Waindale

thirty-one. when i wake alone

Adam carries my bag inside and up the stairs. I follow as we pass many doors which I know lead to bedrooms, but unlike last time, one door is open that has always been closed. Unaware, I glance inside as we pass, but the contents of the room bring me to a stop. Adam soon realizes that I'm not with him, and he turns.

My hand pushes the door further open. It's a boy's room—that's clear. Not a little boy, but what I would assume to be a teenage boy's room. "What is this?" I ask Adam.

"That was my brother's room," he says.

My hand springs from the door as if it has suddenly become searing hot. "Oh, sorry," I mutter and quickly bring the door to its previous position.

We enter the master bedroom and he places my bag down for me to unload. "My parents kept his room," Adam says. "I couldn't take it down either."

"Of course," I say.

"I never told you what happened to him. How he died."

"Adam, you don't have to," I assure him.

He worries me when he says, "I think you deserve to know. Now that you're living here part of the time; now that things between us have settled."

I come over to him and place my hand on his arm. "What do you mean?"

"In an Alpha's family, if there are two sons, the eldest son takes the position of Alpha after the father. It isn't common nowadays, but the younger could challenge the older for the title to prove to be the better choice. My brother did this."

"He challenged you? What did you have to do?" I ask.

"You fight in shifted form. It isn't supposed to be messy. It's a clean fight, and usually the weaker gives up before it goes too far. I shouldn't have agreed to do it—he was different that day. I would have never agreed to it if I knew how he would be."

I swallow.

"He was unstable, dangerous, messy—I tried to end it many times but he wasn't giving in. He died because I killed him," Adam says, his eyes aimed directly into my own.

My hand falls from his arm. "Adam I—"

"I would have never done it if I knew he was going to die. But toward the end, I knew that he wasn't going to stop until one of us did."

My stomach is uneasy. The thought of Adam killing his own brother clouds my head. I don't know what to think, but I sit down on the edge of the bed just in case I start to stumble.

Adam comes down to my level. "I don't want you to fear me, Wrenley, but I feel like I have been keeping this from you. It isn't possible for me to rectify or forgive what I did—I regret it every day of my life—but it is a part of me that I have been avoiding since I met you. I don't want to feel as if I am hiding things from you, not anymore."

"It wasn't an accident?" I mumble.

Adam lets out a heavy breath. "I don't think it was. Not at the time." He takes my hand in between his own. "Wrenley, I would never do anything to hurt you—shifted or as man. You know that, don't you?"

I abruptly stand up. "You had to tell me this? Why?"

My hand leaves his grasp. What would my family think? I convinced them that staying with Adam is a good idea, but they don't know what he's done. My mother would have never given me her blessing if this came up. There's more to them than I thought; there are dark practices and deadly matches. How could Adam fight his own brother and end up taking his life? What does it take to kill one's own brother?

"I told you; I don't want any secrets between us. I want you to know who I am—the good and bad," he says.

"Is that who you are, Adam?"