Back to the present, Alex finally stopped hitting his brother and stepped back, grabbing his own chest and coughing up blood. "Fuck..." He spat it onto the floor and went down to one knee, steadying himself until the wave passed.

Sebastian exhaled slowly. "You are torturing yourself, Alex. You have to let the emotions go or they will kill your heart."

"Along with yours." Alex said, wiping his mouth and getting back to his feet as though nothing had happened. He made his way to the bar in the underground mansion and poured himself a drink.

After what Sebastian had done, something his twin had never forgiven him for, it had caused irreversible damage to Alex’s heart. The grief and bitterness he refused to let go of were slowly eating away at both his soul and his heart, causing it to gradually shut down.

And when it successfully shut down and killed him, it would naturally pull the other twin along with him because of the connection between them. Sebastian could end that connection by killing Alex with his own hand, but he wouldn’t. No matter what had happened, this person was still a part of him.

Sebastian followed and took the stool beside Alex, pouring his own glass. He was raising it to his lips when his brother spoke.

"So how is the search for the prophesied mate? The one you married... did she turn out to be the one?"

One of them was supposed to find the prophesied mate and break the curse that kept killing the wrong mates while slowly torturing them along with it, or make a sacrifice instead. But the search had been pointless for years. The curse ran deeper than most people believed, and time was ticking away for them to find the one capable of breaking it.

"I don’t know." Sebastian said, deliberately keeping his voice flat.

Alex looked at him. "You don’t know. Have you marked her?"

Sebastian’s fingers tightened around the glass. "Not yet."

"Why?"

"Because I don’t feel like marking her." Sebastian said and Alex chuckled humorlessly.

"I suppose I will mark her for you after we switch places this time around. Just like you marked my wife for me when you promised you wouldn’t." He swallowed his drink along with the bitterness and anger in his throat.

"How many times do I have to tell you that I didn’t mark Natalie intentionally?" Sebastian looked at him and watched his jaw tighten.

"And how many times have I told you it doesn’t matter?" Alex said. "You killed her. You used her as your first sacrifice to break your curse by marking her."

"And you killed Evangeline. I never held that against you, Alex." Sebastian gritted out.

"You never held it against me because you didn’t give a damn about her! That is different." Alex’s voice dropped lower and colder. "I cared about my wife. I married her because I loved her and you took her from me." He slammed his glass down on the counter hard enough to shatter it. "If we are keeping score, I believe it is time I made my second sacrifice too, brother."

Rage rose hot and fast in Sebastian’s chest at those words, but he didn’t address what they implied. Keeping score would mean Alex might do to his own wife what Sebastian had done to his years ago, something born from a mistake and a momentary loss of control he hadn’t been able to stop.

Viola had come to mean too much to him now, and he wouldn’t risk dragging her into the conflict between them. If he wasn’t careful, his brother would use her simply to make him experience the pain of losing the mate he love and cared about.

Rather than addressing his remarks about Viola, he said instead, "I have a clear lead in my search for the sea creature. It won’t take long before I find it. Its power can break our curse and cure your heart completely. We wouldn’t need to sacrifice any more Lunas to be free of it."

Alex looked at him slowly and then smiled. "You are trying to protect her." He threw his head back and laughed, the sound carrying through the underground halls. "You have finally found the mate you love enough to protect. Now isn’t this interesting, Seb?"

Sebastian’s expression didn’t move. "Keep her out of this, Alexander. My wife is innocent."

"So was mine." Alex got up from the stool. "It’s almost twelve. Let’s get on with it before we talk any more about this new wife of yours. I don’t want to go through the curse inside the house because that would leave you with the cleaning up, and you are terrible at that."

Sebastian felt his throat tighten, because Alex would be stepping out this time around to live as him, which meant Sebastian would be left here once the days of the full moon passed, for the next six months. He couldn’t let that happen and needed to talk to Alex, to buy himself more time to look for the sea creature and to protect his wife.

The last thing he needed was to put his woman in any more danger, but he still got up and followed Alex deeper into the tunnel that led to a hall resembling a dungeon, where the sounds of whimpering were already reaching them.

They stepped into the dark hall where moonlight streamed in from a ceiling built in a way that connected to the small house above, allowing the milky light to filter down in pale shafts.

The whimpering grew louder alongside the clinking of chains. When the twins stepped fully into the hall there were lines of ten men chained to the ground.

"Please help us. Don’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything wrong!" Cried one of the chained men, who were human and looking up at the tall identical figures standing before them with barely contained terror.

"Hmm." Sebastian hummed. "You didn’t do anything wrong. You should have known by now that it’s unsafe to trespass into this part of the world to steal and kill. I heard you even killed five pups, hunting them like a common animal."

The humans, who hadn’t even known that the territory they had trespassed into belonged to another world entirely, one of creatures who changed form, looked up at the man speaking and replied, "We just wanted to sell their skin and fur. The wolves here have lovely furs. We had...we had no idea monsters lived in this world. If you let us go we won’t come back here ever again, we won’t say a word to anyone!"

Sebastian was used to this, the pleading, the crying, the desperate faces of the people they used to fight off their curse. But these were not innocent people despite how they presented themselves in chains. These were criminals who had trespassed and killed innocent werewolves, and being the supreme Alpha, he kept this kind of human specifically for the full moon when he needed them for the curse.

Normally, they were executed before the pack members because releasing them back into the human world was no longer an option. They would spread word about werewolves and turn his people into something humans would want to capture and experiment on. But using them here was no different from execution anyway.

"Unfortunately I don’t give second chances to killers, especially ones who killed one of my people and skinned little pups." Sebastian said as he began to pull off his shirt. His eyes dropped to the empty plates sitting in front of the chained men and he stared at them for a moment before he turned to look at his twin brother.

"I can’t believe you fed them, Alex. They are criminals."

"Shut the fuck up." Alex gritted out, not wanting to talk to Sebastian and not wanting to admit that he had felt sorry for them and brought food down the previous night, and that the loneliness down here had gotten so heavy he had come here just to ask them about the human world.

"Alex, help us!" One of the men cried out to him.

"I’m sorry," Alex said quietly. "My brother and I need you, or I would have given you all a second chance." He paused. "I will keep my word and send money to your families on your behalf."

"Really? We’re sending money to criminals now?" Sebastian muttered, rolling his eyes at his twin’s naivety and the way he would give criminals second chances but not him. That was exactly why the elders didn’t think he was built to be the Supreme Alpha.

"It’s none of your business. I’m not sending your money, it’s mine."

Alex hated this part of their curse more than anything and couldn’t wait to be rid of it, but he had no choice but to participate in order to keep himself from turning on innocent pack members instead.

The men watched in horror as the twins began to sink to their knees the moment the clock struck twelve. And what happened next was not something they would have been able to explain even if they had lived to tell it.

***

Author’s Note:

I want to give a special thanks to mbmclawhten for the Spacecraft gift and for being the top supporter of this book. As much as I would love to do a mini mass release in honor of the gift, I’ve been extremely busy lately because I’m preparing to move. The stress of packing and getting everything ready has been keeping me occupied.

However, once I’ve settled into my new place, I will make it up to you all and do a mini mass release in honor of mbmclawhten’s generous support.

Thank you as well to everyone who continues to support this book. Every gift, comment, review, vote, and read helps the story reach more readers, and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. ❤️