Accepting My Twin Mates
Chapter 96

Badru

Astennu hadn't ever shut me out like this before. Our anger and hurt were one and the same, but the way my brother's detonated while mine retained its composure was alien and foreign territory.

“Divide and conquer” That was all he would say to me.

How would we divide the interrogation of our father to conquer it, if he was leaving it all to me?

I don't think it was Isaac he meant, slow poke; Baniti muttered, while I watched our twin burst through to their midnight wolf as soon as his feet were clear of the prison grounds.

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Finley.

There was no way for me to stop him. He was far faster and more agile than I could ever be, even sleep deprived as we both were. If I gave chase, there wouldn't be much of Finley left by the time I caught up. But did I necessarily want to stop it? Why would I want to deny that a*****e the beating he had coming.

If Astennu could get the location of our mate, I was free to discover the motives of the former Alpha so nothing like this would ever happen again. I just hoped he would be ok on his own; another foreign sentiment, worrying over Astennu being the impulsive i**t.

Heading back inside the prison, solo, I was met with the scrutinous gaze of Kate, who noted instantly I was alone, and Tamlyn, who pretended to be minding her own business, but the woman had a knack for smelling the shift in mood.

“He just needed to cool off! I stuck to the half-truth and nodded towards the prison door to continue my questioning like everything was fine. f****d up, but fine.

I was an a*s for lying, but if I told her, Kate would go running after. She could hate what her son did all the livelong day, it didn't mean that she wouldn't want to protect her son. And Astennu needed whatever time I could afford him to get his answers while I got mine.

She gave me a stiff nod, which I didn't know was from tension or disbelief, and reopened the gate.

Not wishing to go in and fully test the tether of my anger's restraint, I remained in the frame and proceeded.

“since you don't know where Evie is, let's start with what you do know. Janet, what was her role in all this?” I could see my father looking past me, searching for my brother's figure alongside mine. Was he disappointed Astennu wasn't coming back? “she tampered with Lucy's water to make sure that she remained unconscious. She used my master code to gain access and was only meant to take the locket from Evie's room, but she found the patrol schedule as well"

“And you used it to frame Konstantin as the culprit and make us look incompetent?” I stated woodenly, meeting a gaze I knew he wouldn't return. “Do you even realise how much Astennu blamed himself? He thought he was the reason our mate was taken. You shoved your “evidence! in his face when you knew it was all bullshit!”

“It wasn't as though either of you believed it.” he sniped coldly. “That damn rogue had his claws in you already with whatever lies he told for sympathy. Even after all the rumours Janet spread at my order-"

“Lies?” I repeated through clenched teeth, my jaw spasming with a string of curses I wanted to let loose at him. “The only lies here were from you, and only you! Your heartbeat didn't flinch, once. How could you look at us and lie so convincingly?”

He turned his back to me, out of what? I didn’t know. I wanted to believe it was out of shame, guilt or regret. The small pup in me wanted to see some flicker of the former parent I used to love still living somewhere, but I was growing increasingly aware that the loving parent was the illusion all along.

“Why is Janet so scared to reveal anything?" I said after a deep breath to keep from losing it.

“I knew she was stealing petty cash and sending it to her daughter. I told her, one phone call from me and the girl would be thrown from the pack, along with the mate, as rogues and she would join them. If she did as I ordered, she would be exonerated and the matter dropped.”

“50 blackmail on top of everything and you still have the balls to act like rogues are the villains?” I scoffed, regretting every bad thought I had silently cursed at rogues because of my upbringing.

If Evie had never come into my life, would I have followed in my father's footsteps? Selling rogues as though it was some necessary evil to cure the world of their blight? The thought sent a wave of sickening self-disgust through my bones that I just might have.

“How did you know not to use wolfsbane?” The question occurred to me.

Konstantin had only told Astennu, Evie and me about its effects on lycans. It was a go-to substance to use on all wolfkind, cut with whichever tranquilliser of choice to knock out any werewolf. How did he know to avoid its use?

“When the extraction was arranged,” Isaac turned, but continued to study the wall at the side of me instead of looking me directly in the eye. “I was told, under no circumstances, was wolfsbane to be used. I didn't know what the drug was that was sent, but I was told it would knock the targets out. All they had to do was consume it. Konstantin was the issue because I knew he wouldn't accept anything I gave him, so I dealt with him personally. I went to his room feigning that I wished to talk and I shot him with plain tranquilliser, then carried him out of the window with some effort to the awaiting vehicle"

“Who told you about the wolfsbane? That Marceau guy?”

“No, the intermediary that I went through who arranged the deals”

The creepy guy that my brother had spoken to.

“You know him well? Because he sure as s**t gave you away without a second thought” Call me petty, but it was an immense swell of entertainment to watch his face contort in anger.

“I don't know his name or what he looks like and I'm thankful for it. The man is infuriating to deal with, but highly skilled, even if he was just a pup when he started,” he bit out. “He arranges the transport, transfers the payment at my request and forges the documents to make them look bona fide. After that one incident with the rogue, who killed Kate's son, might I stress, we learned to move faster and have the rogues out the same day they came in”

I spared Kate a quick glance, the way her face twisted in grief, twisted my guilt with it. My next question would not be an easy one for her to hear.

