My Alpha Brother’s Regret Was Too Late Chapter 07

My Alpha Brother’s Regret Was Too Late Chapter 07

At the morgue, my brother realized for the first time just how thin I’d gotten.

My wrists were so narrow they looked like they could snap if you bent them.

“You told me,” Elias snarled.

He grabbed my brother by the collar in one savage jerk, his eyes so red it looked like blood might drip out of them.

“You told me her feelings for me were all fake!”

He howled, completely unhinged.

“That’s why I agreed to Mira’s plan in a rage,” he shouted. “I wanted to provoke Tessa on purpose, to get back at her.”

“And you knew it,” he continued, teeth grinding. “This mating ceremony was my last test for Tessa. After that, I was going to cut Mira off for good.”

Elias stared at my brother like he wanted to tear him apart.

“And now?” he demanded. “Tell me why Tessa ended up like this!”

Floating above them, I froze.

So that was it.

No wonder it had felt that way.

No wonder Elias had seemed like a different person in just a few days.

More than ten years of growing up together, so many vows and feelings, had collapsed overnight.

It wasn’t that he stopped loving me.

He was using what he thought was a “counterattack” to punish someone who had never betrayed him.

I looked at the two of them, their faces twisted with pain, and I shook my head slowly.

“If Elias had trusted me even a little,” I said to myself, “he would’ve come and asked me to my face.”

“He wouldn’t have believed whatever someone else told him,” I went on. “All those years of feelings, and they couldn’t beat one manipulative lie.”

“A love like that,” I finished, “I don’t want it.”

My brother finally broke.

He stumbled backward, shaking his head over and over, his voice chaotic and shattered.

“I didn’t know,” he kept saying. “I really didn’t know it would turn into this.”

“Was all of it fake?” he choked out. “That ‘system,’ those ‘missions,’ was it all just something I made up?”

He jerked his head up, eyes bloodshot.

“Then what have I been doing all these years?” he rasped. “Did I kill my sister with my own hands?”

The air went dead for a beat.

“I’m going to mark Tessa,” Elias said.

My brother froze. “You… what did you just say?”

Elias lifted his head, his gaze bordering on obsession.

“Even if it’s only her name on a headstone,” he said. “In this lifetime, she has to be my mate.”

“It’s what I promised her when we were kids.”

Up in the air, I could only stare.

What a lunatic.

I wanted nothing to do with it.

My brother lunged forward and drove a fist into Elias’s face. “You don’t deserve her!”

“You and Mira,” he snarled, “you’ve done so many filthy, disgusting things together. You know exactly what you’ve done.”

“What right do you have to tie Tessa to you again?”

Elias’s head snapped to the side from the blow, blood at the corner of his mouth.

But he smiled anyway.

It was a vicious, crazed smile.

“And you have the nerve to say that?” Elias spat.

“Who forced her step by step into a dead end?” he roared. “Me? No. It was you. It was you, her favorite brother.”

“You’re the one who hurt her the most,” he said, voice shaking with fury. “Do you know why she killed herself today?”

“Even on the other side,” Elias hissed, “she wouldn’t want to see you ever again.”

They both lost control completely, like two dying beasts ripping into each other.

The police rushed in at the noise and fought hard before they managed to drag them apart.

Pinned down, Elias still stared at my brother with bloodshot eyes.

“I’ve decided,” he said hoarsely. “Whether you agree or not, I’m doing it.”

The morgue hallway was empty, stripped of all warmth and life.

My brother’s back was hunched, like he’d aged ten years overnight.

He covered his face with both hands. “Elias is right,” he whispered. “If I hadn’t overheard it that year, none of this would have happened.”