The antiseptic stung when he applied it to the wounds.I hissed through my teeth, and his eyes flicked to my face.
“I know.I am sorry.”
He was not just talking about the antiseptic.His guilt pulsed through our connection like a second heartbeat.I watched his hands as he worked, gentle despite their capability for violence, and tried to understand the weight pressing down on him.
“Michael is my brother.”I said the words aloud, testing how they felt in my mouth.Bitter.Wrong.True.“My father had an affair.Paid off his mistress.Abandoned their child.”
Raphael’s hands stilled on my wrists.“Richard Hughes was a coward who took the easy path at every opportunity.His sins are not yours to carry.”
“But I benefited from them.”The realization sat heavy in my stomach, a stone I could not digest.“I got the hotel.The inheritance.The name.The love.And Michael got nothing.Thirty years of nothing, watching from the outside while I had everything he should have had.”
“That does not excuse what he did.”Raphael’s voice hardened, the wolf bleeding through.“Stephanie.Winston.The sabotage.Kidnapping you.Tying you to that chair and putting his hands on your face.”His fingers tightened on my wrists for a moment before he forced himself to relax.“He made his choices.He became a monster.Richard’s failures do not change that.”
“I know.”I did know.Michael’s pain did not justify his crimes.Understanding where the monster came from did not make his teeth less sharp.But it made it harder to hate him cleanly, to file him away as simply evil.He was my brother.My blood.And he was a murderer.
“I just need to process.All of it.”
He finished wrapping my wrists in clean white bandages and sat back on his heels, looking up at me with an expression I could not quite read.Love, yes.That was always there, burning steady through the bond.But also fear.And that heavy, suffocating guilt that pressed against me like a physical weight.
“What were you doing when he took me?”
The question hung in the air between us.Through the bond, his defenses rose, a careful partition between his emotions and mine.It was clumsy, obvious.He had never tried to hide from me before.
“I told you.The Pakhan summoned me.”
“For what?”
A muscle jumped in his cheek, and he looked away before answering.“Punishment.For defying him at the gala.”
The gala.When Raphael had chosen me over pack protocol, had challenged Max’s authority in front of witnesses.I had felt it afterward, the ripple effects of his defiance echoing through our connection.But I had not understood what it would cost him.
“What kind of punishment?”
He did not answer immediately.His hands rested on my knees, and I could feel the tension coiled in his shoulders, the battle between truth and protection.
“The Pakhan has ways of reminding wolves of their place.”His voice was flat, stripped of emotion.“Pain.Submission.Breaking us down so we remember who holds the power.”
“He hurt you.”
“I should not have gone.”The self-loathing in those words cut like a blade.“I should have stayed with you.Trusted my instincts instead of submitting like an obedient dog.”
“But you did go.”
“I went.”He exhaled, and his shame pressed against me through our link, heavy and suffocating.“I answered his summons like I always have.And while I was on my knees letting him remind me of my place, Michael was taking you.”
His pain bled through the bond, an echo of what he must have endured during the punishment itself.Sharp, calculated, designed to break.My stomach turned at the thought of it, at the Pakhan’s hands inflicting damage on the body that now knelt before me so gently.
But there was more.I could feel it pressing against the guard he had raised between us, and the guard itself was a confession.Whatever he was hiding, it was bigger than guilt over leaving me.Older and heavier and more terrifying.
“What are you not telling me, Raphael?”
His eyes met mine.In them, I saw the fear I had felt bleeding through our connection, naked and raw and devastating.He was afraid of losing me.Afraid that whatever he was hiding would break us.
“You need to rest.”His hands squeezed my knees gently.“We can talk more tomorrow, when you have slept, when your body has recovered.”
“No.”The word came out harder than I intended.“I just survived my brother confessing that he killed someone for me, that he has been watching me for years, that my entire life was built on my father’s lies.I am done with secrets.I cannot handle more of them.Not from you.”
The bond trembled between us, his fear bleeding through despite his defenses.I reached out and took his face in my bandaged hands, forcing him to look at me.
