by N J Adel
Alec jerked off Kayden’s hands and howled, shifting in the middle of the room. His tail swung, pushing things off on the floor. He snarled and moved like a rabid dog, breaking furniture right and left.
The hair on my body pricked. Instinct took over and fangs came out.
“No, no, no!” Isabella was on her feet, staring the wolf in the eye, tears in hers. “You can’t do this.”
I spread an arm in front of her. “Isabella, stay back.”
“I’m not afraid of you, any of you. Not anymore.” She passed me and crouched down to the wolf’s level. She reached a hand at his head, and I yelled my protest. Ignoring me, she touched the furry skull.
Despite the huffing and puffing and ugly, drooling, clenched jaws, she embraced the wolf and rested her forehead on his. “I’m in love with you as much as you are in love with me. All three of you.”
He snarled again and slid his head under her arms, leaving her embrace. She sighed, shoulders slumping. “Kayden pushed me away as far as he could, Alec. He never touched me because of his love for you. But this isn’t about either of you. Or about Joshua. It’s about me. About Rena.”
“What about Rena? I asked.
She wiped her eyes. “You think she loved you first, and when she knew about what you were, she went to Alec. But that’s not true.”
“What do you mean? This is exactly what happened.” I glanced from her to Kayden, who was eerily silent, the dead muscles of my heart suddenly felt so cold.
“I’m sorry, Joshua. It was Kayden she fell for first,” she said.
“What?” My shout died in Alec’s howl.
“She loved Kayden, and Kayden loved her. But he knew his brother wanted her so he never spoke of his love. Not even to himself. Rena left and met you, fell for you, but then she got scared when she found out you were a vampire. Destiny led her back where Alec and Kayden were, and Alec won her over with his deep love.”
Dazed, I leafed through the memories. Could this be true? She hadn’t told me about Kayden the same way she hadn’t told Alec about me?
Alec shifted back. He stayed on all fours, covering his naked junk. “All this time, she wanted him. She only came to me because I looked like him.”
“No,” Belle said. “She loved you. You, Alec. And I do, too. The only difference between Rena and me is that she loved all three of you at separate intervals of time. But I love you separately and together all at the same time.”
“If that’s true, what are you going to do when you have to make the choice?” Alec asked for all of us.
“I don’t know, but can’t we, at least till that day comes, try to have a glimpse of peace, a glimpse of happiness together? I’m so tired of being miserable and afraid all the time.”
An angry scowl contorted his face. “Is that what you really want?”
“Yes. It’s what I need. I desperately need this, Alec,” she sobbed, and then she looked up at Kayden and me. “Please don’t make me choose. Not now. I’m not ready to give any of you up. I just can’t.”
“I think you’ve already made your choice.” Alec growled and shifted out of the apartment.
CHAPTER 30
KAYDEN
I shifted and followed my brother into the woods. I had to make him listen. Understand.
I had to bring him back to her.
Running in the dark, I trailed him to the willow tree. He just stood there, howling. My paws treaded carefully toward him. His snarls stopped me in my tracks.
His pain led to mine. His anger I couldn’t bear. It was all my fault. I had to find a way to rectify all this.
Alec, please. I know how mad you are at me. You have every right. I made a terrible mistake. Tell me how to fix it. What can I do for you to forgive me?
You are my brother. My twin. You were supposed to help me win her over, protect her from the vampire so I could claim her. Not you.
I haven’t claimed her.
That’s even worse.
I tilted my head in confusion.
Had you claimed her, I would have been able to pour all my rage on you. I would have had the right to be mad at you. His jaws clenched hard. But you…you fucking fell in love with her. He let out a bellowing howl and shifted back. “If I stay in this form another second I won’t be able to stop myself from hurting you.”
I had to shift, too, so he could hear me when I talked. “Take a swing if it will make you feel better. I deserve it.”
“Fuck you.” He kicked at the dirt and dropped under the tree. “Always trying to be the better beast.”
“I’m not trying to be anything. I just want you to be happy.”
“Happy? Giving up your girl is supposed to make me happy? You’re my brother. I fucking love you, too. You really think I’m that selfish to take a mate knowing she is yours even if I really want her?”
“Rena was never mine. I never told her anything.” Taking a look back, I saw now it was a mistake. My biggest regret ever. Perhaps… If I’d just told her, I might have been able to save her life. The vampire wouldn’t have been in her life. Alec wouldn’t have fought him that night. She wouldn’t have died. No devil. No curse. Alec would have found another mate. And all of us would have lived our happily ever after.
“All this time… I mean, I’m not blind. I see the way you’ve always looked at her. But I thought you only saw her as a breeder. Not a mate. But you’ve been fucking in love with her. Right from the beginning. That makes me the bad guy here.”
Guilt hit me hard. “You’re not. This is all my fault.”
He shook his head. “Your fault, my fault, it doesn’t matter. Blame won’t fix anything. All that matters now is her. Just go back to Belle, Kayden. She needs you.”
“She needs you, too.”
A bitter laugh erupted out of him. “Not one of the previous versions dared share what Belle shared about Rena’s heart. What does that tell you, Brother?”
