Stealing the Alpha’s Heritage

Chapter 17

"Alpha, please! Help me—"

The servant's plea echoes through the dining hall as I pry Kael's small fingers from around her throat. His eyes burn crimson, his three-year-old hands leaving bruises that shouldn't be possible from someone his size.

"She took my bread!" Kael snarls, his voice carrying an undertone that makes every wolf in the room submit instinctively. "It was mine!"

"I was clearing the table, I didn't mean—" The servant gasps, rubbing her throat as I hold Kael against my chest.

"Get out," I command. "All of you, leave."

The dining hall empties in seconds, servants fleeing like their lives depend on it. They're probably right.

"Let me go!" Kael twists in my grip, his elbow catching my ribs hard enough to crack them. "I want to hurt her! She deserves it!"

"Kael, look at me." I force his face toward mine, watching the red slowly fade from his eyes. "Where did this rage come from?"

"I don't know." His small body suddenly goes limp, tears replacing fury. "Sometimes I want to hurt everyone."

"It's your Alpha blood awakening." I set him down carefully, kneeling to his level. "But you're too young for this kind of power."

"The shadow wolves say it's because we're special."

Finn's voice drifts from the corner where he's been sitting silently through his brother's outburst. He's drawing on the wall with his finger, leaving no marks but tracing patterns only he can see.

"They're here now, watching Kael." Finn continues, his gray eyes unfocused. "They say he's getting stronger because I'm getting weaker."

"Finn, there are no shadow wolves—"

"Yes, there are!" He stands abruptly, pointing at empty space beside me. "Right there! Can't you see them?"

"Thorne, we need to talk."

My mother enters without knocking, her gaze immediately finding the bruised servant's abandoned tray, the cracked table where Kael's fist connected, the fear lingering in the air like smoke.

"Not now, Mother."

"Especially now." She moves closer, studying both boys with clinical detachment. "Kael attacked three servants this week. Finn hasn't eaten in two days because the shadows tell him the food is poisoned."

"They're having adjustment issues—"

"They're manifesting the curse at an accelerated rate." She pulls me aside, lowering her voice. "The Blood Moon ceremony can stabilize them, but we need to prepare properly."

"You keep pushing this ceremony, but you never explain exactly what it entails."

"Because you're not ready to hear it." She glances at the boys—Kael now pacing like a caged predator while Finn returns to his invisible drawings. "But time is running short. Without intervention, they'll destroy each other."

"My sons would never—"

A crash interrupts me. Kael has thrown a chair through the window, glass exploding outward in a shower of deadly fragments. He stands in the wreckage, his small chest heaving, eyes flickering between green and red.

"I heard her thoughts!" He points at my mother, his voice distorted. "She wants to hurt Finn! The shadow wolves told me!"

"Kael, that's enough—" I start toward him but Finn screams, a sound that makes every piece of remaining glass in the room vibrate.

"They're here! They're all here!" Finn presses himself against the wall, his gray eyes wide with terror. "Dead twins, so many dead twins! They want us to join them!"

"What have you done?" I grab my mother's arm, my claws extending instinctively.

"What needed to be done." She doesn't flinch. "I've been preparing them for the ceremony. Small doses of wolfsbane in their evening milk."

"You've been drugging my sons?" My voice drops to something lethal.

"I've been saving them!" She jerks free from my grip. "The wolfsbane allows Finn to see the spirit realm clearly, to understand his role. And it's tempering Kael's rage into something we can channel."

"You're poisoning my children!"

"I'm preparing them!" She pulls out a journal, shoving it at my chest. "Read the ritual properly, Thorne. One twin anchors to the physical realm, one to the spiritual. The ceremony bonds them together."

"And if it fails?"

"Then they die as nature intended—together, under the Blood Moon."

"Papa, the shadows are getting louder." Finn tugs at my shirt, his small hand ice-cold. "They keep showing me bad things."

"What kind of things, little wolf?"

"You, covered in blood. Mama, screaming. Kael with red hands." His gray eyes meet mine with too much awareness. "They say it's what happens if we don't listen."

"Finn sees possible futures now." Rowena says quietly. "The wolfsbane opened the channels."

"Papa, I don't feel good." Kael sways on his feet, the red fading from his eyes to leave them dull and glassy. "Everything hurts."

"That's the wolfsbane wearing off." Rowena checks her watch. "He needs another dose soon or the rage will return worse than before."

"No more poison."

"Then watch your son tear apart everyone in this pack." She moves toward the door. "The servants are already terrified. Serena hasn't left her room in three days. Even Jules avoids the boys now."

"Because you've turned them into monsters!"

"They were born monsters, Thorne!" She spins back to face me. "Every Blackwood twin is! The curse doesn't care about age or innocence!"

"There has to be another way—"

"There is no other way!" She slams the journal on the table. "Either we perform the ceremony, or you choose which son lives. Those are your options."

A knock interrupts us. Jules enters cautiously, his expression grim.

"Alpha, we have a problem." He glances nervously at the boys. "The pack is growing restless," Jules continues carefully. "Word of the boys' abilities is spreading. Some are saying they're cursed, that keeping them here curses us all."

"Anyone who speaks against my sons—"

"Will what?" Rowena interjects. "Be killed? How many pack members will you slaughter to protect boys who might kill each other anyway?"

"Get out." My voice carries enough Alpha command to make Jules stumble backward. "Both of you."

"Eight days, Thorne." Rowena pauses at the door. "Eight days until the challenge with Evander. If you want both boys alive to see their mother again, you'll continue the treatment."

"They left us alone, Papa." Kael's small voice cuts through the silence after they leave. "Everyone always leaves."

"Not everyone." I kneel between my sons, pulling them both close despite Finn's unnatural coldness and Kael's fever-hot skin. "I'm never leaving you."

"Promise?" Finn whispers against my shirt.

"I promise."

"The shadow wolves say you're lying." Finn pulls back, his gray eyes too knowing. "They say everyone leaves eventually. Even Mama left."

"She's coming back. After the challenge, she'll be here."

"If Uncle Evander loses," Kael adds, his child's voice carrying adult understanding. "But what if he wins? What if Mama chooses him?"

"She won't." I stand, decision crystallizing. "She can't."

"How do you know?"

"Because if she tries, I'll burn the whole world down to get her back." I stare at the broken window, at the glass reflecting the late afternoon sun like drops of blood. "I’ll bring her back."