{translations in the comments!
also i was totally gonna upload the prologue to Atlas but wattpad wanted to be a hoe and delete my prologue so now i have to rewrite it but it kinda works out because i've been wanting to make the people a little more "savage" or throw it back in time a little bit so ya girls about to do some MAJOR editing it's lit!!
M xx}

He watched Grey whirl around and the eyes of the beast land on him. Her eyes were wide with confusion as she pressed her back against Alexei, her hand seeking his behind her. His eyes glared down at their interlocked fingers, ignoring the burning gaze from the beast.

"Dimitri, what are you doing out here?" Grey spoke soft as the beast behind her only growled and glared. He did not like another male getting close to what was his, let alone stand there like he was challenging him.

"Saving you that's what I'm doing, Grey." He spoke strong, voice full of confidence and lacking fear. "If you leave with him you will die."

Grey was growing angry fast. "What? Dimitri what is this about?"

"Back off, pup." The growl shook the beast's chest making Grey shiver against him. "Know your place."

"My place beneath you? Me acting as if you were my Alpha?" He laughed a dark laugh. "Fuck you, mate. That so-called 'place' was destroyed the minute you killed my love, my bonded." Dimitri was vicious, he had no ounce of kindness left in his body, eyes black pools of resentment towards Alexei.

"Sledit' za svoim yazykom mal'chik," Alexei's words were like poison on the tip of a serpent's sinister tongue. "Ili ya uberi eto."

"Da khishchnik, dalit' moy yazyk pered devushkoy, kotoruyu utverzhdayut, chto lyubyat. Pokazat' yey, chto vy na a zver'. Pokazat' yey, grekhi chto proklyatiye ne mozhet skryt'. Dat' yey povod dlya zapuska."

Alexei was quick to move Grey behind him, a growl so vicious leaving his lips that it just about shook the whole ground. The world around them seemed to stop at the sound of his warning, everything grew silent. Grey didn't dare loosen her grip on his hand, she knew it was one of the only things holding him back and she wasn't about to let him hurt Dimitri in any way.

"Alexei." She murmured under the sharp gaze of Dimitri. "Just turn away. Don't let it take over, please. Breathe, my beast."

And just like that, Alexei's attention was focused solely on the girl who was staring at him as he turned to face her. He was fully ready to take the girl home and to places beyond. Nothing - no one - could separate them as long as he had a say, especially not this little boy who lived in the past. Grabbing Grey by both her hands, her pulled them up to place a kiss upon each hand. He'd grown so fond of the human girl, it was probably unhealthy for someone to feel so strongly towards another. She was his weakness, and while he accepted it, fate would have it that no one as hated as a beast like him, would have a weakness that wouldn't end in his ruin.

Her eyes were only on him. On those beautiful eyes of his that never failed to take her breath away and mesmerize her. He was her only focus, her only care in the world. Maybe if she hadn't been so entranced, maybe if she hadn't asked him to turn away, maybe if she had just gone home like he'd asked, everything could've been avoided.

The way all the breath in his lungs left him to fan across her hand that he had just placed a kiss upon. The way his eyes grew wide and the blazing blue seemed to dull and the flame in them fade away and in its place were bland ashes. The way crimson blood trickled from his mouth and left a trail from those full lips of his, all the way down his chin to drip down his neck. The way his body in front of her tensed and yet his grip on her hands lost it's strength. The way he lost his strength. His life.

Grey was petrified, her world was spinning in a downward spiral and everything was ringing so loud she couldn't even hear her own blood curdling scream as Dimitri yanked the silver dagger out of Alexei's back.

He fell out of her reach and down to the cold ground only for Grey to crumble with him and grab his face. She was crying so hard she shook while trying to make his unfocused eyes focus on her and only her but they wouldn't, they just stared at the sky as he shook and his body grew colder than the snow that once covered this land completely. Blood dribbled from his lips and the hole in his back to seep into the grass beneath them.

Finally Grey found her voice, her teary eyes glaring at Dimitri, screaming at him as Petra and her grandmother ran outside. "What have you done?!" She cried as the wind around them seemed to pick up.

"I did the world a favor!" Dimitri was offended that Grey was even crying, for in his mind he saved her, he saved her from a fate full of darkness and death. "You should be thanking me! I saved you!"

"Saved me? Saved me?! Dimitri I was happy! The only saving that needs to be done is Alexei!"

