Chapter 40 40
Chapter 1 – Secrets
They say there are three things that cannot stay hidden for long… the sun, the moon, and the truth.
Secrets hold you captive and nothing makes you feel as lonely as your secrets. The greatest secrets are often hidden in the most unlikely places. I carry not one, but two. Two secrets with the power to cause pain and betrayal in my family.
Most people believe twins share everything with one another, and while it’s true for many, it’s not for me. Alice and I may look alike, but that’s where the similarities end. My sister has always been the outgoing and social type. She took ballet lessons, while I attended martial arts lessons. Alice favors dresses, makeup, and nail polish. I prefer activewear, a clean face, and trimmed nails. Her best friends are female and mine are male.
It's been two years since we celebrated our eighteenth birthday. Two years since everything changed. Two years of pretending everything was okay when it wasn’t because hiding the truth kept me from having to deal with it. Hiding the truth kept the peace within our family. Just when I start to believe it gets easier, it doesn’t. The past always has a way of coming back to haunt you, and tomorrow seems to be just as good as any day for it.
“What the hell was that?” My youngest brother Lukas roared as we continued our sparring session.
“It’s called the flying superman,” I grinned, showing off my newly mastered fighting skill.
Lukas may have been the youngest, but he was one of the strongest. Fortunately for me, he was always a willing training partner.
“Are you bringing a date tomorrow?” I asked as I released a round kick.
“Beky is coming with me,” he stepped forward and tried to sweep my feet.
“The redhead who’s always reading books?” I sent a jab to his side.
“That’s the one,” he returned the jab.
“Isn’t she too old for you?” My elbow missed his chin. “She’s seventeen. We’re the same age,” he took another
swing and I ducked before the blow could make contact. “Do you feel a connection to her?” I lunged for him.
“She doesn’t have a wolf yet, so it’s possible I can’t sense my mate,” he replied as we crashed to the ground, taking our sparring session into a grappling match. “Maybe your mate is younger, and you can’t sense him yet?” Lukas continued with a laugh.
“I’m a wolf, not a cougar,” I snarked.
“Well, you’re not getting any younger,” he gritted as I twisted his arm back.
“I’m in no hurry,” I tried to sound unfazed.
“Tell that to mom,” he replied and tried to apply a choke hold on me, but I pulled out of it.
“I think mom is more worried about you and the old family prophecy,” I taunted and dug my knee into his side.
“Ugh, spare me, not the old family obsession,” he rolled his eyes and tapped his hand on the ground to end the match. “We should call it a day, we have dinner with the pack elders tonight.”
“Ugh, spare me,” I groaned.
We walked back to the pack house, and I decided I needed a shower. The last thing I wanted to do was have dinner with the pack elders who spent most of the time speculating which Alpha was still unmated and my potential mate. I stood under the cool jets of streaming water and considered the upcoming events.
Tomorrow is a big day for our pack, Olympus Blood Moon. It’s the day my father, Alpha Dimitri Theodorus, will pass the torch to my eldest brother, Kyros, as the new pack Alpha. Ranked wolves and warriors from every pack in Greece will be here for the Alpha ceremony. Other Alphas and ranked wolves from neighboring ally packs will also be in attendance. An Alpha ceremony is significantly important, especially when a pack is big and powerful. It’s a chance to forge alliances and renew bonds with the old Alpha and his heir.
Greece has a total of five packs and ours is the largest. The other packs belong to my uncles, so I’ve had the chance to visit, train, and fight with warriors from all the packs. My uncle, Alpha Hades Kappas, is the best trained fighter the werewolf world has ever seen. It’s no surprise why I spent as much time as I could with him while growing up.
My brother Kyros and I took advantage of every opportunity to spend time with Uncle Hades and Aunt Odessa. He’s the Alpha of the Moon Warriors pack, which is only three hours away from us. Aunt Odessa is my father’s only sibling and spoiled us every time we went to visit their pack. I wanted to train with Uncle Hades, and Kyros wanted to be close to the Beta’s daughter, Anya.
