My Adopted Sister is my Mate
"And the night we met again," I whisper, "my wolf recognized you."
Silence.
"Recognized me how?" she asks carefully. My chest burns even as my pulse thunders in my ears.
"As my mate." The word falls between us like shattered glass.
Avara laughs. "That's not funny."
"I know."
"You're my brother."
"I know." I find myself inching closer... closer.
"Thats impossible. This is sick."
"I know," I say again, voice breaking now. "I fought it. Gods, I fought it. I tried to convince myself my instincts were wrong, that my wolf was broken, that I was losing my mind."
Her hands shake. "Stop."
"I can't," I say hoarsely. "Because every second I'm near you, it gets worse. Because my wolf wants to kneel at your feet and tear the world apart to protect you."
.................................
Fifteen years after vanishing from the Silvermoon pack, Kaeden Vane returns, older, lethal, and right on time at thirty-three, the age decreed by the Moon Goddess for succession, having spent years years amassing forbidden knowledge, mastering dangerous magic, and preparing to destroy his father, the man who murdered his mother in a bid for godhood. His return reunites him with Avara Vane, his seemingly fragile, human adopted sister that Silas, their father, adopted as an 'act of mercy'. She is a Nyxarel, whose parents were slaughtered by the man she calls father and who has been conveniently placed and subdued by his father, until it is the right time to use her blood to attain immortality. And one touch is all it takes for Kaeden's wolf to recognize her as his mate, an impossible, unforgivable bond...
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Chapter 2
AVARA
"Who does he think he is, coming back after 15 years and acting like he owns the place?"
Julian is rambling beside me but I can barely hear him, walking so fast that it is difficult to keep up with him. His jaw is hard, and cold anger is radiating off him.
"I'm just as surprised as you are that he is back. I thought that he would never come back."
"Of course he does. Spends 15 years wasting away his life, neglecting the pack, the people, then waltzes back in talking about how he is ready for the succession. He shouldn't have come back. He had become a ghost. Everybody had forgotten about him. Damn it."
I hadn't. When Silas took me, brought me to him, I was scared, destabilized, terrified, my mind hazy, thoughts blurry. It was two days after that night, that night...
I try to think again of that night and give up trying to recollect more than I know. Julian says it's a trauma response, remembering so little of the night when my actual parents died. Silas, my adopted father, gave me a bunch of books on the effects of trauma, on how trauma can make certain thoughts fade to the back of the memory because the brain desperately wishes never to recollect them ever again.
Anyways, Silas had always been harsh, cold, standoffish, right from the very first day. Sometimes I wonder whether it is love that made him adopt me or something else because, the way he acts sometimes...
But Kaeden had been the light in those dark, scary days, for the whole of the thirty minutes that he spoke to me. That night, when I was brought into a whole new territory that I could already sense would be dangerous, he had hugged me, smiled at me, told me not to be afraid, made me laugh, made me feel warm and welcome and happy.
Then he had disappeared. For 15 fucking years.
So no, I had not forgotten Kaeden Vane.
For many years after, I had waited for my big brother to come back for me. I had stared at his portrait hanging over the mantelpiece in one of the living rooms for so long, I developed a little childish innocent crush for my brother. I craved that hug, craved the way that he made me feel that dark, scary night, missed him so badly that one would not believe that we had only met for less than an hour.
And then, when I realized that he was not coming back anytime soon, I grew resentful of him.
Maybe my feelings were not justified. I mean, he never said that he was coming back for me. He never made any promises. But I felt betrayed. l felt hurt. I felt abandoned.
And now he is back. And I don't know how to react. I don't know why my breath hitched and goosebumps ravaged my body when we touched. I don't know why he moved from looking at me like a distant memory he had barely thought about to looking at me so intensely, I felt that I might melt under his gaze.
I don't know why it bothers me so much.
"So what now?" Julian is still snarling. "He shows up now and just takes the throne? Just like that?"
I shrug. "I mean, he is the true heir. It's his birthright."
Julian hisses. "That's bullshit. What happens to everyone who has been toiling to preserve and enrich the park? What happens to me? I've spent years slaving after your father, basically working as his second right hand man."
"Three years." I roll my eyes, knowing exactly where the conversation is heading.
"It doesn't matter the time. I've spent years looking after the pack, looking after you."
"And that makes you more deserving of the throne than the son of the Alpha?"
Julian turns to me with a snarl on his face. "How can you not be bothered by this, Avara? I'm the son of the Beta. You're the legitimized daughter of the Alpha."
"And?"
His voice gets lower but sharper. "Don't act stupid. If he had never come back, we could have had a chance to lead the pack together, you as Luna and I as the Alpha. Once Silas stepped down, there would have been no one to challenge us."
I stare at him blankly. He has never been open with his intentions but I have always suspected that I was just a means, a ticket to what he truly desired, to be Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack. Not that it bothers me so much that he came to me with other intentions other than love, I mean, I don't even know whether I am fond of him and his suffocating nature. The only reason I am with him is because father desires so, and I have seen enough of how Silas reacts when he does not get his way to be foolish enough to disobey him.
"When you talk like this, you sound like a gold digger." I tell him bluntly.
Julian's expression shifts instantly. He reaches out his hands, his fingers tracing my jawline possessively. "No, no. Why are you talking like this, Avara? I love you, you know I do. I mean, I am always at your side."
Yes, always at my side, suffocating me, always wanting to know what I am doing, where I am going, what I am up to. Monitoring me, pestering me. As if I am not already controlled enough by my father.
