Grey was frozen, staring at Alexei who watched her with those lifeless eyes. She didn't know how to react, she was conflicted with wanting to hug Alexei and tell him she's sorry or run away. After a few moments of watching her, Alexei backed away and she frowned at him.

"I see the pity in your eyes." He almost snarled. "I don't need it."

"Ale-"

"No. I don't need your condolences or any form of sympathy from you or anyone. I am not weak."

With that his back is turned to her and he begins to leave the room, but not without one final demand:

"I've told you before this hall is forbidden. Do not let me catch you in here again."

Alexei was down the stairs and moving away from her tantalizing scent as quick as he could go. He couldn't handle it, that look she was giving him. He didn't want to feel the pain of losing his parents again; he didn't want to be weak. He was taught at a young age that weakness is even the most powerful man's downfall. He wanted to lose himself, his thoughts, his feelings to the familiar haze that only vodka could bring to him, and after he'd drank the cabinets dry, he'd let the beast out on the world.

Upon entering the kitchen, he found Maksim perched atop a bar stool with a glass of dark liquid; whiskey, his favorite. It was the brothers' tradition each year on the day of their mother's death to drink up all the liquor in the cabinet until the sky was dark and become the beasts they are to roam the night. Alexei had just missed part of the beginning.

With a bottle of vodka in his fingers, he sat beside his older brother and clicked the bottle to the glass before tossing it back and taking big gulps.

"Why are you not with her?" Maksim's eyes never left his drink.

"This is our time - tradition, brother."

"Not for long." The glass was emptied between Maksim's lips and he looked to his little brother. "She will become your new tradition and I'll be left here to drink myself to death."

"I won't abandon you; I owe you everything."

Maksim's voice grows quiet as he pours himself another glass. "I would've given up everything for Emilie."

"You loved her."

"And you'll soon learn to love Grey like I loved her." Maksim held up his glass. "Cheers brother. May mother's legacy never die."

As the brothers downed their drinks, Grey entered the kitchen and both their eyes were drawn to her. She stood there and stared at them, eyebrows knotted together in thought as she bit her bottom lip. The younger brother was restless at the sight of her so he stood sharply and was out of the home in an instant with a low growl.

Grey stared after him for a minute before turning to Maksim who had a brow perked up as he looked at her. "It's quite late, you should rest."

Maksim snorted. "Don't act like you care about our wellbeing, Grey. Our deaths would be the happiest moment of your life."

"I wouldn't wish that upon you. . . or even the beast."

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" He retorted and she shrugged. "After I finish the bottle I'll be stumbling to bed."

"What about Alexei?"

"He doesn't sleep much," he said. "Never has."

"Why?" Grey looked back where the beast had disappeared awhile ago as if he'd come storming back for her using his name.

"It's the curse. As a child he had insomnia a lot, our mother would give up her sleep to just lay with him and sing to him until he fell asleep. When he got old enough for the curse to finally settle, it got worse and he was plagued with nightmares. He'd scream in his sleep and when we'd go to try to wake him, he'd attack us." Maksim shrugged. "He never told us what he saw when he slept but every time he finally woke up it'd look like he just saw himself die a thousand times over."

"That's terrible."

He shrugged and gulped down more of his drink. "None of us got much sleep back then, that's why he stopped sleeping every night. He felt guilty. I started having nightmares too, still get 'em sometimes. Everything would just be black and I'd hear his scream, that scream was haunting. It wasn't like he was afraid, but more like he was being torn apart from the inside out and I never understood; still don't." Maksim met Grey's gaze, silver eyes filled with sadness. "He's got it worse than me or anything else in this forest. You can't blame him for the terrible things he does, he can't stop them."

"Your mother and him, they were close?"

"He was her malen'kiy volk. Her little wolf." Maksim downed the rest of his rest. "He takes today the hardest, leave him be until he comes to you."

"If he doesn't?"

"He will. He'll always come back for you."

• • •

Petra stared out at the trees from her usual perch on Grey's back porch. Her grandmother had come by with Rosalie on her hip who reached her little hands out for Petra but she didn't even glance at the little girl. Klara expressed her worry towards her granddaughter but the girl had this hollow look in her eyes that always seemed to stray away and glaze over. She always seemed to be anywhere but where she actually was.

