The Shadow Twin

Chapter 20 - The (former) Darkmoon Walkers

----Leigh POV----

Voices was what woke me up and I sat up with a pained sigh. My arm was hurting like hell and so was my leg. My eyes were still trying to adjust to the bright light, so I wasn’t aware of my surroundings yet, and I didn’t care. I could help the pain in my leg, so I lifted the skirt up and slightly massaged the skin around the bandage that covered the bitemark. It wasn’t easy to do it with one hand, but I had to try and sooth the pain. Low growls erupted in the room and made me look up. The four mysterious men, that I found kind of familiar stood in front of me. Of course, my eyes were able to focus now and showed them in perfect quality. In the middle stood the tallest one, who also looked the oldest, to his right stood a guy, that looked like him a lot. The only difference, besides the height, where their eye color. The tallest eyes where a dark drown, almost black and the other guy eyes where a lighter brown and he were smiling, unlike the tallest one. The two other guys, that stood to the left of the tallest one, looked almost identical to one another to. Again, the difference laid in the height, but also the guy closest to the tallest one had a scar going from the right corner of his mouth, down the side of his face and stopped on the right side of his neck. So, this was the enemies of the Royal family, sure I had seen them before, but never this close and they had kidn*pped me this time. Why on earth was I always the target? I knew why, but it still pissed me of, that they went after me and not the one they really wanted to get their hands on.

“I’m Vetranio...” The guy with the huge smiled said and reached out, like he wanted to shake my hand.

“I don’t care who you are.” I turned my gaze away from them and focused back on my leg.

“We are not going to hurt you. I promise.” The tallest said, as he walked up to me and sat down on the bed, by my feet.

“You drugged me, then kidn*pped me. The odds aren’t really in our favor right now.” I looked up at him while I covered my leg with the dress again and then crossed my arms or sort of.

“True, but if we wanted you dead, we would have killed you in the garden.” The guy, beside the one with the scar said, and the other men glared at him. I turned my gaze to him.

“And that’s going to convince me, that you aren’t going to hurt me how?” I asked him and saw as his though demeanor turned into a huge grin.

“That’s enough.” The tallest one said with a demanding tone and then he turned to me again.

“Vetranio here is my twin, younger by like two seconds and I’m Videric.” He gestured at the guy who had already introduced himself.

“These two… They are our younger brothers, Alaviv and Aspar. Twins like us.” He continued and pointing them out to me. Alaviv, where the one with the scar and Aspar, the one with the huge grin.

“And we are your brothers.” He gave me a small smile and looked at me with regret and something else, something I couldn’t place.

“What kind of sick joke is this?” I asked, standing up and took a couple of steps away from them. I was so done with this, and I just wanted to go back to the Carr’s, that I wasn’t really thinking, when I opened my big mouth again.

“If you want to get back at the Royal family you kidn*pped the wrong person. I might be the Crown princess, but I have no value to them.” My words made them growl aggressively and Alaviv went for something in his boot. I started backing even further away from them, not wanting to get even more hurt and panic started to cloud my mind. Vetranio grabbed Alaviv’s wrist, which made it possible for me to see the dark bladed knife, that were halfway out of his boot, and I backed even further away. My back hit the wall and I tried really hard to contain the panic, threatening to take over my mind and body completely.

“It’s okay. The blade is self-soothing for him. He’s not going to hurt you with it.” Videric said, as his twin let go of Alaviv’s wrist and turned to face me. Holding his hands up, in what should have been a non-threatening manner he walked towards me, but my panic just got stronger. This was not helping me, not one bit and before I knew of it, a wolf came flying in the room. It took up stance in front of me and growled warningly at them all. Videric stopped in his track with a surprised look on his face, an expression his brothers shared. Alaviv went for his knife again and I stumbled towards the wolf.

“Don’t hurt it.” I grabbed hold of its fur and buried my face in it. The panic slowly went away as the safety I felt when the wolf was around washed over me. I hadn’t seen it since the attack and I had been afraid it had died, but here it was keeping me safe once again.

“What’s going on?” Videric said in a questioning tone, and I turned my head to look at him. Alaviv had put the knife into his boot again and the brothers had moved further away. They had their guard up and it looked like they were trying really hard not to react to wolfs present.

