Chapter 25
226words
He hadn't aged a day.
Seven years—and that face was exactly as I remembered it.
Alphas lived longer than humans anyway.
I've always been quiet, socially awkward.
Never good with words. Certainly not with sweet ones.
Alaric used to get frustrated when I couldn't say "I love you."
And because I never knew where to begin, I rarely spoke about my past.
Like how from my earliest memories, my mother told me I'd stolen my twin brother's chance to live. That I should have been the one who died.
I heard it so often I began to believe it.
But later, when she pushed me toward my stepfather's fists time after time, when she burned my textbooks to force me to quit school, when Vivienne had her friends cut up my clothes, take humiliating photos, slap me around, try to dunk my head in toilets—
I always wanted to ask my mother:
Yes, I stole my brother's chance to live. I'm sorry.
But could you tell me—what was the point of being alive at all?
I carried that question through my childhood.
Until I was fifteen, when I met Alaric.
In that moment, I told myself—
It's okay.
My miserable existence wasn't completely meaningless after all.
Even knowing we had no future together.
