Chapter 126


    #Chapter 126 – Brother Against Brother


    The forest is dark, but Victor moves through it like a predator, scenting the air, his eyes attuned to the


    night. Every one of his instincts is alive, awake to every breath of wind that stirs a leaf, every animal


    tread that echoes through the night.


    He has been training for years for a night like this, a im he knows Rafe cannot make.


    Victorys down in a patch of brush, his body t against the cold snow on the forest floor. Slowly, he


    props up his rifle so that he can peer through the scope. His forces are all in position, ready to take


    care of Rafe’s when theye looking for him.


    At this point in the game, Victor is choosing to y defense, to sit and wait for Rafe toe for him. He


    knows his brother – Rafe will not have the patience to sit and wait. He will the boundaries as soon as


    he gets bored.


    Growing up, Victor and Rafe were very different children. Their other brother, Christopher, had been in


    many ways like a father to both of them. Several years older, he had trained them, teased them,


    learned how to push their buttons so that he could rile both Victor and Rafe to a temper with just a few


    words.


    Victor had been headstrong as a kid, quick to temper and violent in his reaction’s to Christopher’s


    teasing. Rafe, had, in some ways been the opposite. He’d taken the teasing very much to heart, had


    cried often, and run to their parents to tattle on Christopher for his treatment.


    As the third son, Henry had dismissed Rafe’s tears and his pleas for help and attention, telling him to


    toughen up and be more like his older brothers. Victor, oddly enough, had frequentlye forward as


    Rafe’s champion, then, defending him against Christopher’s taunts and his father’s neglect.


    “That’s good,” Christopher had said to him once, when Victor lost his temper at his older brother for


    pushing Rafe to tears. “You should stand up for him – that’s what I’m trying to teach you. You two need


    to stick together – you’re all each other have.”


    It was then that Victor had realized that Christopher wasn’t treating them poorly to be cruel; he was


    teaching them to function as a team, to love and support each other beyond everything. Christopher


    had known that as the eldest son his dedication had to be to the pack; but as the second and third,


    Victor and Rafe had to help each other.


    Everything changed when Christopher died.


    Victor remembers it now, as he peers through the night scope on his rifle, looking for his baby brother


    toe hunting for him in the night. Victor remembered it as the day he not only lost his favorite


    brother, who cared for him so deeply, but also as the day when he took Christopher’s ce as heir to


    the pack.


    Rafe had been horribly jealous. While he and Victor had always been a team against the world, Victor


    now had to stand apart from him. His father took new interest in Victor’s future and Rafe, in many ways,


    was left by the wayside.


    Victor and Rafe were set to go to Harvard together, Victor one year ahead. They had made ns – big


    ones – to major in the same subjects, live in the same Boston apartment, to support each other as they


    figured out their lives. However, when Christopher died, Henry and Victor agreed that military


    preparation would serve the pack better. They forged the paperwork that allowed Victor to join the Navy


    and all of his ns with Rafe were shattered.


    Rafe reacted poorly to the loss of both his brothers. He stopped attending school regrly, stopped


    having any real goals. His father had to pull strings, in the end, for Rafe to attend the University of


    Pennsylvania, but even that he had mostly squandered his life, hiring a variety of imposters to take his


    courses for him.


    All his life, Rafe had been told he was the third, the least important of his sons. When he lost Victor as


    a support in his life, he started to believe it.


    And he turned on Victor as well.


    Victor wrote to Rafe – the only thing he was allowed to do in Navy bootcamp, as he couldn’t ess the


    phone – and never received any letters back. He called him, once he graduated and received his


    cements, but Rafe never picked up the phone.


    He got updates from their mother, of course, but as far as Rafe was concerned, Victor had abandoned


    him.


    In some ways, Victor considers, looking through the scope at the dark forest, he supposed he did


    abandon Rafe – but he didn’t really have a choice. As soon as he became heir to the pack, the pack


    became his priority, and he had work hard to catch up on lessons Christopher had been learning since


    birth.


