawing at the front of my dress. "Please, please make it stop."

My back arches. A scream rips out of me, and my nails scrape long white lines into the stone. Tally breaks through the crowd and drops to her knees beside me. Her hands are trembling.

"Moth! Moth, look at me!" Her voice c

racks. "Breathe. Just breathe!"

"I CAN'T," I sob. "IT HURTS."

"I know. I know it does." She presses her palms to my cheeks. Her healer's hands are warm, but even her touch can't reach the place that's tearing. "Somebody get the Elders! SOMEBODY HELP HER!"

Nobody moves.

I hear the pack around us, a wall of whispers rising like smoke.

"Two bonds. At once."

"That isn't a blessing. That's a curse."

"The Goddess is punishing her. Or punishing us."

"Don't touch her. It might spread."

Tally's grip tightens on my face. "Don't listen to them. Look at me, Moth. Only me."

I will try. I really do. But her face swims in and out of focus, and the silver eyes in the fog keep burning at the edge of my vision. They don't blink. They don't look away. Whoever he is, he's watching me suffer, and he hasn't moved an inch.

Why isn't he coming?

The thought is stupid. I don't even know him. But the bond in my chest throbs with a pull so strong that it feels like an insult, like the universe is dragging me toward him and he's choosing to stand still.

"Let her GO!"

The roar splits the night. Brask's voice. I flinch so hard that my teeth click together.

He's standing over us now, his cloak thrown back, his chest heaving. Pim clings to his arm and for the first time tonight, her smile is gone. Her face is blank. Watchful.

"Get her off the shrine," Brask snarls. "NOW."

"Alpha," Dunn says carefully, stepping up beside him. "She's convulsing. If we move her—"

"I SAID NOW!"

Dunn flinches. He's a big man, a scarred warrior with a heavy jaw, and I've never seen him afraid of anything. But he doesn't look at Brask. He looks at me, and there's something in his eyes I don't expect.

Doubt.

"Alpha," he says again, lower. "The Elders will want to see this. A second bond has never—"

"There IS no second bond!" Brask whirls on him. "She is faking! Or she's sick! Or the rejection broke her mind!"

"Brask," Pim says softly. A warning, dressed up as a plea.

He shakes her off. He's sweating. Even through the pain, I notice it. The golden Alpha, who walked up these steps like a god ten minutes ago, is sweating.

He's scared.

It cuts through the haze like cold water. Brask isn't angry that I survived. He isn't disgusted. He's terrified, and he's staring at the man in the fog like he's looking at a ghost.

I force myself up onto one elbow. My arms shake. Blood drips from my chin onto the white dress, and the sight of it makes my stomach lurch.

"You," I rasp at Brask. "You knew."

He freezes.

"You knew this could happen." My voice is a ruined whisper, but the whole shrine is so quiet that it carries. "That's why you're shaking. You didn't expect me to live."

"Shut your mouth," Brask says. But it comes out too fast.

"You wanted me dead." Another wave of pain rolls through me, and I choke on it. "You wanted Dunn to carry me into the woods like trash. You wanted it QUIET."

"MOTH—"

"WHAT DID YOU DO?" I scream. It tears my throat open. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?"

The torches flare. A wind rips through the shrine and the fog surges, and every wolf in the crowd takes another step back. Someone mutters a prayer to the Moon Goddess. A mother pulls her child behind her cloak.

"Enough." Brask's face goes cold again. He turns to the Elders at the foot of the steps, three old wolves in grey robes. I know their names. Wick. Marl. Sedge. They've been staring at me with wide, frightened eyes since the second bond snapped. "The girl is unstable. She is raving. This ceremony is over."

"Brask," Elder Marl begins, his voice thin.

"OVER," Brask snaps. "Dunn. Take her away."

Dunn doesn't move.

Brask's head whips toward him. "That is an order from your Alpha."

"Yes, Alpha." Dunn's jaw works. He takes one reluctant step toward me.

Then the second bond pulls.

It's so violent that it throws me off the stone. I tumble down two steps and hit the shrine floor on my back, gasping, staring at the sky. The moon hangs fat and pale over the fog, and for a second, I swear it's watching me too.

The pain eases. Just slightly. Just enough to let me breathe.

