Six Years Ago
“I CAN’T MARRY YOU, Hexius.”
The words stopped him cold. Brandy Monier stood in the moonlit garden, her model height making her nearly eye-level with him. Even now, she was stunning. All lean grace and elegant bones that belonged in magazines, not buried in dusty archives.
“Why?” The question came out harsher than he meant.
“Because I’m in love with Alphonse.”
His leopard went still beneath his skin. “Does my brother know?”
“I told him tonight.” Brandy—the only woman he had ever cared about in his entire life—didn’t even seem aware of how she was killing him with every word.
“Why him?”
“Because I love him.”
“And you don’t think you can love me, too?”
“I don’t just think it, Hexius. I know it. Because all I am to you is someone you feel you’re entitled to own.”
She was right about wanting to own her. Was this not to be expected from a leopard and his mate?
She was, however, wrong about love.
Because he did love her.
But he was simply not the type to say it.
And that was why...
The campaign Hexius launched to win her heart and prove she was wrong sans words was no different from any battle plan he formulated against enemies. He fought to win, and his method was brutal and systematic when needed. And even cunning if warranted.
He started showing up at her university lectures. Not to listen—he already knew more history than most of her students—but to challenge her. Question her research. Make her defend every point until her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparked with irritation.
He used pack meetings to demonstrate his superiority, even nearly coming to blows with Alphonse’s second-in-command because Vaughn saw him as being outright disrespectful to their alpha. And in truth, the latter wasn’t wrong.
When Alphonse suggested caution, Hexius would propose action. When his brother chose diplomacy, he chose strength. He did this because he wanted Brandy to see the truth: he was the stronger leader between them. And thus, the better choice as mate.
He pushed himself harder in training, knowing she sometimes watched from the balcony.
Fought longer, faster, more viciously than necessary.
And when Vaughn had challenged to a one-on-one combat, Hexius had not held back, leaving the younger man bleeding in the dirt while he didn’t suffer even a single scratch.
See what you’re giving up?
Pack gatherings became battlegrounds. He’d appear at her elbow when she was talking to Alphonse, interrupt their conversations, claim her attention with the kind of presence that couldn’t be ignored. Alpha dominance turned into weapon.
“Stop this right now,” she snapped at him after weeks of this. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Am I?” He stepped closer, using his height advantage. “Or am I showing you what you’re really choosing?”
“Exactly! The more you keep doing this, the more you’ve proven to me that I fell in love with the right man. So just quit it, okay? Quit it before you destroy with the person you truly and actually love.”
Hexius was glad Brandy didn’t give him a chance to answer, having walked out on him right after throwing those words at his face.
Because if she had, it would have been worse, with how his blood had gone cold, and he had this sick feeling in his stomach that what she said was true.
He suddenly wanted to change. To stop just like she asked. But by then it was too late.
“Hexius wants to steal her back, and I know he’ll be able to.”
To eavesdrop on a preter was next to impossible because of their heightened senses. So what Hexius had done, which at that time was meant to protect the pack from inside threats, was install spy cameras throughout the compound.
And this was how, that same night, Hexius had found out just how much he had destroyed his relationship with his brother without knowing it.
“You must take action,” Vaughn was urging his older brother. “Everyone is talking behind your back now. They say he’s better, stronger, and smarter than you. And that the only reason you’re alpha is by virtue of age.”
Hexius had expected Alphonse to dismiss such pointless comparisons. Or even reprimand the younger man for entertaining such doubts. But instead, he heard his brother admit the opposite.
“They aren’t saying anything that’s not true. Even I know this. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
It was Hexius’ first time to hear his brother speak in such an empty tone, and he couldn’t remember hating himself more than he did at that moment.
Because Brandy was right, dammit.
Alphonse, his big brother, was the one person in his life that he did love.
But in his arrogance, he had pushed Alphonse to doubt his own capabilities as alpha.
His older brother summoned him to his office the next day, and by then Hexius had steeled himself to have his pride battered. He was ready to issue a public apology. To acknowledge how he had been acting like a self-centered prick the past weeks.
