(A/N: the next two chapters will be a continuation, taking place during the period between chapters 31-35 after Lionel is imprisoned by Alexander.

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You look so strong,
But I know you're tired.

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"If only you knew how beautiful you were Vera," The tone of Lionel's voice is clipped and dripping with need as he alluded me in, to step closer towards his containment.

I stepped precariously closer, only to be burned by the medal doors which spill with lethal toxins to werewolves, its deadly enough to scorch my skin; arising blisters. Now I was starting to regret telling Heidi to let me talk to her brother Lionel, alone.

I've never felt like a stranger inside of my own skin before and the only now do I focus on the lucid temptation that escapes from Lionel's voice. The tenderness that milked around him was purely intoxicating, or that could've been the aroma from the toaster strudel which I hid in my pocket.

Was it really him caged behind bars or was I on the opposite end of another enclosure, keeping us apart. My heart grew cold, seething at the distance between me and the glistening arrays of this male, I half admittedly shared a bond with.

"I don't think you really know yourself, Vera." I watch absentmindedly, as my skin shrivels with the purple venom; also known as wolfsbane.  Slowly my mouth laid agape at the aging burn that turned red until a darkening orange,

"In fact I don't think you remotely know your purpose or story like I do," He tries again to break away from the chains that restrained him as I sneered at the spreading wound that was created on my palm, but my mind was else where. "I can change that." He promised.

"I can change you."

My barrier, my restrain was an invisible hand wrapped around my neck with its finger's entangled into my hair. Lionel's agenda was infernally hidden,  hindering  me in a way I was face down, with my feet tucked underneath my stomach. Though I relatively called and labeled it as anxiety. "I do know who I am,"I retort back to Lionel.

Lionel only shakes his head, denying me of my truth. Had I known and was too afraid to admit myself of the lie I justly commit to. I tried to convince myself, I knew my path— I still had a future.

Only able to mumble five words, I was more than afraid my voice would betray me and give out into a squeak. "You don't know a thing." Lionel clears his throat after he says this, but here I was focusing on the blemish my hand undergoes.

From what I gathered, Lionel was a man of many words... maybe that was the distinction between him and Adonis and maybe even...Alexander. "Why do you say that," I ask fully concerned. Lionel shrugs lowly before slacking into the dark wall that seemed to consume him. His chains were heart wrenching to see, Lionel was more than bruised. He was broken while trying to dictate my own life.

Even under restriction he torments me wondrously like everyone else does. All I wanted to know was the answers everyone has been keeping from me that had been overriding my subconscious, since I learned of this thing called the iron date. "Stop doing that!" I shout at the egoistic Lionel.

He's wiggling his eyebrows while eating the pain of the chains coated in wolfsbane, is horrific.
He almost had me fooled that he didn't mind it either, until he finally winces aloud for my eager ears to hear.

One thing about the alpha that I noticed, he could do it.

He could succumb throughout endless torment. The way he would laugh while accepting punch after blow pursued by Alexander, he would smirk even with a bloody nose like a victorious man even when he was loosing. He was the kind of guy who'd chuckle even in the face of death. Though, he'd never truly go defeated.

Had he really been loosing though? "How about this. I'll tell you something nobody else knows." I purse my lips before I cross my arms across my chest, to shield my burning one. I looked down upon it, once again only to cradle it into my chest like a baby.

I heard Lionel's chains move around, he collects himself while beginning to rest on his knees.

Sweat fled from Lionel's forehead in response to the amounting pain he prayed to subside which instead flourishes. Out of pity and curiosity, I decided to give him what he wants; my attention. "I'm listening." I bark out. Agitation had sliced a wrinkling in time, only my energy and heavy breathing wafted between me and the alpha.

"The moon envies you."

The tension in my body flinched at his words when I came to the conclusion this was the wolfsbane talking. "You're mad." I decided.

For the first time in ages I felt my own cheeks heat up before I belched out into fits of laughter which was genuine that it made my eyes water for more than one reason. I slapped my knee at the ridicule effects of Lionel being in his weakened state under the effects of wolfsbane and venomous toxins. I doubled over still giggling slightly to reach his level on the ground, when I heard a rumble emit from his chest.

"How come," Lionel stated and I reigned in my humor only to giggle once again. "Oh you're serious?" Lionel squinted his eyebrows at me in efforts to show he wasn't joking at all. Not even by the slightest. He was serious for the first time ever and I'm suppose to believe that? Goddess, did he tickle me at times.

"Vera I know more about you than you think." Lionel confessed.

"Oh yeah? Try me." I insisted. "Give me your best shot."