    He was d, in the end, that he hadn’t listened to Rafe’s urgings to continue with their n to go to


    college straight away, to abandon the military path. Because when their father was injured in his early


    twenties, it was only Victor’s precise military training that allowed him to take firm control of the pack.


    Not only take control, but to build it, make it stronger.


    If he’d just been a kid, straight out of college, obliged to take a pack with nothing but some historical


    knowledge at his fingertips? They would have lost everything.


    Victor knows this, in his heart, but Rafe…Rafe was bitter.


    And this was the result of it all. Rafe had always been the gentler brother, and had indeed indulged in


    too much self-pity and profligate, indulgent behavior. But, he wasn’t stupid. It looked like their father


    was the one pushing for Rafe to take over in light of Victor’s apparent weakness, but Victor knew that


    this n had Rafe written all over it.


    Rafe, even so many yearster, wants to prove that he was right: that it doesn’t take military training to


    lead a pack, but instead intelligence, cleverness. That’s all this was, Victor knew – Rafe trying to prove


    to the world – or perhaps, just to Victor – that he was right.


    Victor sighs, wondering if in some way they are still the same teenage kids who found themselves


    stepping into their big brothers’ shoes while they still mourned his loss. Neither of them had been ready


    for it, but it’s what the universe served up on a tter.


    In many ways Rafe’s attempted takeover of the pack is his own personal battle with the past, with his


    losses, with his attempt to understand and assert himself.


    But Victor doesn’t have time for such things. While Rafe looks to the past, Victor must look to the


    present – his care for the pack today – as well as to its future.


    And so, after all this, Victor finds himselfying on the forest floor, looking down the barrel of the gun,


    waiting for his brother to walk into his field of sight. He grimaces, thinking of where Rafe has lead them,


    but he reminds himself that this was what Rafe wanted.


    Rafe chose every bit of this, and if that’s what he wants, then Victor is d to give it to him. Pound it


    into his stupid face, if he has to.


    For a moment, Victor’s thoughts flick to his own children. They are close now – as close as he and


    Rafe had been as children themselves. He can’t imagine a single event that could split them apart the


    way that he and Rafe had been split.


    Hell, Victor had taken every step he could to ensure that the pack wouldn’t give the twins any reason to


    split apart. When Ian and Alvin came to their majority and inherited the pack, that they would inherit it


    together, share their power. Of course, one of them was the older son, born minutes before the other.


    But Victor didn’t know which one it was – had never asked – did not want to know.


    In many ways, his marking of his sons as his dual heirs had been in homage to Rafe. How different the


    pack would have been, their rtionship would have been, how much stronger, if they had shared the


    inheritance after the loss of Christopher.


    But no. Instead, their father and the customs of theirmunity had forced them apart. Victor, the


    second son, had be the first. And Rafe was still the spare.


    But for Alvin and Ian, it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing would tear his boys apart. Victor was determined


    to see it that way.


    Victor’s reverie was broken, then, by a sudden rustle of leaves several hundred yards ahead of him.


    The movement was in contrast to the movement of the other trees and bushes around them, ruffled by


    the soft winter breeze.


    Victor locks in on the movement, peering through his night-sighted scope to see a dark figure slowly


    emerge. A Beta, crouching close to the ground, looking around for signs of Victor’s own forces.


    Victor’s headset buzzes. “Sir. Enemy spotted. Do you have eyes on him?”


    “Affirmative,” Victor says back, his voice barely a whisper. “Let him approach further, see if he has


    anyone on his tail.”


    C0pyright ? 2024 N?v)(elDrama.Org.


    The Beta stalks slowly forward about fifty yards and, seeing nothing, waves behind him. Two more of


    Rafe’s Betas follow behind him. They’re moving in a V-pattern.


    The same V-pattern Victor had taught Rafe during summers when Rafe woulde to train at his Beta


    camp. Rafe may have bested him at chess, but in military maneuvers?


    Victor taught Rafe everything he knew.


    Rafe’s three Betas take a few more hesitant steps forward and Victor’s finger moves to the trigger of


    his rifle.


    “On my count,” he whispers into his headset.


    “One, two…”