“I found it when I was a kid, and It has been keeping me safe since. Where I go, it goes. Always there in the shadow…” My legs started to tremble and with the wolfs help I sat down. And it laid down beside be, so that I could use its side as a backrest of sort. It put its head on its paws and kept an eye on the brothers. I felt weak and with both the pain and panic echoing in by body I just felt completely drained.

“Don’t worry it wouldn’t shift. It’s not a werewolf.” They looked at each other and I gave them a tired smile.

“That’s what you are right? I mean the least ones who growled like you guys did earlier turned out to be werewolves. This was caused by a werewolf.” I said and pointed to my arm and then my leg.

“So, you know?” Aspar said wearingly and relaxed when I nodded.

“Yeah. I was attacked by a group for men, that shifted into wolves. It then turned out that my bodyguard was one to and so is the royal family. I had been surrounded by werewolves for some time and I didn’t even know it and I would probably still be in the dark, if it wasn’t for those men, who also left a couple of everlasting scars to remember the truth by.” The rest of the brothers relaxed, but they still somehow looked tense.

“We wanted to tell you. That’s part of the reason we… kidn*pped you. You needed to where you came from and us.” Videric said and looked from his brothers to me.

“Why should I believe you? Believe that I have brothers?... The first time you showed up, was after I was married into the Carr family, your enemies I might add. It’s more than a little suspicious, wouldn’t you say?” I crossed my arm and glared at them. Vetranio then stepped in front of Videric.

“It’s true that we are enemies with the Carr’s, but it got nothing to do with this. All our lives we were told that you had died, and we didn’t have a reason to question that. But then we got intel or rumors surrounding the Crown princes’ possible marriage and that’s when we saw your picture. You look so much like our mother… And that’s when we knew that father had been lying to us. You didn’t die, no he gave you away and we have been trying to convince him that reaching out was the best option, but he wouldn’t listen, and, in the end, we got tired of the stonewalling and did it ourselves.” He walked towards me, while taking something out of his pocket. The wolf growled at him, and he stopped, holding out what looked like a picture. I reached out and the wolf let him pas. I took the picture from him and looked at it. It showed four boys, a man, and a pregnant woman. The man was holding the woman close to his chest while the boys were sitting still in front of them. I looked closer at the woman and were surprised to see that I indeed looked a lot like the woman. The shape of our faces was the same, jawline, mouth, nose and even the eye color were the same, a dark brown that where somewhere between Videric’s and Vetranio’s eye color. The shape of my eyes was the same as the man’s and the boys. And I even shared the same dark brown hair as the males, mine just had small streaks of red, when the light hit just right, similar to the woman’s actual hair color. The similarities between me and the people in the picture were uncanny, which meant that we had to be family. That they guys in front of me, might actually be my brothers then. No, they were my brothers, I could feel it was right, now that I had not just been told the truth but seen it in the picture.

“What happened? Why did they leave me?” I asked, not taking my eyes of the picture. Vetranio sat down in front of me, but I still didn’t look up.

“We don’t know. Father wasn’t forthcoming with the why, but we have a pretty good idea of said why… At the time we were at war with the Carr’s and Julien was ruthless in his tactics. We didn’t stand a chance, so our father made a deal with the Phantom Council. When you were born the merge with the Council had just begun and we lost the title as the Darkmoon Walkers. We simply disappeared of the face of the earth and the Pack were given new positions within the Council. The four of us was sent into training camps that were a hole other level of pain and it changed us… That not the point though. The Councils treatment of the female wolves are worse than what the men are going through. They are treated as slaves and are forced to bear the children of the men the Council chooses. They are nothing more than babymakers. And we guess that our parents didn’t want that for you, so they gave you away to spare you of the heartache that life would have given you. Had the Council known you were alive; they would have claimed you as theirs as well, despite the fact you aren’t a werewolf.” His voice was filled with sorrow and made the story even more tragic. The tears started to roll down my cheeks and before I had even made a conscious decision, I had thrown myself into his arms. His body froze completely as I buried my head at his shoulder and cried somewhat silently.