46. Bastian #2
Had Anselm ever loved Bastian at all? He’d spent so long believing that he wasn’t enough for his real father or his adoptive one, that he was missing some little thing that would make him worthy of love.
His one consolation when Anselm turned him, despite the fact that he didn’t want it, was that maybe, as a Wolf, he’d meet that final condition to be loved.
But maybe the only part of Bastian that Anselm had ever loved was the potential of his blood. Everett was his full-blooded son, and the heir to the pack, while Bastian was just the spare. The stray boy he’d picked up out of the frozen dirt.
Anselm loved Everett enough not to sacrifice him. But not Bastian.
Never Bastian.
For a moment, Bastian’s resolve wavered. His will to fight, to put a stop to this, fizzled.
But…
Isolde.
She was worth fighting for, even if all the love he’d ever known before her had been a lie. She deserved to live.
Bastian managed to twitch his tail. The feeling crept back into his body, inch by inch.
“So that night after I didn’t come home, when you thought Everett might have killed me?” Isolde was saying, her eyes burning as she stared at her Sire. “That was all pretend? You never gave a shit about where I was.”
“Oh, I gave a shit , as you say,” Selene replied flippantly. “Just not for the reason you thought.”
Bastian wanted to roar at Selene, to leap off this altar and tear her head clean from her shoulders. He couldn’t stand the look on Isolde’s face, the way it crumpled, the way she seemed to shrink in on herself at the revelation that Selene had never loved her.
You’re a fucking fool, he wanted to scream. You had a light brighter than the moon—than the sun—shining for you, loving you, and you never saw it. And now you’re going to snuff her out?
“What was the point of Everett and Anselm attacking Bloodhaven, then?” Isolde bit out, twisting her ankles subtly against the ropes.
Selene didn’t notice, her gaze trained on Isolde’s face.
“If your only goal was to keep me and Bastian healthy and unaware of your schemes until the blood moon, why attack the village and jeopardize it all?”
“That was a rather inconvenient situation, yes. Only the attack on the full moon, before we went to Wolf territory, was Everett. The rest, on the nights where the moon wasn’t full, were Anselm.
” Selene sighed, stepping carefully over the river of Isolde’s blood to go toward Anselm.
“I told you before that the first ritual failed, but that wasn’t entirely true.
Anselm didn’t stop aging, but we both gained other things.
Anselm could control the shift without drinking my blood.
I could eat human food and go into the sun without getting sick.
“But as time went by, those abilities began to fade. Anselm couldn’t control the shift anymore.
I couldn’t go in the sun. We thought it would all just dwindle and we would go back to normal.
But then things started to get worse. I started needing human food to sustain me, and yet I had to feed on blood more often— much more often.
And I couldn’t keep human blood down anymore. I could only feed from Anselm.
“And not only could Anselm not control the shift, but he couldn’t control himself .
He’d turn at night and lose hours of time, where he didn’t know where he’d gone or what he did.
We managed to hide it for a while, but then Anselm turned violent.
At first, it was just deer, goats, the occasional horse.
But in the last couple months… well, you know.
You’ve been trying to chase Anselm down for weeks, and it was all Everett and I could do to keep you at bay. ”
Isolde stared at Selene, her eyes wide with horror.
The color had drained from her cheeks, and Bastian didn’t know whether that was from Selene’s revelations or the blood loss.
Her arm still bled freely, a river of crimson trickling down to pour into the hole in the stone where it mingled with Bastian’s, slowly submerging that silver goblet.
“You didn’t go to the Vampires, did you?
” she guessed, still tugging at the ropes in tiny, barely visible motions.
The one around her ankle was nearly unraveled, and based on the way her shoulder shifted, the one binding her uninjured arm was close, too.
“You were with Anselm. Keeping him from killing anyone else.”
Selene nodded, still oblivious to what Isolde attempted.
“After his rampage on the Night of the Bleeding Moon, we knew it was only a matter of time before someone caught him. He’s less likely to lose control when I’m near, so we hid in a cave to the north while we waited for the blood moon to arrive. ”
“And Everett?” Isolde pressed. “What reason did he have to attack Bloodhaven?”
“ Everett got it into his head that he could take the blame for what Anselm was doing if the villagers saw him that night.” Selene shot an irritated glance in Everett’s direction.
“He knew that if the Vampire coven caught wind of what was going on in Bloodhaven, they’d come to Lake Hall to kill the Wolf who was doing it.
Everett was prepared to sacrifice himself for his pack leader. ”
“I was only doing my duty.” Everett’s voice was low and hard, floating to Bastian’s ears from somewhere beyond his field of vision. “A true Wolf wouldn’t let his pack leader fall at the hands of Vampires .”
He spat that last word— Vampires —with all the venom Bastian had grown up expecting from Wolves.
If Everett had known all along that Anselm and Selene were together, it was no wonder he’d been a breath away from executing Isolde that day at the forge. He’d been watching Anselm careen down this horrible path with Selene for months—maybe even years.
Bastian knew it was naive to hope that some part of Everett had been trying to protect him from going down the same path—from falling in love with a Vampire who would ultimately lead him to ruin.
Still, if he was going to die here tonight, he hoped that was the case.
He hoped that was why Everett had tried to kill Isolde, why he’d been so angry at Bastian, why he’d dealt him such a vicious Punishment.
He hoped that the brother he’d known was not as far gone as he seemed.
“And if your plan had succeeded, and the Vampires came to kill you?” Selene hissed at Everett. “What if the ritual had failed, and you were dead? The pack would be without a leader.”
“I didn’t know about your fucking ritual then,” Everett snapped. “Neither of you bothered to tell me anything until I almost killed your Wolf sacrifice, and Anselm flayed me open for it.”
“Enough whining,” Selene snapped. “And enough questions out of you, Isolde.”
High above the courtyard, the moon had disappeared completely. Only a faint outline of its face remained, a crimson so deep it nearly blended in with the black of the sky.
Bastian could feel the strength pouring out of him with every drop of blood he lost. On her own altar, Isolde’s face had gone bone white.
The bindings still held her to the altar. Bastian, try as he might, couldn’t move more than an inch.
They were out of time.