But he wasn’t even able to say a word, with Alphonse holding his hand up in a bid for silence, before gesturing for his second-in-command to speak.
“It has been decided that you are to marry to a bride of the pack’s choosing.”
Hexius’s first instinct was to wipe the smug grin off Vaughn’s face with a solid punch.
Did they really fucking think he’d let them decide his future like he was some spineless idiot?
But then he saw the way Alphonse was holding himself so rigidly—
And he finally noticed the scent of anxiety clinging to his alpha’s skin—
Too late.
He was too late in repenting, and this was his punishment.
“I would like to meet her first.”
Hexius had to clench his hands against his sides as he forced himself say this.
Otherwise he’d start punching holes in the walls with his fists.
No fucking way did he want to marry a girl not of his choosing.
But he would consider it at least. It was the price he had to pay for his stupidity and selfishness.
If she passed his criteria, well then...
Unfortunately, she did not.
To start with: the girl was human, for fuck’s sake.
Why the hell would he marry a human when they were supposed to keep their existence a secret from mankind?
He had expected Alphonse to at least choose his bride as any alpha would for a member of his pack. But this...
This just smelled like revenge, and he would not stand for it.
Not even for his brother.
And so he chose to walk out of the room.
Walk away from his pack.
And chose to stay away as well.
For two years, he kept his distance. For the good of his pack.
But most of all, to undo the damage that resulted from his decision to nurse his wounded pride.
He hadn’t admitted this then. But life away from his pack was an eye-opener, and this time he knew for sure that he had never loved Brandy.
She had simply been a goal, and her rejection had slighted his great pride but did nothing to his heart.
Hexius had vowed to himself that he would stay away for as long as it was necessary. He would only return once Alphonse and Brandy were married, and his brother no longer saw him as a rival.
But That Day happened, disaster rippling through every corner of the world, and it left no life—whether human or preter—untouched.
****
THE CALL CAME AT THREE a.m. Hexius was on a plane within the hour. But even though he went straight to the hospital from the airport—it didn’t really change anything.
A series of vampire attacks continued to terrorize the city following the first one.
And it just so happened that one of those attacks targeted the conference Brandy was attending in Miami.
By the time Alphonse—who was in another meeting, negotiating alliances with other shifter packs—arrived at the scene, Brandy was injured and unconscious.
Surgery was required and performed immediately. No vital organs harmed, but she would be disfigured for the rest of her life, an indelible souvenir from a tragedy that no one in their right mind would ever want to remember.
But even though Brandy seemed to take this in stride—
“I think this is for the best, really. Maybe this time, people will take me seriously at work.”
It was Alphonse who was left reeling.
“This is all my fault...”
Three days later, Alphonse stepped down as alpha.
Three weeks later, he broke his engagement to Brandy.
And finally, three months later, the results of the council’s votes were released, and it was unanimous.
A new Leopard King would be crowned, and over all the candidates, it was Hexius whom they chose to be their alpha.
****
FOUR YEARS HAD PASSED since then. The tragedy had changed Brandy. She was stronger now. But at the same time, softer as well. And irritating as hell like the sister he had never wanted, with the way she would constantly pester him to do something about Alphonse.
If only it were that easy.
He had tried to talk to his brother countless times. But every overture was rejected, and it was Alphonse who now lived in self-exile.
The former alpha’s refusal to communicate and talk about the past was teeth-grinding frustrating, and when he finally lost all patience, it was then he learned about Brandy seemingly having lost patience as well.
But unlike him, she ended up doing something stupid: she said yes to marrying a man she could never give her heart to...but was already in love with her.
What an idiot.
Did she not know that arranged marriages only worked if love did not exist?
He, too, had thought of marriage as a way of knocking some sense into his brother’s stubborn head.
But unlike her, he had asked the professionals to handle it.
And yes, as it happened, while he did end up with Samira yet again, and the taste of her had created a hunger in him he had never experienced for any other woman, not even Brandy—
That was simply the science of mating bonds at work.
Nothing more.