It wasn’t the fury in her glowing green eyes that knocked the wind out of me, robbing me of my rehearsed tirade. I was used to that look from my sister, and it hadn’t been that long since our last confrontation over half a year ago. I’d long lived to rile Miles up, and in truth, I preferred her green wolf eyes. I looked forward to seeing them the same way that I looked forward to provoking disapproving Aunt Cely faces from her.

What was throwing me so far off balance now that my throat tightened and my eyes burned as I stood facing her alone in the large receiving room was the way that her skin was glowing and how much her cheeks had filled out since the last time I’d seen her.

And the way her normally flat stomach was now distended.

She really was pregnant. It’d been crushing enough to hear the news from Bethany’s mom, but seeing it was something else entirely.

Painful as it was to look at her, I couldn’t stop myself from staring. Nor did I bother to mask my horror at the uncanny, unwelcome resemblance she bore to some of the last memories I had of my mother. It was like staring down my darkest nightmare.

Miles was twenty-eight now—the same age Mom had been when she’d been pregnant with her. The same age Mom had been when she’d died giving birth to her.

Aunt Cely had once asked me if I resented her because she looked so much like my mother. It was a fair assumption since Cely was Mom’s twin sister. But I’d had eight years with them both prior to Mom’s passing. Aunt Cely would always look like Aunt Cely to me. Even in my earliest childhood memories, Mom and Cely hadn’t looked that much alike, and I’d never understood how people could confuse them.

My reasons for resenting my Aunt Cely ran far deeper than the shallow emotions she’d preferred to assume about me. And yet, she hadn’t been so far off the mark. Because the miniature version of Mom running around our house was the one I had often resented growing up: the kid sister who had followed after me everywhere—looking up at me with Mom’s bright blue eyes like I hung the moon and stars. (As Cely would’ve put it.)

She wasn’t looking at me that way now, though. Hadn’t in years.

I’d alternately loved and hated my little sister for her ability to make Mom’s faces. It was always better when she made Aunt Cely’s faces. Better still when the fiery green eyes of her wolf replaced Mom’s loving blue ones altogether, as they had now.

I saw my sister’s mouth moving, but her words didn’t register. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the room flat on my back that it occurred to me I should try to defend myself.

It felt like a boulder had been hurtled at me, knocking the breath from my lungs and causing my vision to go black as pain radiated all along my right side.

“What the hell is it you want from me, Raul?” she hissed down at me.

Dang. She moved quickly for someone who couldn’t teleport.

I braced myself for the next blow. But as I did, it occurred to me the worst blow had already been dealt, and I’d survived it. Bethany had remembered everything—and she’d forgiven me. Bethy loved me. And I was riding so high on that victory, there wasn’t a whole lot else I could be bothered to give a fuck about right now. Not even the fact that I was about to get my ass handed to me by the spitting image of my late mother.

“When will you stop?” Miles demanded from above me. “When will it be enough to satisfy whatever you’re so angry at me for? When you’ve harmed every single person I love? How many more times can you betray my trust?”

My little sister smelled pissed—royally so. Like the rising swell of a storm that was long overdue, the pungent scent of ozone hit my nostrils, and a mounting electrical charge pulsed through the air: a warning of what was to come.

She wouldn’t actually throw a blast that could kill me, though—if for no other reason than the fact that I was mated to Bethany now. Ironic. Since it was also the reason she’d come to kick my ass.

I cracked one eye open, my gaze meeting Miles’s spitfire green eyes above, and I tsked. “Classic Miles. So typical of you to assume this is all about you.”

“Like hell it’s not! Bethy is my best friend, Raul. From the time I was four she and I have been—what the fuck is so funny?”

I’d started cracking up at her possessive “my best friend” declaration for some reason, and I couldn’t stop. When I didn’t answer her, and I proceeded to dissolve into great body-quaking guffaws on the marble floor, she did strike me with lightning.

It only made the whole thing funnier somehow, further escalating the crumpled state of hilarity I was swimming in as I told her in between fits of laughter, “Do your worst, little sis.”

