Chapter 6- The Secret

"I'm curious, Sage. If dad knew, what do you think he'd do?" Alpha Landon asked, his eyes worrying.

Beta Sage moved over to his older brother and placed his hand on Landon's shoulder as his annoyance gradually subsided. He assertively said, "He won't, Landon, stop worrying. Our mother's 'affair' love letters were burned. Nobody is aware that they ever existed, remember?"

The young brothers had not known at the time they discovered their mother's love letters hidden under a floorboard that despite breaking off the affair after she discovered she was carrying her lover's child, Luna Robinson's pack had continued to see her lover after the child she had conceived with him had been born.

"Perhaps father was aware of it; after all, his wolf would experience pain if mother made love to her lover, wouldn't it?" Landon inquired once more, behaving more like a teenager than the master-alpha-to-be of the werewolf kingdom.

Sage grimaced and said, "Of course not; mother would know how to utilize her magic and abilities to disguise the affair." He groaned. "Would you please quit worrying, Landon? That happened a very long time ago. The king would never know."

The irony was that they were correct; there was a royal bastard, but it wasn't the son identified by the controversy.

"As far as the kingdom is concerned, the affair only began the year I was born," Sage explained, seeing no reason why anybody should know. "We are the only two people who know that Mother had been seeing her lover before you were even born, unless you plan on informing our father?"

Landon trembled, "I stood by and watched you being bullied both at school and then at home, Sage, when we both knew you should be King. I have no legal right to the throne. I'm not even his child. But you are!"

Sage made a shaky motion with his head. "Be thankful for that every day. Landon, you should be grateful!" he remarked, his voice harsh and savage in its truthfulness. "You've avoided the filth that I bear. I'm the devil's destined son. You will be a better king than I could ever be. You've made all the ultimate sacrifices, and you're still making them." Sage straightened up, releasing his grasp on his brother's shoulders. "But, you know, you don't have to marry Sophie. You could decline. You could choose someone you like—"

"S-sophie is my mate, my wolf recognizes her—"

"Do you even love her, Landon?"

"I-I, well, the m-moon goddess gave her to me... You know she was my destiny—"

Sage exclaimed, "Come on, you may be my older brother, but really? You fool! How could you believe that nonsense? We are no longer in middle age, for fuck's sake," Sage said with irritation.

"But—"

"Maybe, yes, she is your mate, but do you love her? Like a man to his woman? Or you just want to be miserable for the rest of your life as the Master Alpha of this kingdom?" Sage asked as fury twisted inside of him, thinking about the pretty little doctor at his brother's side for the rest of his life. "You don't have to marry her. You could say no."

Landon shook his head and dodged his brother's gaze. "Easy for you to say. I'm not—"

"Selfish as hell?" Sage thought of where being unselfish had gotten his mother. He'd choose to be selfish every time.

Landon's gaze lifted just as his brother vanished into the bathroom. "Sage, I'm not a rebel like you. I need to... I care about what people think about me."

Sage re-emerged with a fresh towel, which he rubbed vigorously over his damp hair.

Landon sighed, "And this marriage isn't about me; it's about bigger things. I'm realistic about it."

"So, what is the pretty doctor's opinion about it?" Sage questioned.

Landon shrugged incomprehensibly. "What do you mean?"

"What does Sophie anticipate from this marriage?" Sage shook his head and asked with pursed lips. "Is she also realistic?" He abruptly shrugged, dissatisfied with himself for wasting time on something that had nothing to do with him. "Are the moon goddess' blessings and the pleasant warmth of doing the right thing enough for her, too?" Sage rubbed his previously towel-dried hair fiercely while pondering the source of the upsurge in fury. Sophie appeared content to lie in her freshly made bed—with his brother. "Do you two even talk, Landon?"

The alpha groaned, not sounding as if the life he saw ahead of him filled him with joy or disappointment. "We have a lifetime to talk." he paused, "But don't you mean sex, then? You don't usually have such a weak stomach."

Sage raised his brow.

Landon pursed his lips and said, "In reality, I haven't had sex with her. I mean, just yet."

Sage wanted to laugh but stopped himself. "That's not what I meant, but as you've mentioned, Landon, aren't you going a little too far with this untouched virgin bride business? Or perhaps you didn't even mark her yet?"

Landon guffawed. "Not even our father anticipates that. And no, I haven't yet marked her; after all, we both agreed to do it after the wedding."

"How incredibly liberal-minded of you, brother!" Sage was still struggling with the implications of some of Sophie's unguarded comments. Was it really possible that Sophie had not had a lover out of fear of falling in love?

Sage smirked before saying, "What if you're not compatible? Have you thought of that?"

"Could the moon goddess be wrong?" Landon mocked his little brother.

"Maybe?"

Landon once looked annoyed. "For God's sake, Sage, this isn't about how good she is in bed! How could you think about that?"