“That she really needs the three of us.” I squatted and met his glowing eyes. “Like you said, she is all that matters now. You have to be there for her. It’s how we’re wired, Alec. You cannot bail on your mate.”
“She’s not my mate. Not this time.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll have a better shot next time. Or not. I really don’t know how to look at Rena now.”
“No, Alec. Nothing has changed. She’s always loved you. She still does. Your history together, your feelings for each other all these years can’t be erased like that.”
“I can’t. Watching her be split three ways… I just can’t.” He held on to the tree trunk and rose.
I straightened my back. “You’d rather live without her than share her?”
His eyes blazed in the dark. “Just don’t let the parasite have her.”
He shifted and ran off.
CHAPTER 31
JOSHUA
“Do you think I’ve lost him?” Isabella whispered in my arms.
She had been crying silently since the wolves left, and I didn’t know how to react but to put all my pain and confusion aside, and embrace her.
Holding her in my arms in her bed, listening to her mesmerizing heartbeat, knowing she was safe was everything to me. I understood she was dealing with feelings she didn’t comprehend since we met, and the Declan situation had made her more confused.
But she was mine. Isabella and I belonged together. Even if she didn’t believe in fate or soul mates, it was the only way to explain this power, this connection I’d felt from the first moment I saw her. Not only in this life, but since the very first one. We were lost souls that had found each other in the dark. Our lives wouldn’t make sense alone. Not mine, at least.
I was tired of playing games, of pretending I didn’t mind the wait or the rivalry. I wanted her for myself. Forever.
I couldn’t care less for her question. “Even if you have, you still have me.” I was here. All she needed was right here next to her. I leaned in for a kiss to show her I’d been waiting for so long, and I was never going to let go of
what was mine. To make her feel how much I needed her warmth, her heart.
Suddenly, she pulled back from my embrace. “Can vampires breed?”
I was stunned for a moment. I certainly didn’t expect that. “Not if both parents are vampires. Why do you ask?”
“Do you not think I need to know something like that before I make my choice?”
I felt as though all blood had rushed out of my body, except that I didn’t have any. “I thought you weren’t going to make one now.”
“Looks like I have to.”
“No, you don’t.” I couldn’t believe I’d just said that, but anything was better than the alternative. Basing her decision on procreation meant one thing. I lost before I even tried.
And if she didn’t choose me in this life, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Suddenly, no patience was left in me, and I had grown awfully tired of the waiting game.
“Either way, I need to gather enough information for that night,” she said.
A lump clogged my throat. “Is that really how you’re going to rule out options? Scientifically?”
“Do you have a better method? I’m open to any suggestions because I have no clue how to choose between three men I love to death. Three stubborn beasts that would rather tear each other than live together for a few weeks with the woman they say they love.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “If you guys can’t let me have you now, then I might as well make my choice already.”
“And children matter to you that much? Even though they are going to be beasts like their fathers, and you wouldn’t have a lot of time with them?”
Pain etched on her face. I was sorry I had to be an asshole and remind her of all these predicaments. It was my last resort to change her mind. Perhaps my last chance to win with her.
She sat up, her long hair brushing against my forearm before taking away the warmth and cascading behind her back instead. “Do you know why and how Declan tried to kill me?”
No. I wasn’t sure I needed to know, either. My wrath was the hardest to control. If I listened in her own words the details of the terrors that piece of shit had imposed on her, I would roam this earth until I found him and sank my fangs into his throat, drinking his filthy blood to the last drop.
I would have loved to do such a thing, but if for any reason, I was tied to his pathetic demise, she would be, too. That I couldn’t chance.
“Ten days before the incident, I found out I was…” She lifted her chin, fighting her tears. “I found out I was pregnant. It was the first good news I’d received since I was forced to leave school and kept a prisoner at my own house for over a year. I shouldn’t have been that happy, knowing I was carrying a monster’s baby, tying myself forever to that horrible person. But I was.
“I kept the news to myself for a week, thinking if I should tell him ever. I should have just run away, but I was afraid he would hurt me and the baby if I did. I convinced myself that if I told him, he would be happy too and finally change.” She chuckled as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Could you believe how ridiculously silly and naive I had been?”
“Isabella…you must stop blaming yourself.”
“Never. I will always blame myself,” she fumed. “I put myself and my child in the custody of a very dangerous man. A monster who beat the crap out of me the second he knew, kicking my belly, calling me a bitch, throwing me off the stairs until I was bleeding everywhere.” Her arms circled her abdomen as she sniveled and quivered. “Then he put me into a hospital unconscious. I woke up, and it was all gone.”
“Gone?”
“My baby was gone. The hospital report was gone. Apparently, I had been such a klutz as always and fell down the stairs when Declan wasn’t home. He saved me just in time and had been waiting all night at the hospital for me to wake up. The loving husband had even brought me fucking flowers.”
“The sick bastard,” I groaned, picturing his ripped head off his neck.