"But we cannot deny that this was an option for us," he continues. "Until he came back. And we deserve that power, Avara. You know how much we have done for the pack."
"I never wanted to rule the pack. I'm human, Julian. I don't even deserve to."
"Maybe alone, but with me by your side, you do." He sighs. "I'm sure there has to be a way to get rid of him. Send him back to wherever he came from."
That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, still trying to process my feelings towards Kaeden's return. My eyes trail onto a little necklace, one that I had on my neck as a little girl when I was... rescued.
Kaeden had toyed with the necklace the night they met, put it on his nose and made funny faces. That had made her laugh.
I smile and feel led to toy with it the way he did. I lift it and place it on my nose.
As soon as I do, I feel a sharp pain across the centre of my forehead, one that makes me to stumble an almost fall.
Then I hear a voice, clear, one that I swear I used to know, used to love.
"Hide her! Hide the spark!"
I crumple to my knees and instantly feel rough hands on my waist. I turn to see Kaeden's worried face. I realize that he is holding me, breathing heavily, like he had sprinted towards me.
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9.4
I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage.
But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death.
As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket.
Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her.
Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved.
I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies.
They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die.
I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred.
Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me?
Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm.
I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12.
It was exactly three days before the world ended.
When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly.
"Just tell me where to send the money, Mom."
This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.
7.9
He is cursed. She is a slave.
Their forbidden bond will either save their world or set it ablaze.
Caeser Varyn, the formidable Alpha King, is a figure of fear, his very blood tainted by a curse that has claimed every mate the Moon Goddess has given him. His existence is a lonely burden of twisted power, until a single, accidental touch changes everything.
Ava is a ghost in the royal palace-an unseen slave girl with a quiet grace and a hidden power. When the Moon Goddess's mating mark appears on her wrist, Caeser shatters ancient laws and claims her as his own.
Their forbidden union ignites a firestorm, forcing them to flee the burning palace and the outrage of the pack.
Turned out she's gifted by the Moon Goddess and to survive, Ava must master the power she never knew she possessed, expose the traitors who surround them, and find a way to break the ancestral curse.
If she fails, her love will be consumed, and their world will fall to the dark power of a corrupted god.
9.3
"Food made by a person I don't like is naturally detestable,"
Lily didn't expect these hurtful words to come from him-her husband of almost two years- Roberto Whitlock.
She had married him out of love, even though their marriage was a transaction between two families.
She thought she could change him, but it turned out it was just her fantasy.
And he soon brought her to the reality of their marriage which had been hanging by a thin, strained thread this whole time.
"Sign it... My heart can never beat for you in this lifetime,"
After she signed the divorce papers, she made him stand at the back of long line of suitors.
7.4
Some think I'm cursed. Others think I'm unlucky.
But I know what I am.
My name is Leora, and I am the Redwood Pack's Alpha's daughter. Well, until my mother died.
My father remarried late, so the Pack moved on to new hands. My new stepmother, Amarie, is a spawn of Satan. She gives me to the new Alpha's household as a maidservant as a price for not exiling my father. I become an outcast, abused and punished every single day.
On my eighteenth birthday, I find out that I'm mated to the new Alpha's son, Caleb. Enraged, he rejects me, throwing me into the dungeons. In pains, I remain there for days. Then one fateful night, my luck changes.
The Lycan King is visiting the Pack to find a mate.
Which happens to be me.
I'm alone, crying that night, when a towering golden-eyed man charges in and rips the dungeon doors off their hinges. I gasp when he cups my chin, and whispers softly. "Stop crying, mate. I'm here now. And I'll make sure no one ever brings you to tears ever again!"
I thought my problems were over then.
But it was only the beginning.
7.6
I woke up to the suffocating smell of copper and sulfur, my fingers wrapped around a blood-soaked leather whip.
Hanging from an obsidian cross in front of me was a boy with silver hair and dead, golden eyes.
His pale chest was torn open to the bone.
I recognized those eyes immediately. I had spent three years describing them on my laptop.
He was Kamari Monroe, the tragic, overpowered protagonist of my own web novel.
And I wasn't just a bystander. I was Benedict Guerrero, the sadistic academy headmaster. The ultimate villain.
A reel of images flashed in my mind: my original ending. Kamari, fully awakened, skinning me alive and burning my soul in a furnace for forty-nine days.
My loyal attack dog, Gideon, stepped forward with a basin of glowing green liquid.
"Headmaster, let me wake him up with this bone-rot acid so you can resume."
If that acid hit Kamari, his hatred would become permanent. My gruesome death would be sealed.
But if I broke character and apologized, the magical world would sense the shift, and Kamari would just think it was a sicker, more twisted trap.
How was I supposed to survive a death sentence I wrote myself?
I couldn't show weakness. I had to play the monster to survive.
Suppressing my terror, I smashed the acid basin, healed his ruined flesh with agonizing dark magic, and lied straight to his face.
"Someone had to be the monster to push you into the fire."
This time, I will rewrite my own fate.
7.7
Chelsey loved Brett for seven years and tried everything for a baby-doctors, IVF, surgeries. Then she found out he'd been dosing her food with contraceptives.
She woke back at the fire years earlier and watched Brett carry another woman out, leaving Chelsey to choke in smoke. She realized he'd been reborn too-and picked his "true love."
Chelsey walked away and married Julian, her friend's cousin and the hot firefighter who saved her; he gave her all his money the day they married.
Brett scoffed... until Chelsey shone at an AI summit and Julian's real identity shocked him.
Seeing her with twins and another baby coming, Brett begged, "Come back to me! Please!"