Lionel pondered for a moment before it appeared like he had gotten an idea. "I can't tell you how I know." He sighed. "You just have to-"

"Trust you?" I widened my eyes skeptically at what he was about to say, and deep down I knew that wicked Lionel had ceased and was replaced with a much more vulnerable perceptive specimen that wasn't so fearless after all. He had to have been running out of ideas at survival for him to result to spewing nonsense. "Hell would rue the day I begin to trust you, Lionel." I say.

"Your dreams." He mumbles.

"Wh- what about my dreams?" Lionel moisten his lips as he spoke more clearly than the last time, "I know what you'd been dreaming Vera. Long before this, long before any of this ever happened. I know about your sister." I glared at him at just the mentions of my own bloody relative, which he looked unfazed by. "What do you know about my sister!" I growled.

"What has happened to Andy?"

"I think I've proved my point." Lionel mustered up a more wicked grin as I staggered back a bit, he didn't show a sign of care at all. "Now I think you really should listen to what I have to say."

"Goddess if only that bastard wolf would tell you already. This process would go a lot faster." Lionel lowly curses to me, even to god.

There it goes again, those riddles that probed at my brain, the side of the story no one came to address me about. The one everyone had been hiding. "Tell me what!" I shouted.

"Why must you refer to him as that? As a bastard?" I interrogated as I slid closer to Lionel across the concrete floors . Well as far as I could get without frying myself alive by touching the poisoned fence of course.

Curiosity always ate away at me on the inside, even as a kid I was found snooping somewhere I should not have been, but this? I just knew it had to be something huge. More concealed below the surface.

"That's because he is one." Lionel raised his lip up out of true passioned disgust, he wasn't keen on hiding his hatred towards his brother, Bane. It was as if the thought of him alone wrecked down Lionel's nerves and made him mentally ill.

"How?" I could tell whenever he brought up Alexander being a bastard child it resurrected old memories. Maybe some he could talk about, sharing it with me. It could possibly solve some form of puzzle.

"Because he just is."

"But how come?" I grilled more. "He's your own flesh and blood." At the sound of this, Lionel tosses his head backward; smashing it against chiseled wall. "Andy's your own flesh and blood as well." Lionel amused. I glared darkly at his figure, morphing my gaze into daggers. "Never speak of her, ever again." My eyes drifted down his lean figure, as it almost seeps into the crack in the walls.

Lionel was more stupid than beautiful, to which it pained me from every angle. To hear his voice was a sin, to adore his gaping amber pupils was deathless; I knew simply conspiring with him would be either the ultimate wish fulfillment; or an inevitable defeat. I've taken many effortless losses, what furthermore could I lose? "Why must I not? Andy has already reverberated to the dark side." Lionel chastises, his paleness is sickening to even feel appealed towards.

I scoff at his apparent appetite to tease and scheme, for Lionel's loss of blood could be the cause of his delusional. Instead of acclaiming this, I listen to him anyway. "Tell me something new to the ears. My sister had always been dark." I copy Lionel's coy expression, flatlining against the wall subtly. I couldn't help but to focus in on his breathing and rhythmic heart beating. "She'd gone darker." Lionel states in a monotonous tone.

Lionel was an alpha born like his brother, Alexander who was my first male; my mate. Needless to say, I think this ideal alone is why I felt so drawn to him barley with any retaliation. Not out of affection, but rather his natural demeanor to control or subside the wilderness inside of me. Long before I'd turned into a beast, something more carnal, always remained leashed underneath the cavern of my skin. Why do I get the impression, Lionel could be the one to release it? Relieving me of its obstruction to the mind and soul.

"How darker?" My question was far anticipated, as I carved the sight of Lionel with my shying scrutiny. "Far darker." Lionel sings, teasingly.

The man chained down beside his pride and dedication to take down the crown of werewolves, was absentmindedly; a rebel without a cause. No one, not even I nor Heidi were able to decipher what Lionel benefits in between all of this. The hierarchy was in shambles. Wars would be tampering the lands in the name of Alexander or his father, for even Adonis. Lionel didn't want to be king, so what did he want?

What role does he play?

"Your sister has been plotting with the enemy," Lionel stirred in his place, he was unaware of the approaching steps leading down into his imprisonment dungeon. He was too engrossed with the darling in front of him. Vera was far too magnificent, the beholder of integrated peace. If only she'd known this. "Andy has been accommodating with Adonis. Equally, they both want to seize the throne." Lionel spat.

Vera's throat ran dry, fixating her eyes on the wound that had sharpened on her fleshy palm. The wolfsbane wasn't the only thing that was effecting, but her nerves had been stricken from obtuseness. Her heart had been shattered into pieces. "What throne," In between labored breathing, "It's already crumbling like how it is now." I cackled.