She blasted me multiple times, doing more damage to the marble floor, walls, and furniture than she did me. Just as well—Bethy hated everything about how Gabe and Nuriel had decorated the place.

Eventually, though, beneath the smell of my sister’s self-made storm and of her trademark self-righteous fury and indignation, I began to scent her frustration. Her disappointment. Her hurt.

And I stopped laughing. Because this situation between us had never been funny. Despite all the bad blood in our recent history, she was still my sister.

The blasts stopped.

I heaved a sigh and waited, my arm flung over my face on the floor.

Her breathing had gone ragged. I smelled the salt of fresh tears in the air.

“Why, Raul? What did I ever do to you to make you resent me so much?”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And everything.

“You didn’t … you didn’t do anything, Miles. I don’t—”

“I deserve an answer, Raul! Without the layer of bullshit. What did I do to make you hate me the way you do?”

There was no earth-shatteringly brilliant answer to that question. So I gave her the only truth I had: “Loving you got too complicated.”

Too hard.

Too painful.

It was a truth I’d come to grips with long ago. I’d lost a part of myself the day I’d realized it—the day I’d made the choice to go against every single longstanding marching order of Mateus and Cely once and for all. But I’d also recovered myself that day.

I sat up to face Mom’s blue eyes set in an Aunt Cely expression. I didn’t bother getting up off the ground. What would be the point? She was likely to blast me many more times before this conversation was through.

“I’ve never hated you, Miles. I just … gave up on loving you.” As I said it, I realized for the first time how much worse that truth was.

“Loving you required too many concessions. Too many sacrifices, and far too many fucking lies.” Lies I’d never been able to stomach, and over time, could no longer force myself to swallow.

“Loving you came with too many rules and boundaries that I never got to set. And it came with sacrificing myself—suppressing who and what I was.” I felt the old rage and resentment I reserved for Mateus alone rearing its ugly head in me.

“And for what, Miles? So we could be apart? So you could stay hidden? So that our lives could be ruled by fear? So that I could spend my life as an indentured servant to the Reinoso pack? So that the Salvatella assholes who’d slaughtered our ancestors could continue to subjugate us?

“What the fuck kind of life would that have been? It’s too high a price to pay for safety if you have to keep your nose down, your dreams dead, and look over your shoulder forevermore. That’s not living.”

“They were trying to protect us—”

“They were wrong.” I got to my feet. “More importantly, none of the things that Mateus and Cely set in motion for us were things Mom would’ve wanted.”

“What about what I wanted? You lied to me, Raul. You made choices for me—completely reckless decisions on my behalf that put my very life at risk without even once thinking to ask!”

“I know. I know I made choices for you. I know I wasn’t completely honest with you.”

“Completely?”

“Miles, our whole childhood together—the entire foundation of our relationship—was one fat lie on top of another. From the day you were born, I was made to lie to you, to lie about you, to lie about myself and our family.”

“And you could’ve stopped lying to me at any time after both Aunt Cely and Mateus were gone.”

She was right. I could have. There’d been limitations placed on me at the time as a newly transitioned werelock that had made communicating honestly with Miles difficult to nearly impossible at times—between Maribel in my head helping me and Gabe constantly up my business trying to mind-rape my thoughts and emotions. But in hindsight, I could’ve approached things differently with my sister. I could’ve at least tried.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.” I focused on her hands that had settled over her pregnant belly, noticing for the first time how much they also resembled Mom’s. “I guess I didn’t see that I was doing to you the same thing Mateus and Cely did to us—pressing forward with whatever I thought was best, without consulting you.”

A heavy sigh left her. “Thank you for acknowledging that.”

The silence that stretched between us felt like an ocean we’d never bridge; a past we’d never reconcile.

Miles turned away from me, and for a moment, I thought she intended to leave. But then she crossed to an oversized white leather wingback chair and sank into it, facing me.

