How Does Brother'S Keeper End?

The children of the Guardians have grown up together. Emlyn Gunnar has known Richard Holstin her entire life. She gives her virginity to him when she is 16, on the night of his Alpha ceremony. For the next year and a half, they date in secret. Emlyn has fallen in love with Richie and dreads the day he finds his mate. But as her 18th birthday draws near, she is feeling more confident that he is her mate. Due to an impromptu moment of unprotected sex a couple of weeks before her birthday, Emlyn finds herself pregnant with Richie's baby. On her birthday, when she realizes he is her mate, she is relieved. She knows Richie wants to have a baby, they just weren't planning on one so soon. At her birthday party, the moment her wolf howls that Richie is her mate, saying it out loud for everyone to hear, Richie also cries mate. Only, he isn't looking at Emlyn. He is looking at a female from another pack. When Richie refuses to reject her, letting her escape the pain of his romance with his “mate”, she will have to be the one to reject him, causing him to feel the pain of the shattered mate bond. Before he can decipher what is going on, Emlyn leaves. She goes to Araphyra, to the Fae King, to find out how she can break her Guardian bond with Richie. If he's not her mate, then she isn't going to be his Guardian. Richie will have to race against time and Emlyn to figure out why they have a mate bond he can't feel. But will he be fast enough to keep her from breaking the Guardian bond, the last bond tying her to him, or will their bonds be shattered forever?

I thought my biggest problem was falling for the wrong man. Turns out, the real mistake was getting trapped between two brothers who would burn the world down just to hurt each other. One became my past. The other became my cage. Now I’m stuck inside a life built on secrets, obsession, and violence—where every choice I make seems to drag me deeper into him instead of farther away. I’ve tried fighting him. I’ve tried hating him. God help me, I’ve even tried resisting the way my heart reacts whenever he looks at me. Nothing works. And the more I learn about him, the more I realize one terrifying truth: People close to him don’t survive for long.

After my sister-in-law Lydia had my brother Caleb's kidney removed and spent three years draining his blood, he escaped back to our hometown barely alive. He lay on a bed at the clinic, holding my hand tight as he said, "Noah, don't go after them. You can't afford to cross Lydia's family." Three days later, he died in my arms. I buried him on the hillside behind the town, under the old oak tree he had loved to climb as a child. On the seventh day after I buried him, a black Maybach stopped at the edge of town. Lydia got out with a frail man who looked like he could fall over at any time. She stood outside my house's door and looked at me. "Noah, where's your brother? Tell him to come out. Evan needs bone marrow this time." I wiped the dirt from my hands and raised my head as I smiled. "You want to find Caleb, right? Then start digging."

When April Caddel was just a child, her world changed with the arrival of Orion King, a guarded teenager taken in by her loving parents. For over a decade, Orion was her protector, her strict older “brother,” and the unshakable force in her life… until he vanished without a goodbye. Now, six years later, Orion is back. No longer the boy she knew, he’s a powerful, aloof businessman with a new name and carefully guarded secrets. But April’s heart remembers the boy who saw her when no one else did. And her body reacts to the man he’s become. Orion is determined to help April rebuild her life, all while clinging to the one rule he’s never dared to break, he is her brother in every way that counts. But April is no longer the little girl who followed his lead. She’s falling for the one man she was never supposed to want. As boundaries blur and emotions spiral, forbidden love burns between them, threatening to upend everything they thought was safe. The arrival of Orion’s entitled half-siblings and a father who wants his son back only adds fuel to the fire. They share no blood. But will that ever be enough? When love dares to bloom in forbidden soil, will it survive the storm? Or would their love story become one more secret they can never afford to tell?

To punish me for losing my autistic younger brother, Ezra Clement, Mom locks me inside a custom-made steel box. The box is about 20 inches wide and is welded in place in the deepest corner in our basement. "There's a walkie-talkie inside. You'll stay in there until you admit that you deliberately left Ezra beside the human traffickers' van." She locks the lid, plunging me into darkness. For the first three days, I cry and beg through the walkie-talkie, trying to tell Mom that I only let go of Ezra's hand to lure the traffickers away from him. One of the traffickers has slashed me across the back, and the wound keeps bleeding and festering. But Mom refuses to listen to anything I have to say. All I hear are her furious accusations. "Evelyn, you're just jealous of Ezra. A vicious sister like you deserves to be locked in there until you die." On the fourth day, torrential rain floods the basement. Muddy water rises past my knees, soaking the knife wound on my back in filthy water. The pain is so unbearable that I claw at the metal walls until all ten of my fingernails tear and break. I desperately press the talk button. But all I hear from the other end is Mom's gentle voice coaxing Ezra to sleep. To prevent me from disturbing him, she powers it off. When the water that is mingled with the blood from my mangled fingers rises above my head and floods into my nose, I stop struggling. Mom has no idea that on the back of our family photo, I have written down my plan to work hard, earn money, and pay for Ezra's treatment. Helplessly, I think, "Mom, I confess. In my next life, I will never be your daughter again."

The silver blade sliced across my throat, and I collapsed in a spreading pool of blood. I called Ethan ninety-nine times. My brother ignored every single call, but on the ninety-ninth try, he finally picked up. “What now?” Irritation dripped from every word. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble already? I’m in the middle of planning Lyra’s coming-of-age ceremony, and if you don’t show up, I’ll make you regret it.” “Ethan, please—help me—” My voice came out broken and ragged. He hung up. I tried reaching through our blood bond, desperate for him to feel something—anything at all—but he’d severed that connection two years ago. My phone battery was dying, and I watched the last bar flicker before the screen went black. I stopped struggling. The silver blade pierced my heart, and my wolf let out one final whimper before she died with me. Days later, the patrol found a body. The face was destroyed beyond recognition, torn apart and mangled. But Ethan still recognized the scar on the wrist—the one he’d sworn he would never forget.By then, it was too late.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​