Chapter 66
Julian
The wolf who taught me how to fight wasn’t my father. It’s the wolf who charges towards me now. He’s the one who taught me how to protect myself against everyone. Everyone, except for him.
Poised on all fours, in a body packed with muscle, Oliver races towards me, and for a moment, I can only stare. Because he’s here … and he’s real.
It’s not the trick that I’d still secretly hoped it was.
He’s alive and he’s whole, with his all-too-familiar brown coat and amber eyes.
But those hallmarks come paired with certain oddities.
A dullness of his fur, a discoloration in those eyes that almost glow as he stampedes towards me without slowing.
I dart out of the way before his raised claws can tear my face in two.
It’s instinctual—a drive to live because I’m under attack. My body understands that long before my mind has a chance to do the same.
Oliver’s long claws dig into the dirt instead as he lands heavily and turns with a growl.
His eyes meet mine, and I hold my breath. I watch him, waiting for the moment he realises it’s me—Juli. For him to fight past whatever is making him do this; for him to stop. But he doesn’t.
He launches himself back at me, slamming his body into mine. His paws rise high, aiming to rip my chest open. I shove them away, but they’re soon back with his bloodlust leading the assault.
My vision becomes a blurred catalogue of open jaws and extended claws. I parry each one while the world as I know it falls apart.
Oliver’s attacks never stop, never slow. He keeps advancing, again and again, and I avoid each attempt on my life in a daze.
It doesn’t feel real.
My heart pounds in my ears. I’ve never felt so scared in my life, but it also feels like a bad dream that’s going to end once Oliver snaps out of it, or I put a stop to him …
I almost want to let him win—just so this can end.
He’s bigger than I remember, faster too, but I’m not sure if that’s a testament to time or the fact that he’s not holding back. That’s the strangest part of all this—not that I’m fighting him or that his amber eyes are more maroon now, but that with each attack, he intends to hurt me.
No, not hurt. He’s trying to kill me.
He can’t be. It’s Oliver. He’s lost, confused … scared. I can only scent his bloodlust, but that doesn’t mean the other feelings aren’t there. He’s not trying to kill me, because that’s not him—he would never hurt me.
Only … he is. It is him. It’s Oliver, and he’s trying to kill me.
Alex’s whine slices through the air just as Oliver’s jagged claws catch my shoulder. They dig in, freeing a jet of blood. Pain ripples through me, but I stifle the sound and tear myself free from his grip.
I barely catch a breath before he’s back, hungry for more.
My chest tightens, stealing my next inhale as he guns for my throat. But this time, I don’t run.
I meet his advance with my own, ducking below his open jaws faster than he can see. I let my claws sink in.
It’s like tearing my own heart out.
For the first time, Oliver is the one to dart back. He looks down at his wound, at the imprint of my claws in his chest, then he looks at me again.
I brace for the moment I’ve been waiting for since I first spotted him among the rogues. That moment when he’ll look at me and realise that this is wrong—remember who he is, who he taught me to be.
I expect to see heartbreak, realising what we’re doing to each other. I don’t expect the excitement.
What’s left of my heart topples and shatters as hunger floods my brother’s glowing red eyes. My world splinters at its edges, quieting again as I watch Oliver charge.
Focus, Julian! Aiden’s voice booms through our bond, but it might as well be a passing murmur. Julian!
Oliver, I try, prodding at the remnants of our bond I hadn’t dared to approach since I thought I lost him. But there’s nothing there. It’s just a broken thread—an unravelling that only happens when a spirit is gone.
But he’s right in front of me. He’s here, racing towards me, so how had Goddess let this happen?
He’s on me again, a fragment of the chaos ensuing around us, and no matter how much I want to believe he’ll stop, I know he won’t. He won’t stop until I’m dead because … this isn’t Oliver.
The haze clears.
The rogue attacks, and I don’t hold back.
My claws catch in his, and as he tries to tear my jugular from my neck, my canines sink into his right ear and drag the organ from the rest of him. His howl breaches the air like a siren’s call, and while it causes my eyes to fill, I don’t let him escape.
I attack him with the same viciousness he used on me, and on our wolves before—my wolves. I show him the alpha I was forced to become as I tear him apart, bit by bit. I know his weakest spots. They’re the same as they were before.
It’s almost too easy, stripping him down when I don’t look at him as my own. Because no matter how big and strong he is, he’s still a rogue caught in the throes of a blood high, and that makes him sloppy.
