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I’ve been so calmed and soothed, not feeling this restlessness. Challenging my mother for the throne hasn’t even come close to being a concern of mine again since then. Since Thad and other shifters felt the same thing, I assumed it was Hannah’s threat.
Now I wonder if it wasn’t my instincts screaming to protect Slade, and now they’re screaming at me again, since I’m no longer as convinced he’s planning to live. But he doesn’t act anything like a man who wants to die anymore, so I have no idea why I’m panicking like this.
Words Alton once spoke to me enter my mind as if summoned by my own subconscious, as if the instinct is doi
ng the same thing to me that I’ve started to do to it when I’m pushed back into the darkness of my mind.
“Slade is very cautious. He’d never tell anyone his true intentions, least of all you,” I tell him, repeating his words. “Why’d you say that to me?”
“Because Slade was constantly calculating odds and piecing together his visions, creating new variables for different outcomes. He kept things to himself mostly. He only ever saw the changeable future. He never saw the things that were set in stone.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask him as he sips his tea without a care in the world.
“Slade was more in touch with the visionary part of his creature.”
“We don’t have visions,” I remind him.
He snorts derisively. “Slade watched you in his mind for centuries, and you think he has no visionary in him?”
“That’s his connection to me as a mate. You saw your mate too,” I remind him, then grimace when he turns pale and goes rigid. “Sorry,” I say softly.
He clears his throat and nods to himself, his eyes going vacant. I think telling me his lie was so much easier than telling me the truth, until he felt like he could be punished for his confession.
“Our link provided me with visions of her. The visions stopped after I betrayed him and shattered my side of the bond by attempting to show them you,” he says quietly.
He starts violently slapping his head, tears falling as he shouts, “Weak! Weak! Weak! She died because I was weak! Weak! Weak!”
“Stop!” I shout, and his pupils dilate for a second as he lowers his gaze and his hand, hunching in on himself like a kicked puppy.
He goes silent, and I frown, because I think I just accidentally dominated him, and I’m not even sure how. That shouldn’t be possible, since he’s supposed to be just as strong as Slade…
“What do you mean betrayed him and weakened the bond? You claimed your mate, and—”
“That’s what I meant,” he says quickly, then cocks his head. “I claimed my mate and shattered the bond on my end. But his link was still active. It’s how he blocked all visions of you from my mind and memories. I sentenced my mate to death for being weak, and he’s spent his entire existence protecting his. It’s why you’d be the last to know of his plans.”
You did this for her… Those words were the only words I saw on that journal.
“Slade is more of a beast. Like me. His power comes from channeling all that,” I argue. “Not a visionary.”
He scoffs. “Now. He’s not the same brother I had. I always thought he was weaker than me until we were in those rings.”
He lets out a heavy breath.
“But before the rings, he was primarily a visionary. Calculative, clever, insightful…never ruthless as he is now. His instinct thrived from that piece of himself, and he was constantly piecing together the visions of the changeable future to fill in the gaps of the unchangeable future he couldn’t see. We thought we’d prepared for everything.”
He stares down at his tea, swirling it.
“The night they came, he blamed himself for not finding that a possibility. He said too much knowledge left us vulnerable to variables he never considered, because he thought he knew the worst that could happen.”
My mind flicks back to Slade telling me something almost exactly like that, but a little different.
“You mean your father said that,” I argue. “Just before the attack. Because he sensed it.”
Alton slowly shakes his head. “I remember too well the bloody mess in our wake when we were chained, and I was screaming as I rammed myself into the bars over and over again. Slade sat there calmly, as though he’d already given up, then he said those words to me,” he answers so quietly I barely hear him. “It’s when I decided to hate him, because I blamed him for not seeing it before it happened. I blamed the death of our parents on him, the death of our sister on him…Hell, I blamed my mate’s death on him,” he says, laughing humorlessly before it turns into a broken sob. “I blamed him for everything, but it was an unchangeable future. He didn’t know there were other factors to put the path back into motion. It was never his fault. He only sees the changeable.”
His eyes find mine again.
“But I stole my own mate’s future because I was so desperate to feel her just once. Just once. I never considered they’d let me live without her,” he goes on, his broken mind beginning to wander as he shifts the topic abruptly.
