"No. Leave me ... I am dying. Already dead. You and I both know it."
"Not like this, brother," Kade ground out. "You will heal. I'll take you home to Father's Darkhaven, and you will recover from all of this."
"No," Seth murmured quietly. His eyes peeled open slowly on his pained hiss. "No, Kade. I won't." The sight of his twin's gaze almost made him glance away. The pupils were needle-thin, vertical slits bathed in bright amber. Seth's gaze was hot with anguish, a feral gaze. His fangs were still extended. The glyphs that were visible through large rips in his clothing were dark and pulsing with color, as though he starved for blood.
All the signs were there, but it killed Kade to recognize them.
From the time he'd last seen him, his brother had succumbed to Bloodlust. Seth was Rogue.
"There's no going back for me now," Seth murmured. "You tried to warn me ..."
"Ah, fuck," Kade whispered. "Ah, damn it, Seth. No. No, this can't be." Seth sucked in a short gasp and a violent cough racked him. His body shuddered. His skin seemed to grow paler before Kade's eyes. "Let me go, brother. Please."
Kade shook his head. "I can't. You know that. I wouldn't have given up on you, not before ... not now. You saved my life up there, Seth. Now, goddamn it, I'm gonna save yours." He turned his head and shouted up the cliff to Tegan and the others above. "I need some ropes. My brother's wounded. He can't make it up on his own. I'm going to need a harness to lift him back to the top." The warriors peered down at them, then vanished to carry out Kade's request. Then Alex's face appeared in their place, just the sight of her a haven to him, giving him a feeling of pure, honest love-something he'd needed more than anything in that moment. Seth's cracked, bloodied lips parted in a weak smile. "You're in love," he said, something wistful in his wheezing voice.
"Yeah," Kade replied. "Her name is Alexandra. I'm going to make her my mate, if she'll have me." Seth closed his eyes, gave a weak nod. "I would have liked to have met her."
"You will." Kade stared down at him, seeing a stillness washing over his broken body. "You have to hang on, Seth. Come on ... open your eyes. Keep breathing, damn you!"
But Seth's eyes remained closed.
He breathed, but only one final time. His chest compressed with his last exhalation, and then he was gone.
Seth's pain was over.
Kade gathered his twin's ravaged body into his arms. He sat with him on the frozen ledge and gently rocked him, praying that Seth had finally found peace.
Chapter Thirty
No one said a word as the warriors helped Kade lift Seth up from the ledge. They worked soberly, handling the lifeless body like precious cargo even though it had to be obvious, even in death, that Kade's twin was Rogue.
Seth's dermaglyphs were still dark with angry color, his fangs still protruding behind his slack lips. Although his eyes were closed, beneath the lids, his pupils would still be elongated, his irises still swamped with furious amber.
All marks of the Bloodlust that had owned him and that declared him an enemy to every law-abiding member of the Breed. All the more so to the warriors of the Order, who were sworn to rid the population of all killers in their midst.
Yet despite that, Tegan and Chase lay Seth down with reverent care on the snow-covered ground before Kade, while Hunter went to the edge of the crevasse and surveyed the deep chasm far below. He turned a level look on Tegan and gave a mild shake of his head. "I can find no sign of life whatsoever down there. The Ancient is surely dead."
Tegan nodded. "Good. Even if the fall didn't kill him, a few thousand tons of snow and ice will certainly finish the job."
Just then, Alex walked back from the plane with a folded blanket in her hands. She had tears in her eyes as she glanced at Kade, then began to gently shake out the shroud that would cover Seth's bloodied, broken corpse.
Kade held up his hand. "Wait. I need to see him like this. I need all of you to see him, and to know that this could have just as easily been me." He glanced at the grim faces of his brethren from the Order, from Hunter's impassive golden eyes, to Chase's narrowed scowl, and then to Tegan's steady, unreadable regard. Finally, Kade looked at Alex, the person whose opinion mattered more than any other. "Seth--my twin--was a killer. I've known it for a long time, but I didn't want to admit it. Not even to myself. What I really didn't want to admit was that he and I were not so different."
"He was Rogue," Tegan said. "There is a difference."
"Yes." Kade lifted his shoulder in acknowledgment. "But it took many years for him to fall. And during those years, he hunted like an animal. He killed in cold blood. Seth was sick with a wildness that he couldn't curb. I knew he was, because the wildness lives in me, too."
Kade saw Alex swallow hard, saw her hold the blanket to her as if she suddenly needed its warmth. He felt the little spike in her pulse as she stared at him in wary silence. Through his bond to her, he could feel her fear as if it were his own.
He hated like hell knowing that he was causing it, and the urge to soothe her worries with a comforting lie was nearly overwhelming. But he was through with secrets. He couldn't hide anymore, or pretend he was something stronger than what he was, even at the risk of losing Alex here and now. She had to know the truth, and so did the group of Breed males standing before him.
"From the time Seth and I were boys, we let our talent rule us. It was hard to resist the freedom it offered, and the power. It was heady stuff back then--to command other deadly predators, to run alongside them. To hunt with them. Sometimes, to experience the precision of a kill as seen through their eyes. And once the wildness had called to us, it only got harder to rein it in. At times, it still is." Although Alex didn't so much as blink, Kade felt the twist of her stomach as she listened to him. She was repulsed, not by Seth this time, or by some misunderstanding that Kade could smooth away with charm or well-meaning promises. She was seeing the truth now, at last, and as terrible as it felt to know that he was pushing her away with his honesty, he couldn't stop until she knew it all.
"Too much power is never a good thing," Chase interjected into the long silence, the ex-Enforcement Agent's voice deep with reflection. "It corrupts even the strongest."
"Yeah, it does," Kade agreed. "It corrupted Seth early on. I don't know when he first started killing humans. It doesn't really matter now. Eventually, I found out, and I should have stopped him then and there, but I didn't. Instead I left Alaska. I got the call from Niko that the Order was looking for new recruits, and I couldn't get out of here fast enough. To save myself from turning into what Seth had become, I ran to Boston and left him to fend for himself"
Tegan eyed him gravely. "That was just last year. Seth was no child then. How long would you have considered him your responsibility?"