The grass beneath us is splotched with his blood. It’s not nearly as much as when I’d found his fake body, but the memories surface as I add the real pieces of him to the collection.
My heart pounds—the part of me that will always love him slams against me in protest. It tells me that this is wrong and that it’ll haunt me forever.
But Oliver has always been my ghost. So when he tries to rise again on his shaking hind legs, I sink my canines into his lifted paw, tearing his claws from the nail beds.
Whimpering in agony, he falls back, his lifted paw dripping blood like his dislodged ear and tattered chest. Then real panic chases the red glow from his eyes, and finally, the moment comes, but it’s nothing like I’d hoped it’d be.
Oliver knows it’s me.
He knows this is wrong, that this isn’t who we were ever meant to become.
He hurts as much as I do, but not because of his wounds.
The pain surfaces in his eyes only when he stops and looks at the scene around us, noting the dwindling number of rogues and the witches being burnt alive by lightning from the sky.
He realises they’re losing, and it’s strange seeing the Oliver I knew come alive for them, not me.
The pain rises again, taking the guise of misery as I step towards him.
He looks at me, tired and uncaring, and that makes this all easier.
He tries to fight, to avoid it, but when I grab him by his neck, it’s child’s play.
I drag him behind me, even as he kicks and opens fresh wounds, crying for help from others who can’t help themselves.
I haul him away from the thick of it, up one of the valley’s foothills, so what has to be done can happen in private.
Aiden calls for me through our flaring bond and with his howls, but this is between me and Oliver, not him. So, I ignore his panic and his sadness as I dump Oliver’s flailing body beneath a towering tree and call on my shift.
The morning air slices over my skin, raising goosebumps even though inside, everything is too warm. Oliver’s matted fur stands out from the grass like ink on paper, even more so as the sun creeps over the valley’s southern edge to illuminate the war below.
It’s no longer so beautiful or peaceful here. Everything smells like death.
Oliver wheezes as he stares up at me, his gaze empty, before finally, his wounds overwhelm him, and he shifts. My eyes fill with tears again, because for the first time, my brother looks at me.
It’s not his wolf, not him from a distance, but the man I looked up to my entire life, even after he was gone. He’s a little older, with a fresh scar just under his eyebrow, but the rest of him is the same.
Dragging himself upright, Oliver fixes himself against the tree’s trunk before his pale lips curl upward.
“Hey, Juli,” he whispers, and somehow, my already-shattered heart breaks again.
I stare at him while tears stream down my face.
“How’ve you been?” he asks, his lungs audibly straining to keep him breathing. “It’s been a while.”
When all he gets is silence, he huffs. “Always so quiet.”
My lips part, but I can’t get a single word out.
I had so much to say, so much to ask. I had it all planned out in case I got to this very moment, but it’s here now, and I can’t speak because I already have my answers.
“I didn’t see Dad out there,” he muses with a nod towards the mayhem. “Is he dead or home?”
“Home,” I hear myself whisper.
He sighs. “That’s a shame,” he mumbles before letting his head fall back. “So, how are we doing this? Are you going to watch me bleed out, or finish it before that happens?”
“Watch you—” My voice breaks and I’m shaking my head. “I don’t get it,” I rasp. “You’ve been alive this entire time. You … you made us think—made me think you were dead. Why, why would you do that?”
Oliver peers at me, his stare frighteningly blank.
“You were going to be alpha,” I whisper, arguing nothing and everything. “You had a great pack, and a loving family—”
“Loving family,” he cuts in with another laugh. It costs him more blood, but he hardly notices. “We both know nothing about them is loving.”
“They loved you,” I protest, rubbing the tears from my eyes. “They loved you most, and I loved you.”
Oliver blinks once, slowly, and then nods. “Yeah, I guess you did.”
I love him still, even now—he knows that.
“Why?” I ask again. “Why would you make me think you were gone?”
Oliver’s eyes drift, looking over the foothills, and a familiar fondness shines in them as he takes in the open, endless expanse. He breathes in, savouring the air as the wind rushes around us as if to greet him.
“You should see the world, Juli,” he sighs. “It’s so much bigger than we ever dreamt, and so much better.”
I know. I want to tell him. I know. I’ve only seen a little, but it’s great. Why didn’t you wait for us to see it together?
“It’s not all bad,” he continues softly. “There’s good out here, and it comes in spades. There’s freedom.” His eyes glide back to me. “I wanted freedom.”
Freedom from them? From the pack? From me?