Chapter 20 Twenty
Rhea's POV
"Is it true?" I called down to Thanos. My voice sounded small, lost. “My mother, was she really daughter to your sister?
The shifter king's expression shifted. The cruel grin turned human, almost fatherly, almost friendly. It made him more dangerous, not less.
"Beatrice was the one and only offspring of my younger sister," he added, speaking loudly in the sudden stillness. “When she started makin' eyes at that wolf Alaric, we tried to intervene. Shifters and wolves ain’t mix, child. Too long have our species been at conflict.”
He advanced another step toward the wall and I sensed Theron stiffen behind me.
“But she was strong willed,” Thanos added. "Just like you, I suspect. She ran away with him, and we thought that we’d lost her forever. For years, we heard nothing and figured she had died. That she had been murdered by Alaric as wolves murder everything beautiful.”
There was a hardening in his face — the false warmth vanished. "Then we learned the truth. Alaric killed her after you were born. As soon as he found out what she truly was, what you are, he murdered her. Because he was afraid of shifter blood tainting his precious werewolf line.”
These words landed on me like a punch. All of them confirmed what I suspected but did not want to believe.
Alaric had killed my mother. Not in some tragic accident or illness. He'd murdered her deliberately.
“You lie,” I said, but my voice broke on the words.
"Am I?" Thanos shrugged, all pretend innocence. "Ask yourself, little niece. Why would Alaric murder the woman he loved? Why hide your magic from you all these years, leaving you weak and overpowered? For he dreaded what you were. What you represented."
He pointed at the gathered armies, our surroundings. “You’re a bridge between our species. A living testament to what shifters and wolves can make together. And you need to be with your real family. With me."
“She’s one of us,” Cassian snarled from behind me.
Thanos laughed, a sound so full and mocking. "Four werewolf mates. How delightful. But a bond of werewolf to hearth means not a thing next to blood, boy. This shifter is royalty, whether she knows it or not. And I have come to take her home.”
Sensed it through the tenuous links between us. Fear from Cassian. Rage from Theron. Orin, who had dragged himself up here despite his wounds. And from Kieran, cold calculation with some aspect I could not place.
“You’re going to have to get through every single one of us,” Theron said, his voice eerily level. He stepped up next to me, this wall of age and power.
Orin came to his feet, despite the obvious agony. "He's right. You want her? First you will have to kill us.”
Kieran's hand hovered over his sword. "All four of us."
Cassian took an advancing step, his freshly woken alpha power sparking so fierce that even the wolves behind him recoiled. “And all who dwell in this territory And every wolf,” Boaz said.
Thanos's smile never wavered. If anything, it widened. "So be it. I will give you till the morning dawn to change your mind. Give us the girl now, or I torch all of your land."
He spun around and walked slowly back toward his army.
“Choose wisely, little niece,” He calls out over his shoulder. “Your true family, and the wolves who have given you nothing but use of name.”
Then he was gone, melting into the sea of shifters that stared back at us with golden, predatory glances.
We stood in silence. His ultimatum hung heavy on all of us.
Finally, I found my voice. It came out small, broken. "Is it true? Was my mother in truth his sister's daughter?"
"I don't know," Theron admitted. His voice had the ring of truth and it was almost worse than a lie. "But we'll find out. I have contacts, sources. We'll learn the truth."
I looked at all of them. Theron, ancient and powerful Theron, looking down at me with those eyes I’d once noted so admiringly, that could see through centuries. My best friend since childhood, my mate Cassian, his face twisted with concern. Orin, bloody and battered but holding his ground nonetheless. Kieran -- cold, distant as ever, but standing protectively all the same.
Four guys who were meant to be my mates. Four men who barely knew me.
"Why?" I asked simply. "Why would you fight for me? Die for me? You don't even know me."
I waited for logical answers. For politics or prophecy fulfillment or curse breaking.
Instead, Orin spoke first. His voice was weak from his wounds, but firm. "Because you're ours. Mate bonds aren't logical. They just are."
"He's right," Cassian added quietly. “The day I touched you, the day my alpha gift awoke, I knew. You're part of me now."
Theron's hand found mine once more, as he interlaced our fingers. "I have dwelt three centuries in solitude. I had forgotten what it felt like to want to protect something. Someone. Until you."
“The bond is real. Whether we want it or not."
I should have found comfort in their words. Instead, they made everything worse.
Because how could I ever make a decision between them and the family that never knew me? The mate bonds tugging at my heart and the blood doctor Thanos had declared?
I needed time. Space. Air.
Thanos had set us until the end of dawn tomorrow. Less than 24 hours to make an impossible decision.
“I need time,” I yelled back, my voice stronger now. “You want me to trust you and I have no idea who you are. Let me take three days to mull it over.”
The shifter army stirred. Thanos stepped forward from his legions, observing me.
"Three days," he finally agreed. "But know this, niece. You won t obey, I ll carry you off. And all your wolves will die trying to protect me.”
He lifted his hand, and the shifter horde started to draw away. Not retreating, just repositioning. Camping outside our borders.