Because the pull isn't tearing me apart anymore.

It's leading.

I roll onto my stomach. My fingers dig into the cold ground. I drag myself forward an inch, then another, toward the edge of the shrine, toward the dark.

"Moth, what are you doing?" Tally cries, scrambling after me.

"I don't know." I'm crying. I'm bleeding. I'm crawling like an animal in a white dress in front of my entire pack. "I don't KNOW, Tally. It's pulling me."

"Don't," a voice hisses. Pim, quick and quiet, right beside me. I didn't even see her move. Her hand closes around my wrist, tight and cold. Up close, her smile is gone, and what's underneath is sharp. "Don't go to him."

I stare at her. "What?"

"Please." It's barely a breath. Her eyes flick toward the fog, then back to me, and something flashes there. Not malice. Fear. "Moth, listen to me. Whatever he tells you, whatever he *shows* you—"

"PIM." Brask's voice cracks across the shrine like a whip. "Come here."

Pim's grip tightens for half a second. Then she lets go. The smile slides back onto her face as if it were never gone. She rises, brushing off her cream dress, and walks back to her Alpha like nothing happened.

My head spins.

What was that? Was she warning me? Or threatening me?

I don't have time to figure it out. The bond throbs again, pulling me toward the dark, and I give in. I get my palms under me. I push myself up to my knees, then onto shaking feet, the white dress soaked and torn at the hem.

I stand. I sway. But I stand.

The whole pack goes silent again.

I look across the shrine at the man in the fog. He still hasn't moved. Fifteen feet of stone between us, and the air crackles like a storm is about to break.

"Who are you?" I called out. My voice is raw. "What did you do to me?"

No answer.

"ANSWER ME!" I scream. "WHO ARE YOU?"

The fog shivers.

Slowly, the man steps forward.

The first thing I see is his boots, worn and muddy. Then the dark coat, damp and heavy. Then his hands, long-fingered and scarred, held a little away from his body as if he's afraid of what they might do.

Then his face.

The torchlight finally reaches him, and I forget how to breathe.

He's not old. Late twenties, maybe thirty. But he looks like someone who has aged in secret. His dark hair hangs unkempt past his jaw. His skin is pale, almost grey. A thick, jagged scar runs from his left temple down across his cheek, pulling the corner of his mouth into a permanent frown.

And his eyes.

They're silver. Not gold or amber like every other wolf's. Silver, like a blade in moonlight. Exhausted and ancient and burning with something I can't name.

He's looking at me the way a starving man looks at bread.

Behind me, the pack gasps. A woman whispers, "It's him. It's really him."

"The brother," someone breathes. "The one who disappeared."

"I thought he was dead!"

"Don't look at him. He's cursed. They say he killed his own mate."

My heart is pounding so hard that I feel it in my teeth. The new bond hums, bright and warm and certain, and every instinct I have is screaming that this man is mine.

No. My mind rebels. No. I don't know him. I've never seen him in my life.

But my body disagrees.

He takes another step. And another. The crowd parts for him like water, wolves stumbling over each other to get out of his way. He doesn't look at any of them. He doesn't look at Brask, who has gone dead white. He doesn't look at Pim, who has stopped smiling entirely.

He walks straight toward me, and I can't move. I can't breathe. I'm shaking so badly that my knees nearly give out again.

He stops three feet away. Close enough that I can smell him, old rain on dead leaves, wet stone, woodsmoke. The scent I felt inside the bond a minute ago, now alive and real and right in front of me.

His throat bobs. His hand lifts, trembling, halfway to my face. Then he stops, as if he doesn't trust himself to touch me.

"Moth," he says.

Just my name.

Soft. Rough. Cracked at the edges like he hasn't used his voice in months.

But the way he says it makes my whole body go still. He says it like a prayer. Like a word he's whispered a thousand times into the dark, rehearsing for this exact moment. Like he's known my name for years.

My lips part. No sound comes out.

Behind us, Brask's voice cuts through the silence, low and shaking and furious.

"Get aw

ay from her, Vale."

The man with silver eyes doesn't turn around.

He only smiles, small and sad and terrible, and says to me, as if no one else exists:

"I've been waiting so long to say that.”