(MxM) Tales Of A Shifter (P1) - The Meeting

Chapter 76 - Undeserving

Against Ezekiel's will, the Leopard inside urged him to follow Brandon.

Ezekiel simply clocked his exit instead, watching until Brandon had completely disappeared from sight, leaving behind the overpowering scent of his alluring blood on the air.

Mantilo easily ignored his abrupt exit and as everyone turned back to discussing the information that their Father had returned with....Ezekiel found his mind lingering, as it often did, on the meaning behind what Brandon had uttered moments ago.

You and those ugly beasts don't scare me....

Is what he had said to Mantilo, but that snide remark uttered in passing seemed deeper to Ezekiel. It had Ezekiel pondering silently.

So what the hell IS he afraid of? What is Brandon's story?

Ezekiel asked himself.

And for some unknown reason the idea of the answer to that question unsettled Ezekiel even more. And he wondered why someone he thought about this much...was still little more than a stranger to him. And why a sickly unwanted Reaver like him actually wanted anything to do with the mortal who much like every other shifter in the Clan wanted to push Ezekiel aside.

***

Brandon didn't know when sleep claimed him that night, but it came after many useless hours of fretting, thinking and even worrying.

Worrying that one of the Shifter wouldn't return after going out after the Ghouls. To hunt them....to kill them.

But eventually exhaustion claimed him and in his sleep he found little peace.

One moment he was staring at his leather covered hands that were balled up on his pillow in front of him and the next he blinked as he felt the open air.

The sun sat like a strobe light in the open blue heavens and he stood, floating over a conflict beneath him. A beautiful Rosen color kissed the sun and for as long as he could Brandon wanted to focus on that. He wanted to look at the majestic and Unknown Mountain tops peeking out of the fog all around. This dream could so easily have been a happy experience, instead of the intense and endless nightmare that had plugged him all of his nights.

Brandon eventually looked down as the two strangers beneath him began to shout at each other and he saw himself. He saw a man that was him. Dirty blond hair, green eyes...but here the similarities ended. He spoke strange, he was grabbed in silks, and he was covered in blood and in his hand....he held a sword also dripping in blood. The stranger, this dreamlike version of Brandon was speaking to another man. Kail. They were having some dramatic confrontation as they always did in every dream.

Kail, with his familiar face screamed back. It made no sense for Brandon to recognize him, he didn't know either of the men that he saw in the dream personally. Brandon didn't understand why they fought. He didn't know why one of the strangers looked like him. It was a nightmare full of sadness, and agony and it never stopped and yet it all felt so real. Brandon's heart hurt as Kail rose his blade, his eyes stung as a sharp yellow flash of sunlight glanced off the blades length.

"No." Kail smiled over at Brandon's twin sadly as he always did in the dream, as though his heart was breaking. Kail raised the blade before him, strawberry light glancing off the silvery blade in his hands once more.

"I betrayed everything I know for a future. We all knew that there was no going back, not for me. Or for you. I'm embracing the evils I have committed today, so that we can have a future. I've made the choice to do this horrible terrible thing to my brother....All that remains is for us to settle the score." Kail finished.