Lionel gathered himself on his knees, shaking as his strength began slipping away. His wolf howled in the dirt, clouding his consciousness with anger. "No, that's not just it. In order to take down the throne, they have to burden the Eden shared between you and Bane. This mate bond has to deteriorate in order to sanction their own." Lionel's wrist began to flicker in pulses.

"Sanction?" I ask, what had Lionel meant by that? Where is all this information spewing from? I'm suppose to beleive  it from the mouth of a predacious lion. He was a fiend all by himself, he didn't need ill intentions to manipulate me. "Solidify." The yellow eyed beast continues.

Adonis once wanted me, he had prayed on me. Suddenly he found and wants to claim my twin sibling? It became transparent to me that mate bonds fluctuated off all alike bonds. Nothing was special about it, soul mates were dead.

Because the same way my mate bond existed between Alexander and Lionel, it strives between me and Adonis... the only proper assumption I can gather from all this is that, Andy is my twin sister. Lionel and Adonis are also twins. "How is this even possible?" Tears overwhelmed, spilling outside of my eyelids. Lionel was starting to scare me.

Betrayal.

Distrust.

Uncertainty.

All emotions became porcelain between me and Lionel. Here I was, giving a false alpha a rise out of me. "Your dreams." Lionel coughs over, sluggishly falling to lay on his backside. He spoke of this like he has always known. It was obvious all along, right in my face.

Instantaneously I began to laugh hysterically. I have seen it all before.  I could not help but to stare at Lionel with everything throttling inside of the void. Whether my life has become lighter or darker, I could see clearer now. "It isn't real." Lionel chuckles madly, "None of this, is suppose to end good for you Vera. It was never intended that way." An acceptance wavered beneath my legs, I was sore all over. I was absolutely weak, I' wasn't made for fighting.

"You've manifested this life. You desired that bastard only for you to have him because that's what you thought you wanted." Lionel crawled up to the gates, flinching back at the blight; covering his barricade. For the first time, I truly read him after realizing this is where he belonged. Where I belonged. "Why must you call Alexander the bastard?" I gritted my teeth together, Lionel clenches his fist against the bars ever so delicately.  I could hear the burning sound of his skin.

"BECAUSE GOTDAMNIT, HE JUST IS." Lionel frustratedly shouts, with his eyes flickering between amber and gold . He had used all of his remaining strength, to prevent the shift of his wolf from taking over. It was apparent, him and his fiend internally fought for the surge of power to seize, or become adamant to the chains. 

The wild was itching to complete transformation, desiring to burst outside of his cell, which withheld him from me, "HE ISN'T THE RIGHTFUL KING!" 

Suddenly something clicked within me. My sight glazed over and I stood up so fast from my knees, that blackness began to dot my vision; becoming stale and blurry. I rocked smoothly on my two feet, grasping the side of the wall to keep from toppling over, "Wait." I begged myself to keep from fainting. "He is not deserving of such title." My lungs were swimming in iron and decomposition.

"Y- You mean,"

"You me-mean, Augustus isn't Alexander's real father? That's the only way he would be considerably a bastard...right?" I coughed, filling with angst before I clutch tighter at my chest. My hand soon numbed as I awaited the collapse that would surely claim me in a matter of minutes. "Answer the question!" I demanded, but it seemed Lionel was fading within the distance until I no longer could even decipher the sound of him panting.

That's when I felt it.

The presence.

"I'm glad my mate can finally see me for who I really am," A voice said before instantly my muscles relaxed and became mush—almost putty into his hands. I couldn't catch myself in time when I felt to be falling.

My breathing was caught deep within my throat and I didn't even know who to scream for, Lionel or Alexander... "A bastard."

The free Alpha slowly trailed towards me with battering eyelashes, a broken grin lazily devoured his frowning lips. Had I not known any better, I would crumble into his chest and cover his face with stains of my flickering kisses. My mouth dried up quickly, my skin felt like it was being stoned with bricks and several mortal wounds.

"Is it true, Alexander?" Of all my desperate inquires I couldn't stop the most desirable one from escaping my clammy scrutiny. I just had to know, was Lionel telling me the truth. Alexander is probably racking my mind right now with compulsion and devastation.

"Does Adonis have my sister Andy?" I yelled as my pulse skipped steady beats. I'm sure he can hear my heart palpitating. The Alpha looks down, with an unreadable expression. My body expelled me to my knees as vacant tears fled shamelessly down my face.

Alexander surrendered to me for once. His hand touched innocently around my shoulder from above me. He turned to look at Lionel for once, glaring solemnly.

"Don't be silly Vera," The Alpha began to rock from side to side on his feet. Alexander always had been an impatient man, he found my sorrow tiresome. Maybe he knew all along but had been hiding it. Lionel fell against his cage, hiding himself from me in the absence of light.

"Adonis used your sister for all she was, before he killed her. Just because she could not fully equate to the presence of to you."

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