As soon as they were safely out of striking range chaos erupted on me.
"What are you thinking?" Theron turned toward me, his hold on my hand tightening. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re genuinely considering it.”
“I’m stalling for us,” I said wearily. “Time to find out if he is telling the truth. Time to prepare. Time to..."
I faltered, overwhelmed by everything. The revelations about my mother. The four undone mate bonds tugging me. The curse still eating at Theron. The prophecy that is looming over all of us.
It was too much.
Before anyone could stop him, Cassian grabbed me and hugged me. His arms came around me, solid and warm and comforting.
“We're going to figure this out,” he mumbled into my hair. "I promise. We'll find a way."
I wanted to believe him. But I knew from bitter experience that promises were empty.
That night, sleep was impossible.
I lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling as the mate bonds hummed with emotion. Theron's determination. Cassian's worry. Orin’s physical hurt from his wounds blended with the ferocity of protectiveness. And Kieran, a chilling wall I couldn’t see but could certainly touch.
It was suffocating.
I got out of bed, reaching for a robe. The mansion was calm, most of the household at last sleeping after the battle. Guards guarded, but they let me through without stopping me.
I found myself in the garden. The same place Theron had found me once before, when I thought I was going to do the Mating Rite with him.
That seemed like ages ago, not this morning.
I sat on a bench near the fountain and listened to it. Seeking some peace in the noise.
"Couldn't sleep either?"
I twisted around and Kieran was standing in the shadows. He was the member of all my friends that I understood the least. Cold, completely unaffected by all that was going on around us.
“You scared me,” I said, my hand on my chest as if to calm a heart that was pounding.
Kieran stepped into the moonlight. He seemed very different without his habitual armor, in only simple clothes. More human. Less untouchable.
“Apologies,” he said, in a way that didn’t quite sound apologetic.
He walked over to the fountain and stood there, with his eyes downcast on the water. We sat in silence for a long while.
“You remind me of someone,” Kieran said at last, his voice hoarse. "My first mate. Elara."
My breath caught. I wasn’t aware that he’d had a mate before. No one had mentioned it.
"What happened to her?" I asked quietly.
"She died." The words were flat, emotionless. But I could hear the pain buried beneath. "Rogues hit our pack twenty years ago. I commanded the defense on the west. She was in the eastern zone, theoretically safe.”
He clenched the stone basin of the fountain until I actually heard it crack.
“By the time I made it to her, it was too late. She'd been torn apart. I sat with her when she passed away, and I made myself a promise that I’d never experience pain like that again.”
Kieran,” I whispered, my heart breaking for him.
"I'd never have dreamed of doing it had I not then; but after that I—held down the mate bond. Learned to feel nothing. It was safer that way. Easier." He glanced up at me at last, and his blue eyes were tormented. "And you walked into that wedding, and all these feelings I had buried just came flooding back. I don't want them. I don’t want to worry about you.”
The honesty was brutal. Most people would’ve lied, would have sweetened the deal. But Kieran dealt me the raw truth.
"I understand," I said.
"Do you?" He turned to face me fully. "Because I'm terrified, Rhea. Fucking terrified I’m going to care about you, let you in and lose you like I lost Elara.” And I’m not sure I can live through that twice.”
Before I could answer, before I could say that I was scared too, Kieran came over to me and did something I hadn't expected.
His head was bowed as he knelt there in front of me. The alpha, the freezing cold alpha submitting.
“But I do care,” he said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “All the same, despite my walls, despite my fears. I care about you. And it terrifies me."
I extended a shaking hand, and touched his hair tentatively. As soon as I touched him Kieran's body gave a convulsive jerk.
He gazed up at me, and his unguarded expression stole my breath. Not this cold, clinical warrior. This was some frightened, desperate broken human being.
Then he was kissing me.
It wasn't gentle. It was despairing, even angry, as if he were trying to punish us both for having feelings at all. His hands cupped my face, holding me like I might vanish.
I should have pulled away. Should have maintained distance. But I was tired of being rational on it, tired of considering everyone else’s feelings.
So I kissed him with just as much ferocity.
I snarled into his mouth, tangling my hands in his hair, bringing him close. Kieran emitted a sort of low growl-moan type of sound.
The mate bond sizzled between us hot, bright and overwhelming. I could feel everything he felt. The fear. The desire. Begging to reach someone after two decades of no one.
And it captured my own emotions so exquisitely that it hurt.
Kieran’s hands slide from my face to my waist and he leans me in. I slid off the bench and into his lap as the kiss deepened.
This was dangerous. Reckless. But I couldn’t force myself to stop.
When I finally managed to snap away from him, we both panting and puffing like crazy, Kieran fell forward so he was rested by forehead on mine.
I don’t know how to do this,” he confessed. "How to let someone in. How to be vulnerable."
“Me neither,” I whispered in reply. “But maybe we figure it out together.”
Kieran's eyes searched mine. Then he kissed me once more, softly this time. Almost tender.
And for the first time since Thanos had shown, I had experienced something other than fear.
I felt hope.