“There was another person you contacted, a withheld number... that was Finley, wasn't it?"

“Yes. I'm usually able to move the...

“The people you sell into slavery; I filed in his sentence when he trailed off. “You've been doing it comfortably for over a decade, I don't see why you're getting shy about the details now”

“You've made your point” his teeth and jaw clenched. “I normally work alone, but the circumstances this time were quite different. He needed a cover and his trip across country was it”

And I bet the carrot of having a place back in the pack and his former mate, Lucy, all to himself, did just the trick into getting the i***t a*s-hat on board.

That, and he's probably still salty over those fingers we digested, Baniti added with a snarling grumble.

“Your mother was never supposed to be hurt..” the first true sound of torment filtered from him. “I dealt with Konstantin, Finley was meant to take the girl. My Qamar was never meant to be caught in any of this... she was meant to be protected from it”

“No hard feelings about your Luna," the creepy phone guy's words became clear. Our mother was never meant to be knocked out that day. That was why Isaac's reaction was so genuine, because he was truly scared for her.

“You think you were protecting my mother? What if she was taken?!” I wanted to surge forward and punch the stupid out of him. But Astennu had already punched him unconscious and he was none the smarter for it. “How was any of this helping her through her issues with rogues?”

“You have no idea what it's like!” He yelled, whirling on me and finally looking me in the eye. “You've never had to hold your mother through every one of her nightmares, or tried to wake her when she called out for her attackers to stop, or every time she recoiled when she finally woke. You have never had to see the fear in her over those memories. So if I have to see to it that rogues are sent where they belong, so be it”

I could have killed him all over again. My fists curled and my claws extended, ready to fly through the air and slice him apart. As my arm tensed, about to act, a small voice stopped me.

“Isaac... how could you?" My mother appeared by my side, unclenching my hand to be replaced by her grip. “I may have been scared of rogues, but what made you think I would have ever condoned you selling them?”

“I did it for you, to protect you from them, so you'd never feel scared again," he pleaded like a madman, turning his feral break from reality onto me. “You and your brother were going to let rogues stomp all over our pack! I thought I raised you better than to trust those kinds of people and you were ready to let them in. You sided with those animals and not the woman that gave you life, your own mother. I knew what I had to do, for her and the pack... and for you?

“For me?" My lips peeled back in an almighty snarl. I thought all this time you were teaching us, showing us how to be a good and just Alpha, but it was all a lie. Every good memory we have of you is a lie. And now I see the truth. We weren't your sons... we were just another asset, heirs to carry on your warped way of thinking and that's it. What's worse is, you don't even realise how F*****g evil you are! You took our mate... the only woman we will ever love... and our pup,” my voice broke with that final straw.

“Isaac, did you know about our grandpup before you did this?”

“No... I-"

“You what?” My mother’s temper fired, standing toe to toe with her mate. “What was going to happen to my grandchild?”

His neck bent in shame, unable to keep her gaze. “I made a deal that the pup would be returned to us when it was old enough not to need milk. He would be left on our borders, appearing as though the girl had abandoned it here”

If I could have thrown up, I would have. When I thought he couldn't sink lower, act more depravedly, he somehow managed to surprise me. My mother's deep gold skin paled, her hand smothering her gasping whimper and horror.

“You were going to force a mother and pup apart?”

Without warning and in a blur of movement, her palm connected with the side of Isaac's face with such force, his feet stumbled under him

“Do you know what it would have done to me, if someone had taken my boys from me?” She screamed, tears pouring down her face in fury. “It would have killed me! And you would have done that to your sons’ mate? How could you?!”

She ran from the cell, her sobs echoing along the corridor, which left us in the most uncomfortable, tense and disturbing silence.

Tll go after her, make sure she's ok. I can't listen to him anymore; Kate mind-linked, and I heard her hasty retreat, but she may as well have been speaking underwater for how much I paid attention.

“He?” I struggled to keep my voice level. The slip Isaac had made had only just registered in my head over my wolf's frantic snarls.

“.Yes;" he croaked a whisper through the heavy split in his lip that gushed blood. “I was told not that long ago that the pup is a boy.”

I was having a son...

“We're done here, Isaac. And when I tell this to Astennu, I don't know if I'l be able to stop him from coming down here and killing you. My wolf is begging me to rip your heart out, and I want to let him. As far as I'm concerned, you're dead to us. I don't have a father anymore.”

“Badr-"

I turned and slammed the gate closed, unable to breathe the same air as him anymore.

“If you think I would have believed for a second that Evie would be out there, galavanting around and abandoning our child, as you desperately thought I would buy, you are delusional. I would never have stopped looking for her, even on my deathbed.”

Just as I was about to snap the latch up on the viewing window, his words flttered back into my mind, swirling around and dripping in hypocrisy.

“You might want personal revenge, but think what that will cost the innocents around you. You remember saying that?” I repeated. “Did the cost ever occur to you? Or did you simply not care?"

The screech of the metal was deafening, its sound feeling like a finite death, as though I was slicing off a part of myself. Whatever Astennu was doing, he had better have a location for our mate, for our sanity if nothing else.

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