His family was in mourning.
And Kade felt more than partly to blame for all of it.
He opened the chapel door and stepped inside. Nearly every head swung in his direction, some looking on him in pity, others staring at him like the stranger he had become in the year he'd been gone with the Order.
Everyone gathered in the chapel was dressed in ceremonial attire--females draped in black hooded gowns, males in belted long black robes. He found his parents in the front row of pews, standing with Maksim and Patrice, all of them garbed in black, their faces pale with shock, eyes rimmed in red, moist with grief. Had Seth been mated to Patrice, as his widow, she would have been gowned in hooded scarlet to signify their blood bond. His body, cocooned in white silk on the altar, would have borne a single crimson kiss where his Breedmate would have scored her own lips then pressed her mouth to his in one final goodbye. As Kade considered the solemn traditions of his kind, he couldn't help thinking of Alex. He couldn't keep from flashing forward to a future where he was the one laid out on the funeral altar, his face transformed as Seth's was, frozen by Bloodlust under the shroud of white silk. Would Alex love him then?
Could he really ask her to love him now, after everything she knew about him? After everything she had seen and heard in the past several hours, could he ever expect to have her trust or affection ever again?
For that matter, what about the people gathered in this chapel? Would his kin at this Darkhaven have anything but scorn for him, once he'd said his piece?
Kade didn't know. At the moment, he didn't damn well care. He strode to the center aisle, knowing how out of place he must look in his combat-worn, bloodstained black fatigues, guns and blades bristling from the belt around his h*ps while his lug-soled boots echoed hollowly over the polished wood path toward the altar.
His father's gaze narrowed darkly as Kade began to walk toward the front of the chapel. As he passed the rows of filled pews, he heard the quiet murmurs of prayers and softly whispered praises for his brother.
"Always such a charming boy, wasn't he?" someone reflected in a barely audible voice. "How tragic that something like this could have happened to him."
that something like this could have happened to him."
"Seth was the studious and responsible one," another detached whisper recalled. "He might have made a fine Darkhaven leader himself one day."
"Poor Kir and Victoria, they must be heartbroken," remarked yet another grief-choked resident, voice lowered so that Kade could hardly hear as he passed. "Would anyone have imagined that Seth could turn Rogue? What a waste, and what a disappointment for his family."
"Kir has refused to speak of it" came a hushed reply. "I understand he is so ashamed, he would let no one near the body after Kade brought Seth home."
"That's right," someone else chimed in confidentially. "It's only because Victoria insisted that Kir even permitted a gathering for the funeral rites. It's as though he wanted to simply sweep Seth away like he never existed."
Kade ignored the quiet wave of whispered speculation behind him as he made his way to the altar at the front of the chapel. His father's shame and disapproval didn't surprise him. The fiercely disciplined, rigidly perfect Kir would never tolerate a Rogue in the family, let alone willingly deign to admit that his favored son had fallen to Bloodlust.
Kade was ashamed, too, not so much for his brother's weaknesses and unforgivable misdeeds but for his own failure to help Seth turn his life around before it was too late.
"This moment belongs to my brother," he said, addressing the assembled group of his relatives and the other residents of the Darkhaven. "I have no wish to take even a second of this time away from Seth, but there are things you all should know. Things all of you need to understand before you condemn him for what became of him in the end."
"Sit down, Kade." His father's voice was low and level, but his eyes crackled with command. "This is neither the time nor the place."
Kade nodded. "I know. I should have come forward a hell of a lot sooner. Maybe if I'd said something earlier, my brother would've had a chance. Maybe he wouldn't be dead." His father rose, coming up off his seat on the bench. "Nothing you say here will change a goddamn thing. So hold your tongue, boy. Let it be."
"I can't," Kade said. "I've carried Seth's secret for too long. I've been carrying my own secrets, too. It's long past time I let them go."
Kade's mother blinked back a fresh rush of tears, one slender hand cradling the swell of her stomach, where another pair of twin boys was growing inside her. "What are you talking about? What secrets, Kade?
Please ... I want to know."
He looked past the disapproving glare of his father, to the plea that swam in his gentle mother's moist eyes. Maybe what he said in this room, before all of these witnesses, would someday help the new pair of brothers who would soon be born with the same talent--the same seductive, wild calling--that he and Seth possessed. For that reason alone, he had to speak.
And then, there was Alex.
Kade's gaze strayed to the back of the crowded chapel, where she had entered in silence and now stood near the closed doors, her steady gaze as tender as it was strong. She nodded faintly, the only approval that truly mattered in this room.
"My brother was not well," he told the quiet gathering. "From the time we were boys, we both struggled with the ability we inherited at birth. Maybe in someone else, like you, Mother," he said, glancing at her as he spoke about the unique gift she also possessed, "the talent might have been a strength. For Seth and me, it became a curse. It was too much power for boys who were stupid with arrogance and too naive to understand the consequences. We abused the talent we inherited from you. At first, we treated it like a game, running with a pack of wolves in the woods, hunting with them ... killing with them. We let the wildness rule us. At some point, I realized Seth could not stop."