𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍✔️

FOURTEEN|BLOODLINES

  MY BROTHER.

The brother that I hadn't seen in five years.

The brother that used to tuck me in at night, and swore to protect me no matter what. He had tried his best, and for that, I could never fault him, but sometimes your best just wasn't enough.

No matter how hard he tried, or how many times he checked the closet or beneath my bed, some monsters could not be fought off with a nightlight.

The real monsters were not those that I saw in my dreams, or the flaming-red eyes and humanoid shapes that I saw in the dark of my room, but they were those that purged whole packs, slaughtering every last member, be it man, woman or child.

They didn't care. They didn't feel, they didn't see. Why should they?

When the real monsters came, my brother tried to protect me — to stop them, but he was too young and too weak. We both were. I could never blame him for that.

It was almost as if my mind failed to comprehend the concept that right at this very moment, my brother was in Kaden's office. Less than one hundred feet away.

If I were to burst in, would he recognise me? Would he even want to see me? Or would he rather I stayed gone? Did he miss me when I was gone?

He had loved me before, and I him, but what about now when so much time had passed and so much distance has separated us?

I thought about it for a while, until I came to the decision that even if he didn't want to see me I didn't care, I needed to see him. Because I was selfish and self-entitled enough to believe that I had some sort of right to see him, just this once.

I found myself hesitating outside the office door. If I listened closely, I could just about make out the vague humming outline of words. My fingers faltered on the handle; the metal cold and unforgiving beneath my fingertips. I allowed myself one last deep breath, then I forced my way inside before I could allow myself to change my mind and back out.

Kaden immediately stood from his desk; alert. "What is it, Arden? — What's wrong?"

I stood there awkwardly for a moment, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe. And then my eyes landed on him.

"Xavier..." The name fell off my tongue as easily as the tears that blurred my vision. He had changed so much since I had last seen him.

He had the same shaggy brown hair and emerald eyes of my father, the same eyes as me. But his once lanky and frail figure had filled out into one of fine stock, filled heavy with muscle and tan skin. A light layer of stubble coated his jaw, he looked the same, and yet at the same time the person I saw before me was also so far removed from the fifteen-year-old boy I remembered in my head.

He wasn't a little boy anymore. He was a man.

Xavier's eyes flickered with something unreadable, his jaw growing slack, eyes wide and disbelieving, "Arden... Is — is it really you?" He croaked; voice hoarse and yet somehow hollow.

He had thought me dead all these years. He had grieved and accepted it a long time ago and moved past it. But seeing me here, stood before him, alive. It had resurfaced all those horrid feelings, awakened all those demons, and now they tore him apart from the outside in.

I nodded, for it was all I could manage, tears streaming down my cheeks as I flung myself towards him, wrapping my arms around his neck. His arms instantly embraced me, and I could feel tears wetting the back of my shirt. He was crying, the realisation suddenly making me feel less weak as I stopped holding back my own tears and let my emotions overcome me.

It felt almost as though I had been hit by a great force, or a dagger, plunging into my chest at the knowledge that my only sibling was alive and well. I wondered if Xavier felt it too. In that moment, nothing else mattered.

I had my brother. And he had me. Nothing would ever tear us apart again.

"We thought you were dead..." He whispered into my hair, not for a second loosening his hold for fear I would disappear again. "We all did... We searched for years..." He sobbed, pulling me closer into his warmth, "I'm so sorry Arden... Please — I never stopped searching for you..."

A loud growl tore through the air as I was torn away from my brother. Kaden's eyes were dark and not his own, his actions were fuelled by his beast as he snarled, "Mine."

Xavier looked stunned, and for a moment he fought to quell the sudden anger of his own creature as he frowned at us through red-rimmed eyes. "You're mates?"

I nodded and turned to Kaden whose face was only inches away from mine. Everything within me screamed to kiss him, but this was not the place nor the time. " — Kaden, it's okay. He — he's my brother."

The words felt foreign and strange as they left my lips, but I was too close to bursting with the unguarded ecstasy that swelled in my chest to concentrate on my words.

Kaden nodded numbly, looking in shock himself, but he seemed to understand as he released me from the crushing embrace. I ran back to Xavier and hugged him tightly.

The last five years had been cruel and unforgiving, but now... It seemed as if everything was finally starting to fall back into place. The broken shards of my heart were slowly forming one fragile and misguided whole.

"Arden," He said, pulling away and resting his hands on my shoulders, examining every inch of my face. "Where were you?"

Where was I?

I was with the monsters, though I couldn't tell Xavier that, at least not in front of Kaden. But I also couldn't lie to him. Both of them deserved to know, and I couldn't tell one but not the other.

"I was..." I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the hellish memories from overwhelming me and sending me into a complete mental breakdown. "I was gone."

I felt Kaden tense behind me and Xavier shift uncomfortably.

"What do you mean gone?" Xavier growled.

I could only tell them a fragment of the truth, just a singular shard of the broken picture, one that barely scratched the surface of the endless torment that had been inflicted upon me.

I thought for a long time on every syllable before I spoke, "For a while... I was in a very bad place... But I got out and I became a rogue, until Kaden found me... He saved me."

I didn't mention any of the in-between. Maybe it was because I was more terrified of having to relive those memories than how the two most important people in my life would react. Retelling my demons would not change anything. What was done was done. They could not uncarve my scars or kill the monsters that plagued my nights. They were better off living in bliss. I told myself that I was protecting them by not telling them.

Xavier didn't need to know that, that his little sister felt so trapped and controlled by her demons that he couldn't protect her from, that she thought that she had no other way out than through the bottom of a bottle.

But then Kaden came, he was the light that guided me through the seemingly impenetrable darkness that was my life. He saved me, in every single sense of the word.

I could sense both Kaden and Xavier's anger at my confession, it was radiating throughout the room, filling my every breath with red-hot rage and washing over me in thick waves.

Kaden clenched his jaw, and Xavier had balled his knuckles so tightly that they had begun to turn white.

" — A Bad place?" Kaden questioned, narrowing his eyes at me, not in an accusatory way, but almost as if trying to read the secrets that lay trapped behind my eyes. I just shook my head.

"I can't... I — I don't want to talk about it, at least, not yet."