“Tell me, Raul, why did you hate”—she stopped short, and with a swallow of acceptance, offered the first concession—“our Aunt Cely so much?”

Coming from Miles, this was a major olive branch—despite the true identity of the woman she knew as her mother being a foregone conclusion and an indisputable fact we both knew I would never let her deny.

Miles had learned soon after Aunt Cely’s death that the woman who had raised her was in fact her aunt and not her mother, and yet she’d stubbornly insisted upon continuing to refer to Aunt Cely as our mother to everyone. Including me. She’d even had the gall to get pissy with me every time I’d insistently—correctly—referred to her as Aunt Cely.

While I could see that from her perspective, Aunt Cely would always be her mother, Miles’s staunch, misplaced loyalty to Aunt Cely was to me a dishonor to her real mother’s memory, and to the ultimate sacrifice Mom had made for her.

“I didn’t hate Aunt Cely.” But I’d sure resented the fuck out of her for most of my life. Maybe not as much as I had Mateus, but it was always a close tie between those two.

Where to start?

“It bothered me that Aunt Cely talked tough but ultimately always caved and went along with Mateus’s wishes for us. And yeah, I resented her for making me call her Mom and for forcing me to lie to you and to everyone else about who we were as a family.”

“Mateus never gave anyone a choice, Raul. Bulldozing was his specialty. You of all people should know.”

I held my hand up. “You asked, Miles. Let me finish. It bothered me that Cely never understood Mom—her own twin. I get that Cely was insecure and couldn’t let go of her jealousy over Mom being the favored twin who she felt that the world had handed everything to. But I saw how she tainted your view of Mom with the stories she told you of her: of the tragically deceased twin sister of hers who you were raised to know of only as your late Aunt Kamella—the flighty fuck-up twin who made all the wrong choices in life and couldn’t be saved from herself.” Essentially, the female version of me in Cely’s mind.

“That’s not true,” she denied.

“It is, and you know it.” I walked over and sat on the edge of the marble coffee table in front of Miles’s chair. “I get that Cely was bitter that she’d been born barren and then was left holding the bag raising her twin’s two kids—one of whom gave her grief and discipline issues at every turn. I can understand her wanting to sway your loyalty and affection, knowing that she would never have mine. But she judged Mom too harshly, blamed her too readily.

“I know it couldn’t have been easy for Cely, and that she probably did her best. But I hated how she did everything in her power to preach and instill in you the exact opposite of everything Mom stood for—the opposite of everything Mom would’ve wanted for you. She parented us through fear, the same way Mateus did.”

Miles made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a huff as she closed her eyes and rubbed her temple. “Look around you, Raul. How can you continue to blame Aunt Cely for wanting to protect us from this world? For trying to instill a level of caution and pragmatism in us that clearly didn’t exist for her twin sister, given the choices Mom made in her relationship with Mateus?”

“Because I knew them both, Miles!” It came out harsh, and I shook my head at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean it like it was your fault. Just that I’m sorry you never knew Mom. And it frustrates me that the version of Mom Aunt Cely raised you to know of was so one-sided. So negative.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I looked at Miles and confessed, “You look exactly like Mom, by the way. Especially now.”

Funny thing was, as I stared into her blue eyes and said it, I saw more Aunt Cely there than ever before.

“Mom loved with all her heart. She was full of passion and light. She believed in miracles. She didn’t believe in lies. And she didn’t believe in bowing to fear. She always said that lies divided people, that fear was the only thing that could destroy a life. I did what Mom would’ve wanted for us, Miles.”

She’d begun shaking her head at me. I knew she was closing off, but I pressed forward nonetheless as I said, “I brought us out of hiding. I claimed the blood inheritance that was rightfully ours. You can shake your head and disagree with me on this until your dying days, Miles, but I. Fucking. Freed us. And you’ll never understand what that really means—because before I did what I did, you only knew the lie. You weren’t the one forced to dishonor your mom’s memory and lie to your little sister. You weren’t the one shipped off to Brazil your senior year, forced to give up all your dreams to go be some werelock pack’s lowly whipping boy.”

