If She Survives Us

Vegas POV

I learned way before Thea that if you’re not in control that’s when people die. Not maybe. Not sometimes. Every single time. This curse is all about losing control and I learned to never give Echo too much control. Conditioning him to know I’m in control saved me from a lot of shit after my first shift. People think I’m obsessive. Maybe I am. But obsession is easier to survive than regret. Virgo is chaos wrapped in a wolf, the curse was meant to keep us feral and too unstable to love but obsessive all at the same time. Except it feels like the curse morphed into It's own over the generations. Making the next male in the Black bloodline more feral and unstable than the last. Like the curse learned from each kill and came back meaner. Then came Virgo and I the first set of twins in the entire bloodline, so what happens to a curse that was never meant to be shared ? Nobody fucking knows. we both get a portion of it. Or maybe we got the worst parts and left nothing behind. Now we’re stuck searching for a second chance mate that will either save us or die because of us. And the fucked up part is I don’t know which outcome I expect anymore.

I check my watch Virgo has 10 minutes to get downstairs. I adjust the cufflink in my shirt and fix my watch before walking out of the house. We had to build a separate house for us because Virgo doesn’t have control of his wolf and it’s safer for us to live alone. Safer for everyone. I step out of the house and a few pack members walk past and lower their heads and pick up their pace. I know the pack is afraid of us but at least they’re safe.

Nobody talks to us unless they have to. They talk to Jaxon and he talks to us. Warriors volunteer for border patrol but suddenly remember appointments when guard rotations near our house open up. New pack members learn quickly. Don’t approach. Don’t touch. Don’t linger. I used to think it bothered me when I was younger. Now I think distance is one of the kindest things we’ve ever given them. Fear makes people careful. Careful people stay alive. The people in our pack don’t have to wonder if today is the day they become another Black family story because I already do that enough for all of us.

We’re supposed to be going to The Dark Falls Pack to hopefully find our second chance. Alpha Taylor has a lot of unmated shifted she-wolves including his daughter who is 20 still but hasn’t shifted yet. Virgo thinks this one will be our redemption, I think she’s a false sense of hope. I believe in patterns and the pattern is every male in the Black family is doomed to be alone.

My grandfather killed himself after he killed my grandmother.

My father never got the chance to because I killed him first.

I remember standing over him waiting to feel something. Relief, anger, guilt, something. The house was too quiet after. I remember looking at him and thinking he looked smaller than he usually did. Like somehow dying made him look less dangerous. I remember looking at his hands and thinking they looked normal. Not like the hands of someone who killed his mate. Not like the hands of someone who spent years becoming somebody he never wanted to be. Just hands. That’s when I realized monsters never look like monsters when you love them.

That wasn’t control either. That was survival.

I can still hear my mother’s screams.

Five years ago Virgo lost control and killed Thea, five years ago I watched him and the night plays on repeat. I don’t sleep anymore because when I do I hear her pleas, I hear his snarls. I see the blood, taste it, smell it. Every night my mind changes something and every night it ends the same. I shake the memory away before it has a chance to surface.

The seer says the next one will break the curse on her 21st birthday. How is she supposed to survive a year with us, when Thea barely survived six months.

A year is enough time to make every mistake our bloodline has already proven we’ll make.

Control is the only option.

Keep the distance, stay detached avoid emotion.

If the mate bond with our second chance mate is anything like it was with Thea then the moon goddess signed her death sentence.

Staying away from her was impossible.

The bond doesn’t care about logic.

It doesn’t care about fear.

It doesn’t care that we already buried one woman because of it.

I’m hoping years of conditioning and keeping Echo in check will make it easier.

No emotions, stay in control that’s the mantra.

No attachment.

No routines changing.

No making room for someone who isn’t supposed to stay.

Separate houses. Separate schedules. Separate routines. Virgo eats dinner with the pack twice a week because Havoc gets worse isolated too long. I do meetings in person because people trust what they can see. We train separately. Work separately. The less opportunities there are for mistakes the better. The rules started as survival and somewhere along the line became habit. Now I don’t know if I keep routines because they work or because I don’t know who I am without them.

Echo whimpers in my head at the thought.

“I just want our mate” He says.

“If staying away from her means keeping her alive than that’s what I will do” I say to him before blocking him.

His sadness presses against my chest before the block fully settles and for a second I almost let myself feel bad.

Almost.

She will not end up like Thea.

Getting her to break the curse is the most important thing.

Love comes second to survival.

Second to control because the curse doesn’t care about a bond or about love.

It doesn’t care if she laughs.

It doesn’t care if she wants a future.

It doesn’t care if she’s ours.

The curse only cares that eventually somebody loses control.

I pray that she isn’t 18 because Thea barely lasted six months before Virgo killed her.

Six months.

That’s all it took to go from meeting our mate to lowering her into the ground.

A year suddenly feels too long.

The door opens behind me and Virgo steps out of the house just as I check my watch.

Right on time.

Our Beta Jaxon walks over to us.

“Everything is ready” he says looking behind me at Virgo.

“We’re ready” I say as I adjust my watch.

The watch sits exactly where I left it.

The cufflinks are straight.

The car is waiting.

Everything exactly as it should be.

“Get it together before we get to Dark Falls, your aura is bleeding” I say firm no room for arguments.

“She could be our redemption Vegas” he says low.

“Or our reckoning” I reply and he stiffens.

Redemption sounds nice until you remember every man in our family probably thought the same thing before they ruined everything.

If our mate is at Dark Falls I pray to the goddess she can survive us.