I Was the Wrong Twin—Until Fate Chose Me

Chapter 4: Everything She Could Never Take From Me

Some nights, when the house goes quiet and Sienna is probably somewhere in her room accepting the devotion of boys who don't deserve the privilege, I let myself want things.

A mate.

That's always the center of it. Someone who looks at me — really looks — and doesn't immediately start measuring the distance between me and my sister. Someone who thinks paint-stained hands are worth holding. Someone who sees the fire in my hair and calls it beautiful instead of a warning.

Someone who makes me feel like I exist in my own right.

Pathetic, maybe. Almost eighteen and still daydreaming like I'm twelve. But dreams are the only currency I have in this house that

nobody can confiscate.

Were. Past tense. Because when I push open my bedroom door after school, humming something half-formed and quiet—

Sienna is sitting on my bed.

Smiling.

My Ashford application is in her hands.

The air leaves my body in one silent collapse.

"Sienna." Her name comes out barely above a whisper. "Give those back."

She waves the papers above her head like a victory flag, and the smile stretches wider — slow, deliberate, the kind that has always

preceded something irreversible.

"Ashford Fine Arts Program?" Her voice drips with theatrical shock. "Sloane. My God. You've been busy."

"Give them back." I take one step forward, then another, my hands shaking.

"I mean—" She tilts her head, scanning the pages like she's reading a particularly entertaining piece of fiction. "Do they even know

who they're dealing with? You can barely make eye contact with the mailman, and you think you're going to survive some

prestigious art school three states away?" She clicks her tongue. "And who's paying for it? Because you know Mom and Dad won't.

Silly Sloane. Always dreaming."

I lunge.

She's faster — she dances backward off the bed, laughing, holding the papers above her head just out of my reach.

"Oh, Mom and Dad are going to find this so interesting."

"Sienna, don't—" My voice cracks in half. Hate that. Hate that she can still do that to me. "Please. Please don't."

She pauses — just long enough for me to think she might actually have one functional nerve of decency left — and then she smiles.

"You know me better than that, sweetheart."

She's already moving toward the hallway.

"Sienna!"

I chase her down the stairs, my feet slamming against hardwood, heart pounding so loud I can hear it in my teeth. She reaches the

living room before I do, papers held aloft like a crown she just won.

"Mom! Dad! Look what Sloane's been hiding!"

My parents look up from the couch. The curiosity on their faces shifts — to confusion, then sharp, electric fury — as Sienna delivers

the papers into my father's waiting hands like she's presenting evidence at a trial she's already won.

"What is this?" Mom's voice cuts through the room.

"It's — it's nothing. It's just—"

"Nothing." Dad's jaw goes rigid. He turns the papers over in his hands. "You were applying to an art school. Without a single word to

us."

"I wanted to tell you when—"

"When what, Sloane?" Mom stands. "When you'd already gone? When we had no say?"

"It's not like that." My voice is shaking and I hate it, hate it, hate it. "It's Ashford. They have a scholarship program, I've been

working toward it for months — I wasn't going to ask you for a single dollar—"

"You think this is about money?" Mom's face twists. "This is about duty. This is about this family. You want to run off to Oregon and

throw paint at a canvas while everything here—"

"What everything?!" The shout tears out of me before I can swallow it. "What exactly am I staying for? To be invisible? To watch

Sienna get everything while I get nothing and smile about it?"

Silence. White and absolute.

And then my mother says, very quietly, her eyes not quite meeting mine:

"Sienna has caught Caden Voss's attention. The Ironveil Alpha heir. Do you understand what that means for this family? What that

alliance means?" She pauses. "Sienna is exceptional. She is our future. You…" Her gaze moves over me like I'm a piece of furniture

she's been meaning to replace. "You are not beautiful, Sloane. You don't have what she has. You probably won't even find your mate

— and even if you did, what could you possibly offer? So stop building castles in the sky and accept what you are."

The words don't land like words.

They land like surgical cuts. Precise. Practiced. She has had years to learn exactly where to press.

Not beautiful. Won't find your mate. Accept what you are.

Dad steps forward and tears the application in two.

The sound is small. Final. Like a door closing on a room I've been decorating for years.

"You're not going to Ashford," he says. "You're barely going anywhere. School has been filling your head with nonsense — maybe

it's time that stopped."

The room tilts.

"You can't take school from me—"

"We just decided otherwise," Mom says. "You'll stay home. Learn the accounts. The gold mine operations need management and

you'll be useful there. That is your place."

"My place." The words taste like poison on my tongue. "You want to put me behind a desk and let me rot while Sienna—"

Sienna, from her careful position near the doorway, tilts her head with a small, terrible smile.

"Someone's gotta do the unglamorous work, right?"

Something inside me — something I didn't even know was still whole — shatters.

I turn for the stairs. I'm going to lock my door. I'm going to breathe. I'm going to survive this like I always survive it—

And then I see it.

My portfolio. The leather folder. The one that holds every drawing I've ever made that means something. Every piece I was building

toward Ashford.

Gone from the shelf where I left it this morning.

I turn around slowly.

Sienna is standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Holding it.

Smiling.

"Give that back." My voice has gone somewhere very quiet. Somewhere past shaking.

She tilts her head. "Or what, Sloane?"

The rage that detonates inside me has no language. It moves through me like a current, and then I'm moving — down the stairs,

across the foyer—

"Astrid!" Mom screams my old nickname out of pure panic, but it's already too late.

I crash into Sienna like a freight train.

We hit the floor together — her gasp tearing into a shriek — and the portfolio scatters and I don't even care because something

primal and furious has taken the wheel completely. My fists land. My nails drag. I grab a fistful of that perfect auburn hair and pull,

and Sienna's scream is the most honest sound I've ever heard from her.

"You ruined everything!" The voice that rips out of my throat doesn't sound like mine — it's lower, raw, animal. "Every single thing

—everything!"

"Stop this!" Dad's arms lock around my torso and haul me backward, and I thrash — I actually thrash, snarling, my heels dragging

the floor — before the wave crests and begins to break.

Sienna scrambles to her feet. Blood on her cheek from my nails. Hair destroyed. Eyes blazing with a fury I've never seen on her

before because Sienna doesn't lose — not like this, not physically, not to me.

But when I look at my mother—

She's afraid.

Standing against the far wall, one hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide and white-rimmed with something I have never once seen

directed at me.

Fear.

The last of the rage drains out through the soles of my feet, replaced by something colder and more clarifying.

They're afraid of me.

Good.

"You." I point at Sienna, my whole hand shaking. "You are dead to me."

She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out.

I tear free from Dad's grip, take the stairs two at a time, and slam my bedroom door so hard the mirror rattles on the wall.

Then I slide down to the floor, and the sobs come — ugly, convulsive, real — because I've been holding them since this morning and

there's no one left to hide from up here.

My hands are bleeding. My throat is raw.

My portfolio is in pieces downstairs.

My application is confetti.

My future is ash.

And I am so, so tired of surviving this house.

Come find me, I think — to no one, to the universe, to the mate I've been promised exists somewhere on this earth. Please. Before

there's nothing left to find.

My phone buzzes against the hardwood floor.

I look down.

It's a text from a number I don't recognize.