Chapter 141: _ Battle Between Brothers
Amias’s fist comes flying, connecting with Darien’s jaw. The crack reverberates, pain shooting white-hot down Darien’s neck. His head snaps sideways, but he doesn’t fall and only wipes the blood from his lip and laughs.
"Finally grew a spine, huh?" Darien growls. He launches himself forward, tackling Amias. They crash into the table, wood splintering under their combined weight.
The study is chaotic as books fly, chairs topple, and glass shatters when the two Alpha heirs continue to slam into furniture. Their wolves are clawing beneath their skin, threatening to rip free, but neither shifts. Not yet. This isn’t about the wolves. This is about brothers, about fury, about heartbreak, and about Heidi.
Darien’s mind spins, even as fists collide and ribs bruise. He sees Heidi’s face, her tear-streaked cheeks, her trembling shoulders, the marks on her neck that aren’t his. Rage blinds him. He doesn’t care if Amias breaks his jaw or cracks his ribs. He can’t stop fighting. He won’t stop... not until someone admits that Heidi isn’t lost to him, not until someone bleeds enough to make sense of the madness.
Amias, on the other hand, feels the hollow pit in his chest deepen with every punch he throws. He’s not just fighting Darien, he’s fighting himself, his fate, the bitter truth that maybe Heidi never belonged to him in the first place.
The room fills with snarls, curses, and the sound of breaking wood.
Darien fights with a kind of reckless desperation, as though fury alone could make up for his lack of precision. He swings hard, fast, putting all of himself into every blow, but he’s sloppy and wild. His chest heaves, eyes blazing with hatred and anguish, teeth bared in a snarl that looks almost feral. He wants Amias to feel it—to feel the burn of betrayal, the humiliation of helplessness, the ache of being outpaced.
Amias, in contrast, fights with grim efficiency. He’s colder, sharper and his movements are honed by something deeper than anger... all that hurt and anguish he carries with himself all day and every day. If Darien is fire, then Amias is steel, unyielding and merciless. He doesn’t waste breath on insults or roars; his silence is punishment enough.
It doesn’t take long before Amias begins to beat Darien most. His fists land with bruising certainty, blackening an eye, splitting a lip, leaving Darien staggering, bloody, and yet, stubbornly unbroken. Because if Darien is anything, it’s relentless with his unyielding tolerance level. That’s why Darien is considered the strongest; his wolf heals the fastest and has an unyielding tolerance level for pain.
Hence, even though Amias swings the mist fists, he is also the one to get scarred the most because Darien keeps clawing back, landing blows of his own, not enough to overpower but enough to hurt. Amias may win the rounds, but Darien bruises him the most, leaving marks that bloom purple and blue across ribs and jaw with shallow cuts that leak crimson.
By the time they finally collapse away from each other, both are wrecked. Amias’s chest glistens with sweat, the sheen broken by streaks of blood. His knuckles are raw, skin peeled away in angry red patches. Darien is worse. His face is swollen, nose crooked, shirt torn down the middle, chest heaving with each ragged breath. Both of them lean back against opposite sides of the room, shoulders trembling with fatigue, lips drawn back in exhausted snarls.
Darien slumps into another chair, feeling his ribs throbbing. He wipes at his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood rather than cleaning it, and spits red onto the floor. His mind still races, still screams: She’s ours. She can’t just be theirs.
Amias stays near the desk, quietly and broodingly as usual with his arms now folded tightly over his chest as though to cage in his own rage. He doesn’t look at Darien. Maybe he knows if he does, they’ll start again, and neither of them has the strength left for round two.
The grandfather clock ticks mercilessly in the corner, every chime stretching the silence thinner.
Darien mutters to himself, seething, "I’ll wait. I’ll sit right here until those two bastards come."
Amias doesn’t answer. He sinks into the shadows on his side of the room like a mute pillar of bitterness.
The day crawls by and the evening gives way to darkness. The blood on Darien’s knuckles dries into stiff patches. He drowses, jerks awake, paces, sits, waits. The fire dies down to embers, glowing faint orange. And still, no twins.
By the time the door finally creaks open with moonlight spilling through from the hall, Darien’s nerves are frayed raw. The scent is what he catches first. The familiar tang of Grayson and Morgan. The wolves who have no shame.