“I screamed at him, yelling at the top of my lungs what he’d done, threatening I’d go to the police. He just smiled and warned me the next time it wouldn’t be a hospital where he’d put me, it would be the psych ward.” Her hands balled into fists so tight her knuckles became white. “You were never pregnant, Belle. It was all in your head,” she mocked a man’s voice.
“I got out of the hospital determined on one thing. Run.” The tears froze in the corners of her bloodshot eyes. “I beat myself for it every day. I can’t believe I had to lose a baby to snap out of his prison.”
I held her arms, rubbing them gently. “The important thing is that you did. You had the courage to leave.”
“But not enough intelligence not to get caught. He found me after one day. One pathetic day,” she mused. “Then he killed me. He tortured me for one night, said I wasn’t worth any more of his time, and he just stabbed me with a knife at a crappy motel.”
My eyes squeezed shut. My fingers curled tightly around her flesh. Just tearing his throat to drink his disgusting blood wasn’t going to cut it. I could hear my fist smashing into that Declan’s nose, shattering his bones, splattering red blood on the dirty walls of whatever hole he’d locked himself in. I could see the man’s blood dropping through the tiniest bites around his body, in a slow, agonizing death, in my mind.
“Might as well have one last fuck with you was the last thing I heard him say before I felt myself going cold, my breathing erratic,” she continued. “I retreated into the darkness, not wanting another moment of this. Even when I was dying, I couldn’t catch a break. The last thing my bleeding out body would experience was that motherfucker rutting into it.”
I yanked my hands off her before I wounded her and jumped off the bed. “Isabella, enough. Please.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I don’t know why I didn’t die. Come to think of it, I strongly believe it was Damien’s work that night. All of it. Having Declan go psycho on me, and the saving right before I rattled my last breath. The show couldn’t just end like that. It wasn’t entertaining enough for him. So not only have I ended up losing my baby, almost losing my life, but I had to survive, living with the scars and…a womb that had suffered greatly that miserable night.
“So to answer your question, Joshua, yes, having children matters to me that much.” Her dark gaze locked on mine. “My chances to have another child are slim to none. If turning into a beast fixes me up and lets me have a baby even for a short while, I’ll take those chances gladly. Any human could die younger than fifty anyway. That doesn’t stop them from having kids.”
“And so you shall have a child.” The wolf’s voice penetrated my ears. “With Alec.”
My head snapped up toward him. That rabid mutt was out of the picture completely, and now his chances to win Isabella had rocketed to the roof.
I couldn’t give her what she wanted unless a fucking miracle happened and I could impregnate her sick womb now, but that only meant she couldn’t turn on Halloween or the infant’s destiny would be at risk.
Alec could, but he was too jealous to stay.
That left her one option. That smirking wolf over there that had just waltzed in, still playing the Good Samaritan.
“Kayden.” She threw herself into his arms. “How long have you been here?”
He took in a deep breath. “Long enough to hear everything.”
I was too consumed by my fury to detect his smell or hear his pulse.
“Where’s Alec?” she asked.
His ugly brows hitched. “Don’t worry. He will be back.”
She fiddled with her thumbnail. “You don’t have to lie to me. I know he’s left. He doesn’t want to be a part of this anymore. Why would he when there’s always the next life, right?”
“I know my brother. His stubbornness and temper get in the way sometimes, but he always comes back to his senses.”
I rolled my eyes, fed up with the charade. “I’m going out.”
Finally, she left the wolf’s embrace, and I regained her attention. �
��You’re leaving me, too?”
I savored her beautiful face and stroked her hair. “No, my love. I will fight for you till the last second, even if I know I’ve already lost. I just need a walk.”
“To sink your teeth into something?” Kayden taunted.
“YES! Another moment of listening to your bullshit, and that something will be your neck.”
“Now who’s talking bullshit? In your dreams, Bloodsucker.” His disgusting voice trailed behind me as I blurred out.
CHAPTER 32
BELLE
The only sun I’d felt on my skin for weeks was through the bay windows. Now, it speckled my face and dress as I strolled down to the clearing I’d only heard of from the boys.
Joshua and Kayden prepared a picnic under the willow tree. Sandwiches, coffee, bourbon. The brown bears were chilling on the other side across from us, rolling in the tangle of grass and wildflowers. It was so beautiful. Peaceful. I even saw a female deer, and out of respect, none of the beasts hunted her.
“Thank you for this. I really needed to go out,” I said.
Joshua cradled my hand in his palms and planted a soft kiss on it. “Anything to bring back your beautiful smile.”
“You look so beautiful in that red dress. Reminds me of the first day we met in this life.” Kayden pecked my cheek.
I chuckled, feeling the rivalry between the two, and blushed at the memory; that red dress of my birthday was barely on me when we met.
My gaze trained on the bears. They looked so cute, playing together, rubbing each other’s bellies. “How are they your brothers?”
“Bear father, wolf mother,” Kayden answered.
“Is that possible?”
“Yes. We come from an ancient clan of shifters that only breed in twins. Each original parent had chosen their spirit animal and adopted them as their inner beasts. Their children carry the gene. When cross mating happens, which is quite popular in our clan, each twin has the beast of either parent.”
