Chapter 100
epting My Twin Mates Chapter 100
CHAPTER 97 – PAYING THE PRICE?
Badru
“You ok?” Tamlyn tapped her cane to find me, resting her hand on my shoulder.
“No,” I swallowed down the lump that seemed firmly lodged ufortably in my throat. “But I will be.”
“For what it’s worth, you handled it like a pro. I’d high-five you but that seems inappropriate, so an
awkward support hug it is,” she felt me out and squeezed me around my middle briefly. “I’m actually
surprised. You held it together and Aste lost his s**t. Guess it’s always the quiet ones.”
Astennu!
“I need to go. I think he went to pay Fin a visit.”
“That boy’s losing more than some fingers,” she uttered, switching to mind-link as I rushed away. ‘I’ll
catch up with you, just go.’
It was two and a half hours to Seattle by car. In my wolf form, I could be there in just under two.
Running from the prison building and shimming through the perimeter gate before it had fully opened, I
stripped as fast as I could once I was in the treeline and wrapped my clothing into a bundle. Baniti was
quick toe forth, shifting in the blink of an eye, grabbing up the bundle within our jaws and following
the yank on the bond to our twin.
The forested and mountainousndscape of the pack quickly melted and bled into the manicured
greenery of the human territory. On the outskirts of the suburbs that sprawled below us, our paws
stumbled, a blinding mash of rage and all-consuming vengeance doubled us over. Our shoulder burned
out of the blue, as though the ghost of a de had passed through our fur and split apart our skin… our
brother… he was hurt.
‘Astennu,’ I tried to reach out, but it was no use. It was as if my voice rattled around my head, unable to
find its target.
Baniti pushed us to our feet, staggering our paws forward towards our bond that shed like a hotwire
strung out on more power than it could channel.
Property ? N?velDrama.Org.
‘He’s alive,’ my wolf reassured and fixed our sights ahead. ‘He’s just very pissed.’
‘No shit.’
We felt each other’s emotions all the time, to the point where we were unsure whose it belonged. This
was a first where I had been crippled by the onught of hostility, so strong its acidic taste gagged at
the back of my tongue.
While we remained under the cover of the shrubs of a nearby mansion, I shifted so I could dress and
not have to be naked where the humans could see me. Werewolves didn’t bat an eye to nudity,
humans did.
I recognised the street that led to the swank apartment building, but I also knew the sounds of panicked
cries when I heard them, those of humans, running from the source of their fear.
The gates were wide open and the building’s courtyard was a ghost town, except for one figure. Naked,
covered in blood and staggering down the outer stairs in a daze, Astennu looked like a character from
the very sher movies he hated. The blue of his irises were dulled and vacant, staring at an unknown
point behind me. It was as though he didn’t recognise me or acknowledge I was there.
‘Whoa, I think he went beyond being pissed,’ Baniti muttered, as rapt in shock by our twin’s state as I
was.
“Aste!” I rushed forward, steadying him as he slumped to the smooth and polished stone steps huffing
for breath. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
The scent of the blood on him wasn’t his. The hint of ginger told me whose it was, whose all of it was,
except for a small dab that my nose instinctually picked up on belonging to my wolf’s other half. Pulling
my sleeve over my palm, I rubbed around the spot where I had felt the injury, smearing away the sticky
crimson stain and finding a long thin gash. There were no signs of healing, the edges rumpled where
his skin had been singed, but not from a me, from a metal.
“Aste?” I whispered, grasping the sides of his face in hopes that I could pull him from the murk his
consciousness had dissolved into. “I know something that might make you happy… the pup, it’s a boy.
Evie’s carrying our son.”
His eyes finally flickered to mine, the small shimmer of the luminous midnight blue returning that ran in
our family.
“She is?”
I nodded. “Yeah. And I just know he’s gonna have her eyes.”
His tiny smile lingered, but suddenly upturned in a grimacing frown.
“Toulouse, France,” the sound barely left his mouth in a murmur.
“That’s where Marceau is?”
“It’s where one of the fight rings is, near Pont Neuf. That guy’s base is in mountains somewhere. Finley
didn’t know where,” my brother’s brows scrunched, his eyes hardening. “I made sure he didn’t lie.”
