The Cursed Omega's Revenge

Chapter Four

GRAY

Atlanta's skyline pierces the dawn like teeth through flesh, all glass and steel pretending civilization can mask the beast. But I know better. Every city has its killing grounds, and in those shadows between what humans see and what truly exists, the Otherkind conduct business older than memory. The airport thrums with barely leashed violence—human sweat mixing with predator musk, the copper tang of suppressed hunting instincts, the underlaying perfume of creatures playing at being prey.

I spot my brothers before they see me. Twenty years of shared blood makes them shine like beacons in my vision, even drowning in a sea of humanity.

Maddox leans against a pillar like he's seducing the marble itself, all languid grace and barely contained storm. At twenty-eight, he's grown into the kind of beauty that makes people forget to breathe—too sharp, too knowing, like moonlight given flesh and hungry eyes. His dark hair falls across green eyes that see through dimensions, and I watch a paper cup levitate past his fingers, dancing on invisible strings before dropping. Still showing off, even after all these years. The air around him tastes of ozone and possibility.

Paxton sits on a bench, fingers tracing histories only he can read. Baby of the family at twenty-six, but his eyes carry the weight of every death that's ever touched the world. He's reading everything—the bench that remembers a suicide, his phone that's passed through thirteen hands, the very air that holds the last breaths of the dying. The psychometry hit him like lightning at fifteen, and sometimes I think he drowns in other people's ghosts.

"You look like death warmed over," Maddox says by way of greeting, pulling me into an embrace that smells of oil paint and Highland storms, of home and exile all at once. "When's the last time you slept without wolves in your dreams?"

"Sleep is for people who don't have uncles trafficking omegas." But I hold him tight anyway, feeling the ice around my heart crack. We've managed twice-yearly visits since I moved to Lyon—Christmas and the anniversary of our father's death—but it's never enough. The distance aches like a phantom limb.

Pax rises, and I see he's grown again—nearly my height now, all lean muscle and coiled tension, beautiful in the way broken things sometimes are. When he embraces me, I feel him reading my history through touch—the whiskey in Paris burning my throat, the glass cutting my palm, the rage that burns constant as hellfire.

"She's still alive," he whispers against my shoulder, and I know he means our mother. "I can feel her sometimes, like an echo through pack bonds that should be severed. She dreams of us."

We don't talk about her. Can't. Margaret Carver might draw breath, but the woman who sang us lullabies and taught us to read moonlight died the night Remus tore out our father's throat and claimed her like a prize of war.

"Council first," I say, switching to business because emotion is quicksand and we're already drowning. "Then we go home."

The word tastes like blood and ash. Home. As if Bloodthrone could ever be that again.

The Atlanta Council keeps their offices in a building that exists between breaths—floors that elevator buttons can't reach, doors that human eyes slide past like water over stone. We take the service elevator down into the earth's bones, until my ears pop and Pax starts humming old Scottish lullabies to keep the pressure from crushing us.

The receptionist is a redcap in Chanel, her teeth filed to points behind crimson lipstick that might be blood. "The Carver brothers," she purrs, like our names are particularly fine wine. "They're expecting you. Try not to bleed on the marble—it stains so dreadfully."

The Council chamber thrums with power older than continents, the kind that makes your marrow ache with genetic memory. Five seats arranged in a crescent moon, each throne carved from materials that shouldn't exist. The vampyr representative looks bored—they usually do, when you've seen Rome fall and Atlantis drown. The witch's eyes spark with interest that makes my wolf bare teeth beneath my skin. The fae lord smiles like he knows how we'll die but finds it too amusing to share.

But it's the wolf who speaks, and her voice carries the weight of mountains being born.

"Gray Carver." Councilwoman Chen rises, silver threading through black hair like moonlight through water. "Your mother was my packmate once. Before the world broke."

Before Remus. Before blood painted throne room floors. Before everything shattered like spells under iron.

"We know why you're here," she continues. "Bloodthrone has become... problematic. Complaints pile up like corpses. Missing omegas. Suspected trafficking. Treatment of pack members that violates laws written in moon-blood and starlight."

The fae lord laughs, sound like breaking hearts. "And three orphaned princes arrive just as the Council needs investigators. How deliciously convenient. One might almost suspect destiny has a sense of humor."

"Convenient or not," Chen says, her voice cutting like silver through shadow, "they're qualified. Gray with his Interpol experience hunting the worst of our kind. Maddox with his... unique perspective on pack dynamics and power. Paxton with his gift for uncovering truths written in blood and bone."

She slides three folders across the obsidian table. New identities, clean as fresh snow on a grave. I open mine to find a stranger's name: Gabriel Morrison, security analyst for the Council's investigative division. Maddox becomes Marcus Morrison, cultural anthropologist specializing in pack dynamics. Pax transforms into Parker Morrison, Otherkind rights specialist.

"Brothers still," Chen notes. "Distant cousins of mine through a human marriage, visiting to investigate the complaints. Your presence will be legal, even expected. The Morrison line is old New England money—explains your accents, your education, your air of barely civilized privilege."

"And Remus?" Maddox asks, his water glass trembling with suppressed kinetic energy. The liquid inside forms impossible shapes—wolves running, throats being torn, blood spreading.

"Will see Council investigators doing their job." The witch speaks for the first time, her voice like smoke and starlight f*****g in the dark. "What he won't see is three boys who ran twenty years ago, coming home with vengeance burning in their veins like molten silver."

