THE ALPHA’S ANTIDOTE

Chapter 7: Brother

Mira's POV

For three years I had dreamed of my brother's face.

In the dreams he was always the same, standing at the edge of the great hall with his hands open at his sides, telling me not to be afraid. In the dreams I always ran to him. In the dreams I always woke before I reached him.

Now he stood in the doorway of Rowan's room, real and breathing, and my feet would not move.

"Mira," Julian said again, softer.

Then the dam inside me broke.

I crossed the room in four steps and he caught me against his chest, and I felt his arms close around me, solid and warm and smelling faintly of cedar smoke. I pressed my face into his coat and made a sound I had not made since I was fourteen years old.

He held me the way he had on the night our mother died, one hand cradling the back of my head, rocking me slowly.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into my hair. "I'm so sorry, little sister. I thought you were gone for good."

"You confessed," I said, choking. "You told them you stole the formula. Tessa told me. They would have killed me, and you stopped them."

"I looked for you," he said. "Every winter, every single one, I thought of you at the border. I sent letters to every border town I could think of. I would have done more, if they had let me." He drew back and framed my face in both hands. His hazel eyes, our mother's eyes, were wet and bright. "Look at you. You look exactly like her." "Julian."

"I know." He smiled, a crooked, tender smile. "I know." Behind us, Rowan cleared his throat.

"Beta," he said. "I did not send for you."

"No, Alpha." Julian released me and turned, bowing his head a precise inch. "But the whole pack is awake. Tessa sent word to the elders at dawn that you had claimed an exile, and they are furious. I came to make sure my sister was not being mistreated." He glanced at me, and his voice gentled. "And to see her for myself."

"She has not been mistreated."

"Good."

It was a warm, easy conversation, and it should have comforted me. For a long moment, I let it.

But Ember stirred.

She had been quiet since the hawthorn, a low, steady hum at the back of my mind, and now she lifted her head and went very still.

I felt her attention sharpen, the way a hound's does when the wind shifts.

Mira, she said slowly.

What?

Something is wrong.

He is my brother.

I know. Her voice was small. But he smells different.

I almost laughed. Of course he did. Three years had passed. People changed.

But I looked at him again, properly, the way I should have the moment he walked in, and a tiny discomfort slid under my skin.

Julian had not asked what happened to me. He had said he was sorry, and held me, and told me I looked like our mother. But in the minutes since he entered, he had not asked where I had been, or how I had survived, or whether I was hurt. The first questions anyone asks after three years are the simplest ones.

And his gaze kept drifting.

To the rack of vials on the washbasin. To the notepad with my long rising line across it. To the pale violet tube still clutched in my left hand.

"What have you been doing here?" he asked lightly, nodding at the glass.

"Checking the Alpha's blood."

"For what?"

"Nightveil," Rowan said, before I could stop him. His eyes were on Julian's face. "Someone has been dosing me."

I saw it then, so quickly that I almost missed it. A flicker at the corner of Julian's mouth, there and gone. It was not shock. Shock would have been loud. This was quieter, closer to calculation.

"Nightveil," Julian repeated. "That is Mira's recipe."

"So I am told."

"Alpha, you cannot think that she..."

"I think nothing yet." Rowan's voice was calm, but his fingers had curled around the edge of the blanket. "I am gathering facts. Beta, I need you to go to the elders and tell them that the Alpha is conscious, that he is lucid, and that nothing is to be decided about the exile until I have spoken to them myself."

Julian nodded slowly. "Of course."

"Mira will stay under guard in her room, with food and water of her choosing. No one else enters."

"Of course," Julian said again. He turned to me and smiled, and it was the smile I remembered, warm and boyish and so full of love that my chest ached. "Let me walk you back, Mira. The corridors are long, and Tessa has an itchy trigger finger." I looked at Rowan.

He held my gaze for a moment, and I saw the question in his eyes. Do you want this?

I did not know what I wanted. I wanted my brother. I wanted the truth. I wanted the two things to be the same.

I slid the pale violet vial inside my sleeve, where no one could see, and nodded.

Julian placed his hand on my shoulder, and we walked out together.

The corridor was dim and narrow, lit by wall lamps turned low for the night. Tessa and Brenna had gone to fetch more supplies, so we were alone. The only sound was the soft scuff of our shoes on the stone floor.

I remembered running down this hallway as a girl, barefoot, with Julian chasing me and our mother's laughter echoing from the dispensary. He had always let me win. He had always pretended to be slower than he was.

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

"You look thin," Julian said at last.

"Human food."

"You hate human food."

"I got used to it."

"Did you?" His hand slid down my arm to my wrist. "I think you hated every day."

I stopped walking. "Julian."

"I want you to know that I did it for you." His voice dropped. "What I said to the council. What I gave up. All of it, I did to keep you breathing."

"I know."

"Do you?" His grip was tightening. I looked down and saw his knuckles go white around my wrist. "Because I need you to understand what I am about to tell you, Mira. And I need you to listen without arguing, the way you did when we were small." A cold feeling spread through my chest.

"What are you doing?"

"You were never supposed to come back here." He leaned close. His breath was warm against my ear, and under the cedar smoke I caught it again, that strange, faint sweetness, sharp and floral, like something crushed in a closed room. "Whatever he told you, whatever he promised, whatever you feel when you look at him, none of it is real."

"Julian, you're hurting me."

"Leave tonight," he whispered. "Take your bag, go through the window of your room, and run until you cross the border. Do not stop. Do not look back."

"Why?" I whispered. My heart was slamming against my ribs, and Ember was pacing inside me like a caged animal. "Why would you say that to me?"

"Because if you stay," said my brother, "he dies. And this time, you will take the blame again."

"Who is doing this? Julian, who..."

I opened my mouth to demand a real answer, a name, a reason, anything. In three minutes my brother had given me orders and fear and a smell I could not place, but not one clear sentence.

At the far end of the corridor, a door opened.

I heard the click, and the rustle of silk against stone, and the whisper of someone breathing in the dark.

Julian's fingers vanished from my wrist.

By the time I turned, the corridor was empty, and the door at the far end was swinging softly shut.