Chrysalis (Book 1.5 in the Wolfen Brethren Series)

CARSON

I stormed into the office determined to talk to my brother. This wasn't my home anymore but every time I returned back to this place I felt like a traitor because there was still a worlds divide between us.

I had used all kinds of excuses to justify why I hadn't spoken to Khan about anything and the more I tried to justify myself the more I began hating myself. I couldn't work on being a better man for my son if I was still stuck lying to myself and hiding from my sins. Was this what I wanted to teach him, to teach my little king, Yavan. To teach him to hide from his mistakes as if they had never existed.

I was a father now and if I couldn't do this for me then I would do it for him because that little boy was the centre of my world and when I lost him I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I couldn't say that I gave him the best me possible. The only way to do that was to confront my past and lay it all bear to my older brother, the male who had paved the way for so much of my future.

But that was the past though, I was trying to recover. To cut the chains of my old life, to soothe the burning flames that I had set alight in my past years.

I was trying to be a better man and so I swallowed my fears and stepped inside. My brothers knowing hazel eyes flickered up to meet me, shock plastered over his face at he took in the sight of me. It had been a while since we had seen each other and I knew I had grown, in height, in width, in mind. I was a different man from the one he had seen a year ago.

"Carson, what are you doing here?" He questioned, rising to a stand as he came around the table and embraced me in a tight hug. Hugging Khan always felt so weird, so awkward. It was something that I rarely remember doing with him, even in my younger years, especially then. I had just been his annoying twerp of a brother but now I was more in his eyes but less in mine. Funny that.

"How is Neema?"

"Still complaining about being fat, Noah is 5 months now and she has lost all the baby weight but she keeps complaining. Gods save us from women!" He chuckled, eyes rolling to the sky. I could only imagine what Neema was putting my brother through and because he loved her so deeply, he was only too willing to listen to every complaint. Love did that. She was naturally beautiful and motherhood gave her a glow to her that was missing, that and my brothers love. They were doing good and I couldn't be happier for them.

"Well I actually came to speak to you about something, I've been meaning to tell you from a while but I haven't because I always knew you wouldn't take this well" I took a seat on the opposite side of his desk and braced myself for his wrath. Closing my eyes, I centred myself, breathing out all my nerves. My grey eyes opened and then words slipped past my lips,

brazen but shameful words.

"Vanya is my mate," I felt like a weight had been released for my shoulders. I still hands right my wrongs and perhaps I never could but telling Khan, letting going of that poison that had corrupted my soul. It felt liberating if only for a moment.

"What?" he growled, chair crashing to the floor as his hand thudded against his desk. I thought the age to lean back from him, instead my shoulders squared and I met him head on. I wouldn't hide from this any longer. I wouldn't make Vanya suffer in silence whilst she hid this as if it where her dirty little secret when in reality it was mine. It always had been my secret to bear and I was a bastard for making her suffer through the silence.

"I said-"

"I know what you said but I must have heard you wrong because there is no way, no way you would have been her mate. No way, not while you were sleeping with other females." I grimaced at the attack, hating that there had been so many witnesses to the way had desecrated this bond.