"You would've ended up dead, Grey, had I not killed the monster." He spat to the ground and Grey grew furious.

Standing to her feet she shoved Dimitri by the chest and moved so she was face to face with him. Gone was the girl sobbing for the life of her love and in her place was a girl so calm yet fire blazed in her eyes as she swore revenge. "If he doesn't come back, I swear to you that I will kill you. I will make you suffer. I will make you wish you were dead, Dimitri. You have my word!"

"You are making a mistake!-" Petra moved in and shoved Dimitri back, acting as a barrier between him and the rest of them as Klara found her way to Alexei.

Klara was knelt on one side of him as Grey reluctantly moved away from Dimitri and took to the other side. The old woman was already moving quick to steal her beast from her arms and turn him over, making sure to turn his head to the side, blank eyes looking towards Grey who was holding his limp hand in a bone crushing grip. She placed her wrinkled hands over the gushing wound and frowned.

"The silver is in his heart."

Grey grew panicked. "You can fix it though. . . Right, Klara? Please tell me you can save him."

"I can but I must warn you, bringing someone back to the land of the living, they are different." Grey frowned and the woman continued. "They lose apart of themselves when they die and return, he will not be the same as he was a moment ago."

"I don't care, Klara, just bring him back to me."

"Grey, listen-"

"I'm begging you to bring him back to me, Klara."

The old woman paused, her solemn eyes taking in the broken girl and she sighed. "As you wish."

• • •

Maksim had felt it from miles away, tucked in his room in their home. The feeling was so raw, so powerful that it had him stumbling and weak. It was a burning fire that rippled out from where his heart was placed, spreading across his chest and leaving a trail of pain down his spine. It was a feeling so real that he had to look down at his own chest and make sure there wasn't actually a knife in his heart. And when there was no blood, no knife, no more pain, he knew what had happened when the cold feeling of emptiness filled his veins. He felt his brother die. And for those few minutes that Maksim sat on the floor of his room, breathless and broken, he wondered what he was supposed to do in a life without his little brother. And sitting there, he had flashes of himself drinking himself to death in the home he grew up in. All alone. The vivid images of his baby brother's lifeless eyes, blood pooling around him, was enough to almost drive him off the edge. Memories, the good and the bad, so clear that Maksim thought he was reliving them, flashed behind his eyelids that he had squeezed shut. For a long few minutes, Maksim felt like his life was falling apart, piece by peace and he didn't know what to do.

And then, all of the sudden, the feeling lifted, and Maksim felt whole and normal again despite the confusion that raged in the back of his mind like a thunderstorm. He'd felt Alexei die, he remembered the feeling from his parents and it didn't disappear so quickly; it had slammed into him and settled in the deepest pits of his chest like heavy weights. Something had happened. Alexei was alive. So after the confusion had lifted, he managed to move himself from his dark room to the living room where he poured himself a glass of vodka and sat beside the window looking towards the forest, watching with dead, dull eyes, waiting.

And when they emerged from the forest, Alexei dominated the clearing, Maksim's eyes automatically going to him. The bags under his eyes and blood staining the skin around his lips and arms, droplets on his naked torso. He looked different, something about him seemed more feral, more beastly. But it wasn't even the bloodied beast he'd come to know as his brother that had him scared, it was the girl in his arms. An arm hooked under her knees and another behind her back, she lay limply across him. One of her pale arms was swinging by her side indicated the fact that she was unconscious, as well as her head that lay back at an awkward angle. She too was covered in blood. Maksim gulped.

He was quick to move out of the way for his brother who brushed past him and inside without a single glance. His cold eyes were set to nowhere in specific with a hard glares. Maksim was hot on his trail as he followed him into the living room where he dumped - quite literally - the unconscious Grey, who groaned when her body collided with the sofa in a bounce; she thankfully didn't bounce onto the ground.

"What the hell, brother?" Maksim was infuriated. From his brother's death scare to this and he had not one answer, he was pissed. And it seemed all that anger inflated when he caught sight of the marks from Grey's shoulder and across her collarbone, ending just above her chest and directly above her beating heart. The wounds oozed blood onto her shirt and the couch and Maksim was by the human girl's side in an instant.

"What have you done?!" He yelled after a silent moment of inspecting her with his little brother standing to the side not even looking at the girl.

Alexei shrugged. "She got in the way."

And with that, Alexei walked out of the room and disappeared up the stairs.