Kaye:
My mom had been fixated on Maximus for the past five minutes. She hadn’t looked away from him as he used his phone in front of her.
We had our casual dinners with her at the beginning of every month, but tonight was different. Norman didn’t co.
He was usually the one trying his best to keep the peace between all of us. Now that he wasn’t here, I wondered how the night would go.
"Maximus, did you speak to Emt?" I knew Mom would ask him so kind of question just to get his attention.
"Hmm?" Maximus raised his head montarily from his phone before looking down again. "When has he ever co?"
"I know that much. But did you ask him to start joining our dinners?" she insisted.
Emt was a different breed. He had stopped coming to these dinners after the first few tis, and eventually, he avoided eting our mother altogether unless she bumped into him sowhere—or Norman dragged him to an event where she’d be present.
"I think Norman did," Maximus replied. He was so distracted that I wanted to snatch the phone out of his hands and make him listen to her. But I didn’t want to upset Mom by acting out in front of her.
I hadn’t even touched my phone in her presence, yet she had so little to say to .
"And?" She had to work so hard to get answers from Maximus, while I sat there dying for her to ask a single question.
"And—he said no," Maximus replied carelessly. However, he finally put down his phone and sighed tiredly.
"When will dinner be served?" he asked in an exhausted tone.
"Why? Do you have to be sowhere?" The hurt in Mom’s voice made feel sad for her. She was trying so hard to keep us together, to stay close to us.
I knew just a few kind words from Maximus could lift her mood, but he refused to give her even that.
"Yeah, kind of. I have a date—" he smiled before looking at Mom, "sort of... with a bunch of friends." He quickly twisted the truth, trying to pass it off as a joke.
"Are you going out with a girl?" Mom was spot on. But Maximus wasn’t foolish either. She never liked us going out with anyone—at least not with soone who wasn’t her choice. Maximus would never admit the truth to her.
"No! I was joking," Maximus frowned, reaching for his phone again. I shook my head at him.
"Let’s have a nice conversation without you using your phone for a while," I muttered under my breath, gesturing to him that he was hurting Mom.
"Kaye, you’re younger than him. You don’t need to order him around," Mom suddenly grunted at in disapproval, crushing my confidence.
I glanced at Maximus, who took it as a joke and stuck his tongue out at , but I felt nothing but regret. I just wanted Mom to know how seriously I took these family dinners.
"Anyway, did you two et your siblings?" That’s when Mom brought up our younger siblings, and I noticed Maximus’ body twitch slightly.
We had longed to live in the sa house as them. They were our little siblings, but when Dad rejected Mom, they left with her since they were just babies and needed their mother.
"I did. I even brought them gifts too," Maximus said with a wide smile, his desire to share a roof with our little twins shining through.
I loved my little twin brother and sister, but we had missed so much of their childhood because of our parents’ hatred for each other.
"They’ve gone to bed right now, but they’ve been asking about their brothers a lot," Mom said cheerfully as she ntioned the twins.
"They’re so adorable, but they can also be so stubborn when they want sothing," I added, eager to join the conversation. I didn’t usually like kids, but my siblings were the cutest exceptions.
"Kaye, they’re just kids. Of course, they’ll be stubborn. You used to be stubborn too," Mom said, completely misinterpreting my comnt, and once again, she decided to school for it.
"Kaye was just complinting them in a cute way. You need to chill, Mom. If you want us to keep coming here, you’ll need to adjust your attitude too. Or else—just like Emt—I might also stop coming," Maximus’ tone shifted as he noticed the look on my face.
A sudden wave of comfort washed over when I realized how well my best friend—my brother—understood .
"Of course, I was joking too. Right, Kaye?" Mom said, turning to face . Her smile faded as her eyes locked onto mine. I felt my hands and feet grow numb.
I didn’t know how or why, but she had this strange control over . I guess it was because I loved her so desperately, and her attention could compel to do things I normally wouldn’t.
"How about we cheer up and get ready for dinner?" I said, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.
"That’s a nice idea. I’ll go check on the servers," Mom said as she stood up and left.
Maximus leaned back in his chair and looked at . "You okay?" he asked softly.
"I have you. How can I not be okay?" I replied, earning a smile from him. But the truth was, I wasn’t okay.
Sothing was missing in my life—or perhaps, soone.
’I know who you’re thinking about. You’re wasting your ti and energy. She’s a forbidden fruit now,’ Ye said, as if he were ready to remind yet again.
’I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I wasn’t thinking of her,’ I retorted, exposing myself in the process.
’Anyway, she’s soon to be your stepsister. Unless Dad rejects her mother, it’s a done deal. And then, you’re her trainer. I hope you realize it’ll be unfair to the other students, because you’ll be biased as hell,’ he added, clearly trying to annoy .
"I’m not even thinking about her. You’re the one who keeps bringing her up," I said, trying to sound clever and flip the conversation back onto him.
’Huh, ever since she saved you in that dream prison, you’ve been so infatuated with her. The minute you two held hands after crushing those flowers and felt those weird feelings, you started acting differently,’ Ye said, making tilt my head in frustration, though I let him continue.
’And then—you held her back while she rested her hands on your chest. Kaye, it was only a dream prison. You two were miserable and vulnerable. Don’t take those feelings seriously; they ant nothing,’ he stopped yapping to hear my response now.
What he didn’t realize was that, while running his mouth, he had answered one of my biggest questions. That’s when I started piecing things together.
’How do you know that? How do you know such little details if you weren’t even there?’ I asked, my voice low but pointed.
I rembered the big hint he had given after we returned—that Rune had silenced him in the dream prison. This was why the mate bond I felt with Helanie couldn’t have been true—because Ye had supposedly been asleep.
So how, then, did he know everything in such detail?
’From your mory, duh! You know I can access your mory,’ he replied smugly, but I could tell he was scrambling.
’But, Ye—rember you told you didn’t feel the mate bond because you were asleep? You said Rune made think I felt it?’ His silence was deafening, and I knew he realized I was catching on to him.
’So? Why are we talking about this for now?’ he said hastily, clearly panicking.
’You started it,’ I scoffed.
’Ye, when I felt the mate bond with her, you were awake. It wasn’t until later that Rune arrived and declared you inactive,’ I said, my voice shaking as a painful sense of betrayal crept over . That was the detail I had been missing all along.
’Oh... I must have been mistaken then,’ he mumbled. But the guilt in his voice betrayed him, proving right.
’I can’t believe you did this to . You lied to about my mate bond? You used the dream prison to manipulate , to lie to my face!’ My voice cracked, and I couldn’t begin to explain how torturous it was to realize that my own wolf had been dishonest with .
But then again, what did I expect from Ye? He had always been this way—cunning, manipulative, and abnormal.
"Kaye!" Maximus snapped his fingers in front of my face to grab my attention. "Are you alright? You don’t look good."
He gestured at my hands, which had started transforming. My nails were growing, turning into sharp claws, and my skin was changing color. I knew that if I didn’t get control of myself soon, my transition would begin—and that would be very, very bad.
"Hey, look at ," Maximus said, cupping my face firmly in his hands. His voice was steady, commanding, and full of concern. "You need to calm down."
As he held my gaze, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle of wolfsbane.
"Take a few sips," he insisted, holding the bottle to my lips.
I obeyed, taking just one sip. The liquid burned my throat, its sharp bitterness bringing tears to my eyes. I didn’t let him see them, though—I couldn’t let him see why I was crying.
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