Darien shoots up from his chair like a spring, fists clenching again despite his bruises. He is ready. He is more than ready.
The twins stroll in like they own the place, whistling some careless tune. Grayson pushes the door wider with his shoulder, his dark curls messy like he’s just rolled out of bed. Morgan trails behind, twirling an apple in his hand with an infuriatingly wide grin.
They stop just inside, taking in the wreckage; the blood-stained floor, the overturned chair, and the broken desk leg.
"By the Moon," Morgan drawls, giving a long whistle. "Looks like the apocalypse passed through here. Did a tornado fight a bear or something?"
Grayson chuckles, tilting his head as his eyes land on Darien’s stained shirt and swollen lip. "Oh. No. I see. You actually fought back this time. Impressive but Mama Ines will be disappointed in you, Darien. You never fight back. I would’ve bet Amias flattened you in the first two minutes."
Why, that son of a bitch!
Darien’s body trembles with the effort of not leaping at them. "Shut your mouths."
Morgan bites into his apple with an obnoxiously loud crunch. Juice sprays, and he sighs in exaggerated bliss. "Tsk. And I wasn’t here to watch? I bet it was epic. Brother against brother, blood and sweat flying... argh, should’ve charged tickets."
"I said shut up!" Darien roars, fighting every urge not to pounce at them.
Yes, he is the one who never throws fists no matter how much the jab cuts. He’s the one who takes in all the insults from his brothers, pretends not to care, and never retaliates because his mother wants him to continuously set a good example outside. Every time Amias gets angry and punches him, he takes them all in, every time Morgan and Grayson throw in their banters, he shoulders them all and acts deaf to all.
However, it doesn’t make him deaf or dumb. He’s just trying to be the bigger and disciplined brother, but with Heidi, he broke his principles at a single thought.
Fuck this. Fuck her.
The twins glance at each other, then burst into matching grins, enjoying his fury far too much.
Darien’s voice is hoarse but sharp as a blade when he speaks. "What the hell do you two think you’re doing?"
Grayson blinks innocently. "Walking into our study?"
"Don’t play with me!" Darien snarls. "I know what you did to Heidi."
The grin slides more slowly across Morgan’s face. "Oh, that. You mean her." He makes biting gestures that only split Darien’s face into two with rage.
"How can you be so shameless? Marking that clueless girl? Acting pious and jumping into the portal with her all because you wanted to take advantage of the bond?!" He bellows.
"What?" Grayson interrupts, stepping closer. His tone is maddeningly casual, as though they’re discussing the weather. "Why can’t we mark our mate? Is there some law against it we don’t know about?"
Darien’s throat works. He can hardly breathe. They’re not even denying it.
"You..." his voice cracks, "you actually did it. What makes you think you could? What right do you HAVE, you sons of a rogue!"
Morgan shrugs, tossing the apple core onto the ruined desk. "What gives us the right? Well... what gives you the right to tell us no?"
"She doesn’t belong to just you," Darien hisses, his whole body shaking. "She belongs to all of us. To every one of us. You had no right to mark her first. Not a bloody right!"
Grayson tilts his head, eyes glinting cruelly. "And did anyone stop you from doing it? Huh? Did we stop you from marking her if you want to?"
Darien freezes. The words hit too close. His mother’s shadow presses against his chest. No one is stopping him from marking her, but his responsibilities are. He has a mother and two sisters who depend on him. He can’t forsake his family because of a girl.
A mere stranger to whom the goddess forced onto him. But then again, he can’t deny or ignore what he feels for her—or rather, what the bond makes him feel. How he craves her touch once again, the way she moaned for him, hands on...
Argh! To hell with this!
Grayson interrupts his thoughts, reading the look on his face. "Ah. That’s right. Mama Inés would be so disappointed if her darling boy ever broke the rules."
Morgan laughs, clapping his twin on the shoulder. "Unlike you two crybabies, we don’t care what our mother thinks. Not that she cares anyway. Our mother doesn’t give a batshit about winning the Alpha’s favor because she already has and will forever have it."
"... BECAUSE! She’s his mate. And I’m sure you two already know how hard it is not to care for one’s mate." Grayson finishes for his twin, sending Darien a wink.
A WINK. A BLOODY WINK.