She's wrong. We're not boys anymore. We're something worse—men who've learned to make weapons of our wounds, who've turned trauma into teeth.

"There's something else," Chen says, and the temperature drops until our breath mists. "Twenty years ago, Bloodthrone lost something precious. A child. The daughter of your father's Beta."

My blood turns to ice crystals in my veins. "Liwon Lim."

"His wife was... special." Chen chooses her words like a butcher selecting cuts. "Suchin Lim carried bloodlines we thought extinct. When she died, her daughter Samira vanished. We assumed she perished with her mother."

The witch makes a sound that might be laughter or funeral keening. "Suchin Lim was the last confirmed silver wolf. Her death was... thorough. The killer knew what she was, dismembered her while she still breathed, sold the pieces to the darkest markets. Heart to a necromancer in Prague who ate it raw. Eyes to a seer in São Paulo who wears them still. Blood distributed in vials that surface like cursed treasures, worth more than nations."

Pax flinches, tears streaming as he sees it all through her words—a woman screaming as they take her apart, trying to cast one last spell with her dying breath. Maddox's control shatters, papers lifting in a telekinetic storm before settling like dead birds.

"The daughter?" I manage, though my throat feels lined with broken glass.

"Dead, presumably. Or hidden so deep even death can't find her." Chen's eyes hold secrets older than written language. "But Remus hunts something. His trafficking patterns suggest he's looking for specific genetics. Anomalous traits. Healing gifts. The blood memory of moon-blessed wolves."

The pieces click together with sickening clarity. "He thinks there's another silver wolf."

"Perhaps he's right." The fae lord examines his nails like they hold the universe's punchlines. "Perhaps Suchin's last magic was stronger than anyone guessed. Perhaps a child hides in plain sight, wrapped in spells that make her invisible even to herself. Wearing her mother's death like armor."

Or perhaps we're chasing moonlight and memory. But the thought of a silver wolf in Remus's hands makes my wolf howl for blood.

"When do we leave?" I ask.

Chen smiles, sharp as winter's first kill. "Your flight leaves in three hours. Welcome to the Council's service, Investigators Morrison. Try not to die. The paperwork is murderous, and I do so hate form 37-B."

We rise to leave, but the witch's voice follows us like smoke and prophecy. "The moon turns toward blood," she says, her words tasting of ash and silver. "What was hidden will be revealed. What was sleeping will wake. The silver wolf runs in your future, Gray Carver. The question is: will you be her salvation or her doom?"

"Both," I answer before I can stop myself. "It's always both."

Her laughter follows us into the elevator, beautiful and terrible as birth and death.

In the elevator, Maddox breaks the silence. "Gabriel, Marcus, and Parker Morrison. We sound like prep school assholes."

"Better than dead Carver princes," Pax says quietly, still shaking from the witch's visions.

He's right. But as Atlanta blurs past the taxi windows and our flight to Riverbend approaches, I can't shake the feeling that we're not investigators heading to Bloodthrone.

We're offerings walking willing into the wolf's maw.

And somewhere in that killing ground, if the Council's whispers hold truth, a silver wolf hides among shadows. Wrapped in her mother's dying magic like grave clothes, wearing another's face so perfectly she's forgotten her own. Waiting for someone to strip away the spells and reveal the moon's own daughter, terrible and beautiful as justice itself.

Remus hunts her with the patience of a spider. The Council has written her off as dead, a convenient tragedy. But I've learned to read between the lines of official stories, to find truth in the spaces between words.

Samira Lim is alive. Hidden. Sleeping.

And we're about to walk into her dreams with all the subtlety of an earthquake, three brothers carrying matches into a world made of kindling.

The flight boards in two hours. Time enough to transform from the Carver brothers into the Morrison investigators. Time enough to bury our real names so deep even Remus's paranoia won't unearth them. Time enough to practice being strangers to our own history.

But some things refuse to stay buried. Blood calls to blood across years and miles. Magic seeks its own level like water finding cracks. And somewhere in Bloodthrone territory, our mother breathes in captivity, the silver wolf hides in plain sight, and our father's killer sits on a throne built from bones and betrayal.

The witch was right about one thing—the moon is turning toward blood. What she didn't mention is that some of that blood will be ours, spilled willing on the altar of vengeance.

I finger the false identification, memorizing Gabriel Morrison's manufactured history. Eight years with the Council. Specializes in security breaches and trafficking patterns. Parents died in a sailing accident off Nantucket. No connection to Bloodthrone. No reason for revenge beyond professional duty.

It's a good lie. Solid. Believable. The kind that might even fool us if we wear it long enough.

But lies are like spells—they only hold until someone speaks truth like a blade.

And the truth is: we're going home.

Not as investigators. Not as the Morrison brothers.

As sons of Romulus Carver, true Alpha of Bloodthrone. As boys who fled through forests that tasted of father's blood. As men who've learned that sometimes the only way forward is through the flames, and if you're going to burn, you might as well take your enemies with you.

The silver wolf waits, wrapped in her dead mother's final gift.

Our mother waits, trapped in silk and submission.

Remus waits, secure in his stolen power, not knowing death comes on a delayed flight from Atlanta.

They all wait for someone to light the match that will burn their careful world to beautiful, terrible ash.

They don't know it yet, but their wait is over.

The Carver brothers are coming home, wearing stranger's names and carrying twenty years of rage sharpened to killing points.