“Does he need a morgue or a clinic?”
It was a pointless question to ask because I knew the answer.
“We’ll need a few wolves to clean up the mess… Kate will already know but we should formally notify
her.”
I looked up the stairs, in the direction I knew the apartment was. He had killed Finley and, by the
amount of blood, not cleanly. The way he spoke, so detached and devoid of emotion, he wasn’t back to
me fully, not yet.
“Aste,” I gave his face a little shake, trying to be his anchor and not knowing entirely what to do to be
that for him. He was my anchor, not the other way around. “Are you ok?”
“Ru, I’m fine,” he gripped my wrists tightly, but I could sense it in him, his actions were yet to fully
register.
Behind me, tires screeched, the sound of rubber on tarmac losing its grip and burning in eleration,
approaching fast. A pack vehicle spun into the courtyard, bouncing up on the curb and knocking over a
small whip of a tree.
“-ver getting in a car with you again!” Tamlyn climbed out of the passenger seat, halfway through a rant
and looking frazzled.
“Tam? How the hell did you get here so quick?”
She should have been at least another thirty minutes, possibly an hour, behind me.
“Because I drove,” an all too familiar smug and antagonising woman’s voice spoke. “You’ll be getting
several speeding tickets, by the way. Sorry about that.”
‘That smirk doesn’t look like a sorry,’ my wolf narrowed his eyes, already pre-agitated with Catalina’s
presence.
Lucy’s shaking figure was next to stumble from the back seat, teetering over to the bushes and hurling
with all her might. Why in goddess’s name had they let here along?!
‘You brought Lucy? This could’ve been dangerous! What’s wrong with you!’
‘She insisted,’ Catalina sliced me with a re, rubbing the back of the small she-wolf. ‘What was I
supposed to do? Tell her she can’te because it’s big wolf issues?’
“I’m d you didn’t drive like that when we went up to the mountain,” Lucy groaned, steadying herself
on Catalina’s side, only to pale again when she saw the state of my brother.
Tamlyn turned to grab something from the footwell of the vehicle and held them out for me; a bottle of
clear liquid and arge dark towel. “Looks like I was right to bring these, judging by that sharp iron
smell.”
“We need to notify human authorities too,” Astennu wiped himself with the towel as I poured the water
over him. “I think most of the human neighbours ran, but they’ll have phoned their police.”
Speak of the devil.
The sirens grew louder and shing lights would be appearing soon. I had a naked twin covered in
blood, humans who had fled their homes and f**k knows what Finley’s body looked like upstairs. Our
pack was our own, no humanws applied to us except when we were on theirnd, but we were
technically on pack business dealing with a cast-out member. I doubted they were going to try and
arrest an Alpha wolf, however, we were probably looking at some hefty fines.
“The Washington governor is gonna be on our asses for this,” Tamlyn’s head twitched in the direction of
the high-pitched rms.
“We’ll add it to the list of problems,” I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, and decided on
our best course of action. “Ok, Tamlyn, meet with the authorities out front and tell them we are dealing
with a pack traitor which we are well within our rights to do, remind them of that. Lucy, there should be
some clean clothes in the back of the vehicle. Grab them. Catalina, help my brother get cleaned up. I’ll
go check the scale of the problem upstairs.”
I bolted up the steps before I could receive a griping protest from the annoying one. The door to
Finley’s apartmenty in splinters with an obliterated hole carving it in half. Pushing what remained of it
open, the scent of warm fresh blood hit my nostrils. A war had been waged between two wolves, w
marks gouged the floor, furniture was upended and there, slumped and lifeless, hanging from the wall
by his hand; Finley. Deep prating shes had hacked his chest, neck and face apart, mauling his
features beyond recognition were it not for his scent. I would be forever thankful Astennu hadn’t
dismembered his body and scattered it around the ce.
If it were up to me, I would have dragged his body clear of the city limits and dug his grave with my own
paws; a final curse on his soul for what he had done to my mate and my father-inw, to all of us. But
that decision would destroy Kate and I had to remind myself, in a short space of time, she had lost
everything. All she had left was her mate and the pup that she was carrying.
Like many of us, she was innocent in all this and paying the price.