My Ex Sold Me for His Debts, Then My Brother's Enemy Claimed Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Brothers

Rhys attacks Costa on the river road, Willa steps between them and the pack learns she is the Alpha's sister; Rhys sets Dean's judgment for noon.

The first truck stopped sideways across the road, and my brother was out of it before it stopped rocking.

Rhys did not run. He walked, and he was already half-changed, with claws out and his shoulders wrong under the leather jacket.

Behind him eight Hollowmere wolves spilled out of the other trucks.

Costa Rooke stepped away from the wall and stood in the middle of the road with his hands open.

"Thackeray," he said.

"Rooke."

That was all either of them said before Rhys hit him.

I had seen my brother fight maybe six times in my life. He had never once looked like this.

Costa went back two steps and took the second blow on his forearm, and the bone in it cracked.

He didn't hit back.

"Rhys," I said.

Rhys didn't hear me. He had Costa by the throat and was driving him into the side of a truck.

"Rhys!"

I pushed off the wall and walked.

My knees gave as I moved, but I pulled myself up, and then I was standing between them with my back against my brother's chest and my hand flat against Costa's.

The pulse in my wrist hit so hard I nearly went down.

Costa's eyes were on mine. They had gone gold.

"Willa," my brother said behind me, very quietly. "Move."

"No."

"Move out of the way."

"He didn't do it," I said. "He's the one who got me out."

Nobody spoke.

I could hear the eight wolves behind Rhys shifting their feet.

One of them whispered, "Her?"

"Willa Kingsmill is the Alpha's sister," said another.

So the whole road knew. Rhys had spent twelve years keeping that quiet, and it was gone in a breath.

I felt him feel it. His chest went still against my back.

Then his hands came down on my shoulders, and they were shaking.

"Look at me," he said.

I turned around.

He looked at my wrists, the blisters weeping under the burns, and at the bruise on my jaw I hadn't known was there.

His face went blank, the way it does when he is past angry.

"Who."

"Dean."

"Dean Karrick," said one of his wolves. "He's in the cellar, Alpha. Two of ours have him."

"Bring him."

"Rhys, he's only a gambler. He's a nobody who owed money."

"Bring him."

They dragged Dean up the cellar steps by his shirt and dumped him in the road.

He looked from me to my brother and back again, and I watched him understand.

"Alpha," Dean said. "Alpha Thackeray. I didn't know. I swear on my mother, I didn't know she was yours."

"No," my brother said. "You didn't."

He said it so softly that Dean actually started to smile.

Rhys put a hand under my arm and walked me to the truck, slowly, so I wouldn't fall.

At the door he stopped and turned his head.

Costa hadn't moved. There was a red handprint across his throat.

"You touched my sister," Rhys said.

"She touched me," Costa said. "And I didn't buy her. I broke the deal."

"Then why were you in that room?"

For one second, Costa looked at me instead of him.

"Ask her what I said when I walked in."

Rhys didn't ask.

He opened the passenger door, put me inside, and buckled the belt over my lap himself, the way he had when I was nine.

"Stay down," he said.

"Rhys, what's wrong between you two?"

"Nothing you need to know."

"He called me Thackeray. How does he know my name?"

My brother shut the door.

Through the glass I saw him walk back to Costa, close enough that nobody else would hear.

I couldn't hear them either. I only saw Costa say something short, and my brother go very white.

Then Rhys turned his back and climbed into the driver's seat.

He drove with both hands on the wheel the whole way up the valley.

I looked into the mirror on my side.

Dean was in the bed of the second truck with a wolf on either side of him, bleeding from the mouth.

He saw me looking, and he mouthed, please.

I turned away.

My brother stopped at the bridge over the river, and for a long time he said nothing at all.

"Tomorrow noon," he said at last. "The whole pack in the square. Dean first."

"And then?"

"And then I'll tell you what I can."

He still hadn't said why a Cairnfell Alpha had known my father's name.

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