“It shouldn’t be possible,” Liam insisted. “If he’s my brother, our pheromones should repel each other.”
Jules frowned, his expression becoming thoughtful. “Have you considered that there might be another explanation for your attraction to Anthony? A simpler explanation?”
“What explanation?” Liam said with a bitter laugh.
There was something like hesitation on Jules’s face.
“Just say it, Jules,” Liam said, his tone shorter than it normally was.
“Anthony is our half-brother,” Jules said, the look in his eyes almost pitying. “You do remember that, right?”
Of course Liam remembered that, even though it was something barely spoken about in the family. Their father—Liam, Jules, and Eric’s father—had always insisted that Anthony was his son, too, and Liam remembered Anthony being genuinely fond of his step-father. Anthony’s real parent—an omega their mother was married to—had died from complications after giving birth to him. It had taken their mother nearly a decade to recover from her grief before she married again, this time a beta, and gave birth to her youngest children. Liam’s memories of his childhood were rather hazy, but even as a child, he remembered Mother being sterner and harsher with Anthony than she ever was toward them. Liam wondered sometimes if she had subconsciously blamed Anthony for her first spouse’s death. Or maybe their alpha designations were to blame for them constantly butting heads. Either way, Mother and Anthony’s relationship had always been strained, and Father had been the peacekeeper of the family, his mild beta temper good to calm them both down. Liam had sometimes wondered whether Anthony would have stayed home if their father didn’t leave for the war. Probably. When a few months after being drafted, Father was declared MIA, Anthony had a huge row with their mother and enlisted, too. And that had been that.
“I’m not sure what that has to do with anything,” Liam said.
Sighing, Jules ran a hand through his hair. “It’s true that closely related alphas and omegas’ pheromones aren’t supposed to be attractive to each other, but what if your relation to Anthony isn’t considered close? We’re related to Anthony only through our mother—our mother who didn’t even carry Anthony—his omega mother did. Genetics are fickle. Maybe you inherited most of your genes from our father and actually share very few genes with Anthony—so few that your pheromones don’t repel each other.”
Liam stared at him.
Jules’s explanation did make sense. It wasn’t as far-fetched as Liam’s, considering that Anthony had passed all the identification tests.
Fuck.
He had been so certain that the impostor explanation was the only possible one—that it proved that he wasn’t a pervert—but if Jules was right, he was back to square one: still lusting after his own brother.
Liam’s face crumpled.
“Oh, Li,” Jules said, pulling him into a hug, the air filling with his sweet, soothing pheromones. “I’m sure you’re just confused. He’s a handsome alpha and you barely remember him, so it’s probably natural that you find it hard to see him as a brother. It’ll pass, you’ll see.”
Comforting always came so much more naturally to Jules than it ever did to him. Liam had never felt like a bigger failure. He was older than Jules. He shouldn’t need comfort from him, especially not for this reason.
“I still might be right,” Liam mumbled half-heartedly.
“You might be,” Jules said, but Liam knew he was just humoring him.
Jules didn’t really believe him.
Liam didn’t believe it, either.
Chapter 7
At the other end of the Blake family mansion, the man who called himself Anthony Blake cursed under his breath, rolling his chair away from the computer. He got to his feet, his skin crawling with frustration and the beginnings of a headache thumping at his temples.
Nothing.
Ten days of searching for it, and he still couldn’t find the trigger that would release the lock on his memories.
If that lock even existed.
Frowning, he paced the room. No, he did have the classic signs of memory tampering. They were very subtle, but he recognized them after years of undercover work. He was here on a mission. The memory lock had most likely been put in place to fool the Inheritance Department’s advanced lie detectors. He’d passed the DNA test too, but there was a way around it. A very illegal, highly classified way, but entirely viable if one had access to certain technology that could temporarily modify a person’s genetic markers to show a false positive.
He sighed, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. Everything would have been simpler if he could trust his own memories.
There were only a few things he was certain of. He was military. He was an operative of the Division. He had been doing classified, undercover work for his country for a decade. Those memories were very sharp. Natural.
The rest was… murky.
He didn’t think he was Anthony Blake. For one thing, his childhood memories felt too disjointed when he focused on them—an almost sure sign of implanted memories. He was used to that feeling from deep undercover missions—except during those missions there was normally a trigger word that would release his real memories. It was standard protocol during such missions to mail or deliver the trigger to the operative after he passed the security checks.