I straightened my back and stood, resigned that she was never going to see my side in this as I crossed to the enormous leopard-print leather couch she’d marred with a lightning blast earlier and plopped down on it. This conversation was a lost cause. I had to focus on Bethy.

“I can’t take back what I did,” I said with a heavy exhale. “I am sorry I lied to you and hurt you. But none of that has anything to do with the way I feel about Bethany or my mate connection to her. I don’t want her to feel punished for the bad blood between us. It’s bound to be a tough transition for her—being thrust into our world—and I’d like to make it as gentle as possible.”

“Wow.” Miles’s hand lifted from her belly and fell to her knee with a smack. “This from the man who bit Bethy ten times, almost killed her fiancé in front of her, drugged and kidnapped her, brought her here to the ultimate palace of evil, and let the Rogue set her on fire the other day.”

Typical Miles to only keep a running tab of the negative stuff.

She continued, “I’ll sure do my best not to ‘punish her’ for our bad blood, so that you may proceed with your gentle transition plan.”

“Thank you. Glad to hear that. Because I didn’t appreciate the way you punished her for choosing to have her memories of our world erased.”

“Excuse me?”

“Gregg,” I spat. “How could you not tell her about him when you knew?”

She shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “Raul, I’ve never liked Gregg any more than you do, but there’s no way I would have known about his cheating if Alex hadn’t been reading his mind. More importantly, you can’t just fix things for people when they haven’t asked you to—pressing forward with whatever you think is best.” She repeated my words back to me. “I guess if it were up to you, you would have just killed Gregg without consulting her, or maybe erased his mind of her memory and shipped him off to Siberia.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. She had a point—although erasing his mind and teleporting him to an Amazonian jungle was closer to my style.

“Raul, you told me once that you and I were simply victims of shitty circumstance. You were right. As children, we were. But we’re not victims of circumstance now. Our relationship today is the result of the choices you and I have both made as adults. We can’t blame Mateus or Aunt Cely anymore. From here on out, we both need to take responsibility for the choices we make. For the sides we choose.”

I had to stop my eyes from rolling out of reflex. Here it comes.

“I’ll never side with Maribel, Raul. I’ll never endorse a world where she is allowed to reign as the Rogue.”

“She isn’t Maribel anymore. She’s Sloane.”

“She is the same soul. I know you and Alcaeus see her as a new being deserving of a second chance—a cute little girl trying her best not to succumb to the living embodiment of the bloodthirsty dark spirits within her. But it doesn’t matter what you or Alcaeus or anyone else who’s been charmed by her thinks.” Her eyes flashed green. “I know. I lived with the black heart of Joaquin’s blood curse before Maribel came along from the ether—murdering Lupe, Kaleb, and countless other innocents in order to rip it from me.

“I was the one who lived with those voices. I have felt their wrath and tasted their thirst for revenge. As twisted, dark, and crazy as Maribel was, she never meant to be reborn as an altered being attached to that black curse. Because even she knew she couldn’t handle it, Raul! She told us both as much. And wishing and hoping and believing in miracles won’t change what we’re up against with this.”

We’d circled the battleground and arrived at the anticipated impasse. Mike was tapping my mind, and Bethany had been left with Alex under minimal supervision too long for my comfort. I needed to get back to my mate.

“We’re not up against anything, Miles,” I told her flatly as I got to my feet. “Because this isn’t your problem anymore. It’s Sloane’s,” I reminded her through gritted teeth. “And whether you want to admit it or not, she did you a favor by taking the faulty heart of the curse off your hands.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off.

“You scoff at believing in miracles. So tell me, Sis, what great logic makes you think that killing Maribel as Sloane will yield any different result than it did the last time Maribel died? You really think it’ll solve anything? That somehow the blood curse will magically go away this time and not return?

“Don’t you get it? If Maribel wasn’t powerful enough to drag it to the other side and keep it there, then no one can. Sloane isn’t the problem. She’s our only answer.”