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Whatever hope I’d that there was something salvageable of the man I knew as my brother died out as I realized the extent of depravity that was taking place in his club. I never thought there was something worse than what they did to the shifters they experimented on when we dismantled an entire organization that wanted to create vampire-wolf hybrids. Tonight, I was proven wrong.
Over the last months, as I struggled with the knowledge that we would eventually have to kill my brother—the brother I once thought dead—I hadn’t been sure if I could go through with it. All I could think about were the times he’d taken care of me. The way he shielded me from harm over the centuries. He was a good big brother, and I never once imagined he could be a despicable person.
Even today, when I asked them to let me deal with him, I wondered if there was a way for me to talk him into giving himself up. The more doors I opened, the more that thought went away until I was boiling inside.
I didn’t know who this man was, but he wasn’t the brother I knew. I wasn’t sure if the person I remember was an idealistic memory I’d designed in my head after his supposed death, or if he had kept this part of himself hidden away from me. Whatever the reason, I no longer felt any hesitation when I thought about what needed to be done.
Nochehuatl needed to die, and he would die at my hand. It was my responsibility to put him down. As we continued to search for him, I kept my connection to my real family open, ensuring they were okay while we fought.
‘We need a little help over here, uncles.’ Miguel’s voice came through the mind-link. I looked at Seb and nodded at him.
“Go help the others. We’ve got this.” Seb turned to Cormack and Gregory, the two warriors that were with us. After they ran off toward the other hallway, we continued killing garbage and searching for Nochehuatl.
“Are you sure he’ll be here?” Seb asked as we turned the corner.
“The Nochehuatl I knew was a burrower. He hated dealing with people and always picked the furthest corner away from the rest. If he’s here, he should be somewhere around here.”
“What about the office? He had the top floor.”
“Because he could watch us come and go,” I answered, but not fully confident in my statement. At this point, I felt like I was guessing which parts of my brother were real and which parts were an act.
We went through another three doors, dispatching anyone we found, but the following four rooms were empty.
“Maybe that’s as far as this hall goes?” Seb mentioned as we walked back outside one of the rooms.
“No, I think he—”
“Hello, little brother.” A large door in the middle of the hall was closing behind him.
“Nochehuatl,” I growled.
Seb began to camouflage, but before he could, we both doubled over as Adrien’s yell of anger and sorrow made us double over in pain. Percy, my wolf, was howling at the pain so loudly as grief pierced our soul that I didn’t see or hear anything for a moment until I felt the hands that grabbed my hair and pulled me away from my mate. I tried to push him off, but before I could, I felt the sting of a knife at my neck.
“Let. Him. Go,” Seb growled, taking a step forward.
“I wouldn’t if I were you. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize one of Huitzilopochtli’s crystal shards, Guatemoc(gwah-teh-mok),” he taunted Seb. “You know what’ll happen to Tlilpotonqui(tlihl-poh-tohn-kee)’s spirit if I take his life with it.” Seb froze at his words, and I tried to look at what was pressed against my carotid artery.
All I could see was the handle of a handmade dagger and not the blade, but judging by the fear blasting down the mate bond, I was willing to believe the missing shard taken from the spear that killed Helios’ mother was attached to the end.
The crystal shard in question was actually volcanic glass, but the white color mimicked that of a crystal, and the name stuck. It was one of two pieces of obsidian that were imbued by Coyolxauhqui(coh-yohl-shau-kee), the Moon Goddess, with great power long before Helios was born. So much power, in fact, that it turned the usually black glass, white.
Only two pieces of obsidian with this amount of power were in existence. One was made into a beautiful deadly dagger, and another was put at the tip of a spear she later used to kill their mother to stop Tezcatlipoca from pushing into the realm of the living.
When the spear killed their mother, it shattered into three pieces. Two of the shards were in our possession in a vault back at the pack house, while the dagger was in the hands of Celeste. The third shard disappeared from Helios’ possession over half a millennium ago, almost a hundred years before Nochehuatl faked his death. The glass had the power to sever a soul’s ability to be reincarnated if they died by its hand.
“He’s your brother,” Seb growled.
“Is he not here to kill me, too?”
“I will kill you,” I spat, still trying to struggle away from him, albeit weakly once I felt the dagger pressing painfully against my neck.
“You never beat me in a fight, little brother. What makes you think you could now?” he asked, his tone mocking in my ear.
“Because I never tried before. I looked up to you, Nochehuatl. I kept you on a pedestal,” I growled at him.
“My name is Nickolas,” he raged back at me.
“Your name was Nochehuatl. You were born over seventeen hundred and seventy years ago, five hundred miles from what is now Mexico City. You were the oldest of five children. You were my brother.”