She was waiting for the day khishchnik walked out of those trees; the day she'd kill him. She wanted to avenge her friend, she didn't know whether Grey was alive or dead but she did know that she would be the one to end the reign of terror that beast brought upon the town.

Whenever Petra was little and her mother often told her the story of the predator of their town, she knew that there were some truths but she never fully believed it until Grey disappeared.

The story told of an angry man, a man without any sort of remorse. A man of endless wealth who committed such an unspeakable crime, he was cursed by a witch to live out his days alone. His personality was already horrid, she just needed to make him so ugly on the outside, he'd never find true happiness. So she made him a lycan. The witch told him the only way to rid of the beast was to have a woman love him and he love her back just as fiercely; she did this because she knew the chances of him breaking it were slim to none. A monster of a human and a beast of a lycan; who could love that? Yet, despite his infliction, he found a woman and made her his wife, thinking their undying love would break the curse but they were too corrupt. They were two dark souls, made for one another in the deepest pits of hell. The witch knew this from the minute he laid his beady eyes on the woman, who from the outside, carried herself with the utmost elegance and innocence. But behind that smirk of hers, was darkness. So much darkness.

When their first son came, the witch was ready to curse him as well, but she saw that he already carried the curse in his blood thanks to his father. He was the first born son, he was already destined for a rough life. The beast still raged inside of the man and he did everything he could to rid of it before his wife fell pregnant with another child. And he thought he had gotten rid of the curse for awhile.Then came the second son, the stillborn who's first breath was thanks to the witch's spells. The night he was born, the beast returned through the man and he blamed the second son for it. He blamed the curse returning on him, for having to seek out the witch to make his son breathe. The witch almost felt sorry for the youngest boy, who - as he grew older - wore the curse on his back in the form of licks from his father's whip. She saw their futures in their baby blue eyes and just about wept for the boys. What had she done? She asked herself this question until she lay on her deathbed, wishing she could reverse the curse but it was too late and the boys had already grown old and left a trail of bodies in their pasts.

The story then went on to tell of a day when the brothers would emerge from the trees with a girl on one of their arms and they'd be free from the curse. But even if the curse was broken, it could never take away the darkness that was passed down from their parents, nor the darkness they had brought upon themselves. They'd bore too many sins to become good even after the curse is broken.

"When are you going to give up?" Dimitri's voice was behind her but her eyes never strayed from the trees.

"Never."

"Petra. She's not coming back." His voice was strained, he was sad too, she knew he missed Grey but he was so quick to give up all hope. "She's probably-"

Petra whipped around, her eyes finding something other than trees for the first time in days. "Don't you dare say it! I know she's out there and I know she wants to go home! She's never going to love that monster."

"How do you know? How can you be so sure that she's not dead or that she isn't in love with one of them?" Dimitri was almost as furious as the shaking Petra.

"He killed your family, Dimitri! He killed Ethen and he almost killed you." Petra shook her head at him. "Why defend him when you know he's a beast better than anyone else? I know that once Grey figures out all that he's done she'll never love him."

"What about the brother? Maksim? What darkness does he carry to scare her away?"

"She's already bonded with khishchnik. The bond is only broken by death you know this."

"But if theirs isn't acted upon what's to say Maksim won't take her like he took the last girl?"

Petra paused. "Dimitri-"

"She may not be dead now, but I promise you they will kill her just like they killed her." His voice was dark. "When that day comes, I hope I'm far from here so the last memories I have of Grey are her alive and not her shell of a body."

Petra stared at the boy for a moment before realizing how his eyes were underlined with dark circles and there was a slight shade along his jawline. He looked like he'd been through hell and back yet oddly enough, he looked like a man.

"Where are you going?" She spoke softly, her heart breaking more than it already had.

"I'm leaving for America in the morning. I can't be here anymore, I can't deal with the cursed forest or Grey's disappearance. It's just too much."

"Can you do me a favor when you get there?" He nodded as she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. "Find Grey's family and make sure they know she's alright, no one can know she's vanished."

"And what if you don't find her? If you do and she's. . ."

"I'll contact her family myself." Petra stared at Dimitri with such passion in her eyes it left him breathless. "Be safe my brother."

"Be safe my sister." Dimitri bowed the slightest to the girl who smiled. "Don't be foolish."

{in case y'all didn't catch on dimitri and petra aren't blood related, they just took him in and raised him as their own after his parents}