Wolf Broken (Wolfish 2)

“But then again,” Remus continues, “as much as we loved her, Remus and I were never bonded to her.”

“So … you think it’s different for me?” I lean forward suddenly. “Do you think Remus would …”

He cuts me off, his eyes sliding over to me. “I don’t know,” he says with surprising honesty. “All I know is that I can still remember that moment as if it were happening right now in front of my eyes all over again. No matter how much I try to scrub it from my brain, it never diminishes.”

He closes his eyes as his face contorts into a look of pain. When he opens them again, he has a vacant expression that lingers in sorrow.

“The other humans at the ceremony had just been turned and were violent and unpredictable. It’s nearly impossible to control a freshly turned shifter right after their first transformation. Remus and I both tried to stop it, but by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. Sienna was still human, and the shifter standing next to her was not. It took less time for him to sink his jaws into her and snap her neck than it took for either of us to blink.”

My stomach sickens.

They watched their own kind murder the love of their life. No wonder Romulus is so guarded; he’s been through hell.

“Remus and I didn’t return home that night. That month. That year.”

He pauses, one hand running along the smooth, hairless line of his jaw. For a moment, he looks so much like Rory that I nearly catch my breath.

“When we finally returned, we found out that a raiding party from a warring pack had heard about our grief and taken advantage of that opportunity to ravage our mostly undefended packs. They killed only the non-pure-blooded shifters … which was more than enough. When I looked at the men and women that I had known for years, slaughtered and strewn across the ground in nearly unrecognizable pieces, I didn’t have the heart to lead anymore.”

As much as Romulus and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, my heart can’t help but bleed for him now as he tells me his story.

“The turning ceremony had always been frowned upon, more so by some than others. But Remus and I had never taken issue with it until that night. For my brother, it drove him into an obsession with pure-bloods. He saw Sienna’s death as an intervention of fate, something that gave rise to a delusional new purpose in which he sought to ensure that his line and his pack maintained pure from that day forward. For me, it had a different effect.”

“It made me realize that there were many lone turned wolves without packs and without leadership; wolves that needed protection from packs like the one Remus was creating. I made it my new quest to find packs that needed my help and offer them asylum with me. It was in one of these packs that I found a woman who reminded me of the girl I once loved and had lost.”

“Lydia?” I ask.

Romulus nods. “She had been turned some time before I found her and was able to soften my heart, despite myself. I fell in love with her compassion and strength, and her ability to see past my brokenness and unlock the potential that we had together. I married her and since then she has been the piece of my soul that I thought I had lost. Remus could never accept that I had married a turned woman, and I could never except his ignorant hatred toward turned shifters. We’ve been at odds ever since.”

We sit in silence for a while after Romulus finishes speaking. His story explains so much. It explains why he’s been so against my involvement since the beginning and why he’s so strict with the boys when it pertains to me.

“Why are you telling me this now?” I ask, my turn for my voice to be so quiet I’m surprised he hears me.

Romulus just shakes his head.

“Maybe it’s because Remus is nearby. Maybe it’s the tea. Maybe it’s just that …” he stops and shakes his head, his thought going unfinished. When he looks at me, his face has a hollow, haunted quality to it.

“So now you understand?” he says, after a long silence. His eyes bore into me with an intensity that would make me uncomfortable if my thoughts weren’t already racing into the forest like the boys that have long since disappeared.

Of course I understand.

But it’s also given me an idea.

It was never about me, it was about Remus. About appeasing the brother that he’d long had a falling out with.

A brother that will, very soon, be close at hand.

Romulus is a lost cause. His loyalty, his trauma, his pain—they make it impossible for him to entertain the idea of turning me against the alliance’s rules.

Lately, I thought that was the end of it. I thought I was slowly slipping into a fate without Rory, without Marlowe, without Kaleb. But now … now …

Maybe it isn’t Romulus I need to convince at all.

Maybe it’s his brother.

I try to hide the way my heart beats louder in my ears. It must be deafening by now to ears like Romulus’.

Maybe if I could convince Remus to go along with the idea of me being turned … then perhaps Romulus would be less opposed to it. Surely if Remus had once loved a human woman himself, he would understand what the boys and I are going through. He might make an exception just this once, especially for Rory at least, since they are blood-family.