Fifty–Three
Alexander’s POV
Immediately I left Blake, I went up to my wing and straight into my personal gym. I could already see myself training for the next few hours until I dropped.
I hated how Blake was mostly right. I hated how he reminded me of the truth that I wanted nothing more than to forget. I also loved how he was slightly wrong. I wanted to take comfort in that one mistake.
I wanted to make myself feel better by thinking that everything was partly because I was trying to protect her but did that even matter if she ended up falling into danger at the
end of it all?
I hopped onto the treadmill, putting it on mid–speed, planning to build up the speed as I went on…just as my mind slowly drifted from my argument with Blake and towards Antonio, my identical twin and the one who abducted my mate.
The truth was that I had never imagined Antonio to be behind this. Although it was clear that he hated us -me in particular- I thought that he didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. I never knew that he would one day try to take revenge and possibly contest for the Alpha position. It was the thing he coveted the most out of everything I owned.
At first, it was my toys, my story books, or my coloring pens and then as we grew older, he found out about something of even greater value.
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Once Antonio realized that due to birth order, I was going to be Alpha after our father, he started to rebel more seriously than he ever had which didn’t make sense considering that it wasn’t even a choice to make.
Yes, we happened to be twins but there couldn’t be two Alphas and I happened to come out first into the world. Apart from that, an Alpha is born an Alpha. I had my first shift before Antonio, whose first shift happened a year after, something that absolutely crushed him with the amount of pride that he had.
Long before Antonio’s wolf showed up, my wolf had already begun to command respect the way only an Alpha wolf could, one that Antonio’s wolf had no ability to do whatsoever. It was clear from then, that birth order or not, I was to be the Alpha, not that it was any contest for me but forfeiting my birthright just because Antonio was being a whiny baby, would have been an insult to the moon goddess.
And apart from having someone as irrational as Antonio lead our pack to obvious destruction, who knows what punishment the moon goddess would have reigned down on us for disregarding her decisions?
And so it was final, Antonio was disregarded and he didn’t take it lightly. It was like he was determined to wreak havoc after that. He was determined to just be a complete nuisance. My father hated it.
Like I’ve said one too many times, my father was and is a strict man. He was someone who did not tolerate rubbish and loved things going in the perfect order all the time so just imagine someone like him having a son like Antonio. He tried
everything he could to keep him in check to no avail and now
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that I look back on things, my father wasn’t even this strict and intolerant before Antonio started to act out horribly and especially before he broke the last straw.
Antonio was a topic that was always brought up among the elders during their meetings with my father much to my father’s displeasure but nothing Antonio had done could hold a candle to what he did that day.
After befriending a bunch of rogues who he met outside the pack, he was bold enough to bring them into the pack himself. I didn’t know if it was that he considered them his
friends and innocently wanted to show them around his pack or it was that he had already been filled with so much hatred for his family and pack by then because those friends of his who wouldn’t have entered the pack so easily if not for him, weren’t up to no good.
A whole ten of them had split up around the pack, springing up on people who were going about their daily activities, and by the time help came, it was a surprise no one died at the end of the day.
The pack hospital was filled up with injured werewolves and a decision was made for Antonio to be thrown out of the pack. It was long overdue and this time my father did not even try to fight for him because that would be as good as declaring that he was in cahoots with a traitor.
Besides, sentiments aside, we all knew that Antonio deserved it, even though my mother and I both cried our eyes out when he had to leave. The truth was that for Antonio’s crime, he deserved to be killed so we had to quietly swallow the better option he had been afforded as the Alpha’s son,
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And yet, Antonio left the pack feeling like we had wronged him. He refused to keep in contact with us. My mom had fallen into depression after that. He never picked up her calls and never returned her letters, there was no word from him until he changed locations and we could never find his location. It hurt her not knowing whether her son was dead or alive.
I met my brother years later while studying abroad. He had come to meet me and while I had been excited to see him, he was still harboring all his hatred for the past, accusing us of abandoning him without a single word which confused me considering the fact that we always reached out to him but he declined our attention.
He had managed to form a small family for himself from what I had gathered at the time. Like a low–budget pack of people who had left their packs but did not completely want the solitude of the life of a rogue. The two men that I had seen with him wore identical crests and it was the same crest I saw
in Isabella’s room.
If Antonio had never got rid of his anger, hatred and resentment, there has to be only one reason I would find his possession in my mate’s apartment after her disappearance. And while I never went on to find out his base after we met that time, I was sure if I scanned that region, I should be able to find them and end everything once and for all, right?
I never told my parents that I had met Antonio again after all those years. How would they react if I told them now as well as the fact that he was behind my mate’s abduction? Should I tell them?
I dropped the barbell with a huff and went on to the bench
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press. I must have been working out for at least an hour and I didn’t feel strained enough. I didn’t feel like I had pushed myself enough. I began to think about my wolf’s suggestion to pick a fight Caleb because I’ve not heard of a single fighter who hasn’t felt satisfied after a fight. But once again, I pushed away the irrational thought.
For how long do I continue to hold on to sentiments though? I thought as sweat rolled down my face and onto my neck, tickling my skin. For how long do I continue to give him the benefit of doubt for the fact that he was my brother? Would he pin me down and clamp his teeth down on my neck, aiming to kill me if he had the chance? And if he would do that, it would mean that Isabella was already as good as dead.
Or perhaps he was holding her just long enough that he could strike a deal with me. It was a highly better option for me and that was exactly why I doubted its viability. So far, I have never had the benefit of a better option so why now? Besides, I clearly remembered the look Antonio’s eyes held the last time I saw him. He did not look at me the way one would look at a brother -especially one that has literally the same face as him.
No, the look in Anthonio’s eyes was crazed and bloodthirsty because according to him, I was the one person he expected to stand up for him and yet I didn’t.
It was the first time I had gotten angry at Antonio. I wish he had given me an actual reason to feel guilty about but he hated me because of something even my father could do nothing about.
What could thirteen–year–old me have done to help him after he had single–handedly destroyed his own life? I had gotten
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angry then but he had left before I could say a single word to him and I had not seen him or heard from him again…until
now.
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