Fortunately for Kyros, Anya turned out to be his fated mate and will become the Luna of our pack in tomorrow’s ceremony.
Every werewolf has a second half, a fated mate. The Moon Goddess, Selene, creates each wolf to be part of a whole. When mates find each other, it’s said to be magic. A mate bond so strong, that it pulses through both of you. The wolf within each shifter seeks the comfort and bond of their mate, it grounds them and provides them with the love and strength they need to thrive.
Most shifters reach maturity at the age of eighteen when they get their wolf and can shift into wolf form. This is also when a wolf can sense and find its mate. If you’re lucky enough to find your mate in the same pack, you usually find them on your birthday. For others, it can take years if your mate is in another pack or a different country.
From a very young age, Kyros shared a close bond with Anya. Everyone suspected they were mates, though he wasn’t able to confirm it until he reached maturity at eighteen. Anya was kind, gentle, and beautiful. While I preferred training with my cousins, Alice always opted to forgo training and spend time with Anya. She had two younger brothers, Aleksei and Aleksandr. All three had beautiful golden hair.
Aleksei and Aleksandr had Alpha blood because they were the sons of a Russian-born Alpha who is my uncle’s best friend and second in command, Beta Kazimir. On the outside, Kazimir is as strong and cold as Russian vodka, but for those of us closest to him, he’s warm and kind. Now that Anya was going to be the new Luna of Olympus Blood Moon, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him at our pack.
We cross-trained to ensure we’d become well-rounded fighters in both human and wolf forms. While most packs neglected training in human form and solely depend on their wolf strength, our packs ensured we were strong in both forms. The training didn’t stop there, for those of us who possessed elemental gifts, we also had additional training with my father.
Elemental wolves have an ancient gift and are descendants of the Moon Goddess. Legend has it, that the Moon Goddess gave four of her daughters the gift of elemental power to control either earth, air, water, or fire. Not every descendant is elemental, and it often skips generations or siblings. My father received the earth element, but it skipped my Aunt Odessa. Even though my aunt doesn’t have the elemental gift, she passed it to three of my four Kappas cousins. Leona is the youngest and has yet to reach maturity, so we don’t know if she will be elemental.
When my Kappas cousins visit Olympus Blood Moon to train with my father and brothers, Aleksei and Aleksandr come with them. For as long as I can remember, there was something about Aleksei that sent the butterflies in my stomach fluttering. He was handsome, strong, and charming. Like many of the other girls in our pack, I also admired Aleksei, but I wasn’t as obvious about it. I used to dream about him and marvel at the idea of kissing him.
I often wondered if our family’s closeness kept Aleksei from really noticing me, but then the truth would come crashing down on me. I remembered the longing looks I frequently caught him making at my twin. As time moved on, I realized he had zero interest in me, and I had zero chance in hell with him. He only had eyes for my sister Alice, and it filled me with unexplainable jealousy.
For a long time, Alice ignored him. The more she ignored him, the harder he tried to get her attention. Eventually, his seduction attempts worked.
I turned off the shower and decided to skip dinner altogether. Dread filled me as I considered having to see my sister tomorrow. She would be arriving from Spain in the afternoon, and I would have to plaster on a fake smile for the sake of my family. I slipped into bed and turned off the lights. I turned and tossed as memories of the past consumed me.
Alice and Aleksei started dating during our last year in high school. Just as my brother Kyros and Anya felt they were mates all along, Aleksei was certain Alice was his mate. The only problem was… I continued to feel drawn to Aleksei. I continued to long for my sister’s boyfriend and possible mate.
Aleksei was born four months before us, which means he would have been able to start sensing who his mate was. He would have felt more drawn to her, and his wolf would have been attracted to her scent above the scent of another. Sometimes the pull was not there until both mates had reached maturity, so there was a small chance the connection would not be felt until then.