As the comment unlocked a stream of graphic images that flowed relentlessly through his head, Sage lowered his eyelids to half-mast. His jaw clenched as he struggled to stem the flow and pretended an amusement he was a long way from feeling. "But it would help."

It would help him even more, Sage mused darkly, if he could stop thinking of unfastening glossy honey hair and watching it fall over bare shoulders, pushing it back to reveal small, firm breasts...

Oblivious to the tension underpinning his brother's taut delivery, Landon laughed. "I really like her."

"Like?" Sage groaned as he nodded his head listlessly. "Come on, she is my mate. What not to like?"

Sage threw her hands in the air dismissively and said, "Just like how you like her little sister, Cherryl?"

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Landon, your eyes glowed when I mentioned her name." Sage shrugged.

Landon tipped his head in acknowledgment. "Sophie is sweet and smart," he began with the attitude of a man who was clutching at straws.

"And," he ploughed on with determination, "she has a lot of common sense."

Were they even talking about the same woman? Sage wondered, thinking about the woman who had attempted to punch her way out of his locked car just to avoid being shut in there with him.

He recognized she'd been driven to this drastic move by desperation and fear, and he had fully intended saying something to soothe her, but the expression on her face when she'd acknowledged him, the fact that she'd looked as though she had just discovered she had jumped into a car beside the Devil himself... He simply hadn't been able to resist playing up to her prejudices a little.

But then she challenged his own firmly embedded prejudices. In the abstract, he had been able to despise Sophie Savannah, or at least the idea of her, a woman who, despite coming from a different generation, was just as willing as his own mother had been to be a compliant, werewolf political pawn.

The first surprise had been the desire that had twisted inside him when he'd found himself sitting just inches away from her, which shouldn't have happened. He had seen the photos. He already knew that she was good-looking, admittedly more classy than classically beautiful. But what those photos had not prepared him for was the crystal clarity of her skin, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her small, straight nose, and the deep, liquid darkness of her eyes that seemed to reflect her every mood like a mirror. And last, but definitely not least, the pink lushness of her amazing lips.

The blood-roaring primal intensity of his reaction had effectively blocked everything else from his mind for what might only have been seconds, but could have been an hour.

And the hits just kept coming!

He'd expected a passive victim; he got a feisty fighter who clearly thought he was a total waste of space. What had got to him the most was the conflict in her eyes and her vulnerability.

He'd just wanted to tell her not to do it. Not to marry Landon. Instead, he'd kissed her... a greedy response to a need that had been visceral in its intensity.

"I've never seen her lose her temper," Landon said.

Sage could not control the bark of laughter that bubbled up from his chest as he lifted a hand to his cheek, where the imprint of her fingers had lasted, but he didn't react to his brother's puzzled look.

"Perhaps you should try giving her cause and see what happens?"

"She's very pretty," Landon added, his tone almost defensive, as though he expected his brother to deny the fact.

Was Landon serious? The woman was beautiful. She wasn't his type, he had never leaned in the direction of cut-glass delicacy, but even he could recognize her natural beauty, the rare 'get out of bed with her hair mussed and still look knockout gorgeous' beauty, not that he would ever get the chance to prove his theory.

She was his brother's.

The reminder slowed the heat rising inside him but did not stop its slow, inexorable progress.

What are you, Sage? Fifteen? Get a grip, man!

"Are you asking me for an opinion?" Sage struggled hard to tap into the sympathy he normally felt for his brother, who was the one expected to make a marriage of convenience, the one looking ahead to a life of being the acceptable public face of the crown.

"No, yes? I suppose?" His brother produced one of his genuine smiles, seeming to suddenly shrug off his mood with an ease that Sage envied.

"Maybe you should go on a date," Sage suggested.

"With Sophie?"

"Well, the dating ritual is kind of what people do before they get married, unless you have one of those "wake up in Vegas with a tattoo, a hangover and a wife" marriages. I can recommend the first two as a way of passing a weekend."

Landon's eyes slid from his brother's as he sketched a smile. "I haven't thanked you yet, for getting her out of that press scrum."

"Glad to be of help, alpha," Sage said, wondering about the change of subject and his brother's unusually evasive attitude. Landon, he decided as he studied his brother's face, looked positively shifty.

Landon groaned, "I'm sure she took it all in her stride."

Sage's nose wrinkled as clamped his jaw and fought a compulsion to defend Sophie from the criticism he could hear behind this faint praise. "You'd have preferred she'd have fallen apart, Landon?"

"Of course not."

"Actually she was pretty shaken, but she came out fighting." Sage saw no point adding that the fight had been mostly directed, quite deservedly, at him.

Landon got to his feet. "She was lucky you were so close."

"She might not agree… I've been drinking."

Landon looked amused. "Fall asleep and snore, did you?"

Sage's eyes fell. "Not exactly."