When Aleksei turned eighteen, his entire demeanor towards me changed. He started avoiding me and never attended the same training as I did. For some irrational reason, this pained me. Alice and I graduated high school with two months left until our eighteenth birthday. She spent most of the summer doing incredibly fun things with Aleksei, Anya, and Kyros. I was never invited.
Once we turned eighteen, things took a turn for the worst.
“Knock, knock,” my mother said as she pushed my bedroom door open and pulled me out of my thoughts. She turned on the lights and my arm shot over my eyes.
“Mom, you’re supposed to wait until someone invites you in before you just waltz right into their room. I could have been naked or something,” I huffed and shuffled into a sitting position on the bed.
“You didn’t come down for dinner. Are you okay?” “I’m fine.”
“Good, I found the perfect shoes to go with your dress for tomorrow,” she continued.
“Don’t you have some last-minute things to go over for tomorrow? Why are you worried about my shoes?”
“I just want to make sure you look your best tomorrow, you never know who you’ll meet,” she smiled like the Cheshire cat, still hoping I would find my mate. I had no doubt she had probably forced my father to invite every unmated ranked wolf on this continent.
“Goddess help me!” I groaned and flopped back onto my pillow.
“Don’t sleep in too late, your grandparents will be arriving early in the morning. We expect you to be at breakfast with the rest of the family.” She set the shoes down and whirled out of my room.
My mother wasn’t asking me, she was telling me. I had tried to avoid as many family gatherings as I could in the last two years. Now that I was twenty, the topic of conversation always seemed to veer back to finding my mate. My mother even suggested my grandfather take me with him on shifter council business to other packs and events in hopes of finding my mate. But it was all in vain.
With mounting frustration, I gave my pillow a few good jabs as if it had personally offended me. I repositioned the now fluffy pillow and settled back down, hoping to drift off to sleep. I closed my eyes and visions from two years ago haunted me again.
On the morning of my eighteenth birthday, my wolf Azura awakened and was eager for her first run. My father was busy talking Alice through her first shift as she writhed on the ground in pain. I slipped behind a tree and shifted in a matter of seconds with very little pain or effort. Howling to the sky, Azura took off, eager to explore our territory and stretch her legs.
Two hours later, with the wind blowing through my fur, I returned to find the shocked expressions on the faces of my siblings. My mother also stood in disbelief as she looked me over. My wolf was much bigger than the average-sized wolf. In fact, Azura was just as big as any Theodorus male.
“Anabeth!” My mother gasped. “You’re… you’re…” she couldn’t seem to find the words, which was unusual for my mother.
The Theodorus bloodline descended from the first werewolf turned by Zeus which made the Alpha males unusually larger than other werewolves. My sister had a black matte-colored coat and was average-sized. My wolf stood two feet taller than hers and was more of a shiny raven black color.
“Sweet Moon Goddess Anabeth,” Alice spoke to me through the mind link. “You’d better hope your mate is a confident beast of an Alpha because your wolf is just as big as dad!”
She couldn’t have been any more wrong. It wasn’t the size of my wolf that caused my mate to deny me. It was his desire for her that left me without a mate on our eighteenth birthday. A day that still haunts me.
“Anabeth, will you go find your sister, we’re getting ready to bring out the birthday cakes,” my mother instructed and moved to the kitchen.
Our party was in full swing and curious eyes seemed to be watching my every move. Word had already circulated about my wolf, and I managed to catch some of the whispers as I moved around the crowded room. My sister was nowhere to be found, so I went upstairs to check her room. That’s when his scent hit me, and I knew who it belonged to.
I moved to her bedroom door and stood silently for a moment. He was in there with her. My heart started racing and I wondered if it was possible to share the same mate.
“I love you, Alice. It’s always been you, only you,” he said through labored breathing.
Fear and anger ignited in me, without thinking, I reached for the door and pushed it open. Sex. They were having sex. My sister let out a shriek and Aleksei covered her naked body with his.
“Get out!” He roared, but I couldn’t move.
Our eyes locked and that’s when I felt my heart shatter.