The Understudy Husband

After my sister, Blair, was widowed, she applied for a new shifter mate. As luck would have it, the registry matched her with Axel—my husband's twin brother.

When the news broke, Silas held me in a rigid grip. His chest stayed tight against my back, muscles coiled like a spring the entire night. He never closed his eyes.

For once, insomnia dragged me under too. I stared at the dark ceiling, counting the hours. Around dawn, the mattress finally dipped.

The patio door slid open with a soft click, barely breaking the silence. I lay perfectly still, listening to the muffled, low pitch of Silas's voice through the glass.

He was calling his brother. "Axel," his voice rasped. "I can't spend the rest of my life missing her. Just do me this one solid." "Don't worry about Sienna. She's clueless.

She'll never figure out you're taking my place." I squeezed my eyes shut. My fingernails dug into the palm of my hand. "Remember?

She's already mixed us up once before," Silas continued, his tone desperate. "And Blair hasn't even met you yet.

If I step in and take your spot as her mate for a few days, she won't suspect a thing." He kept pacing the concrete. "Please, man. Just give me one week. One week is all I'm asking.

I just… I need to do this without any regrets." He stood out there begging until the first slivers of pale morning light cracked over the horizon.

Finally, a heavy exhale pushed past Silas's lips. Axel had caved. He agreed to play the role of my devoted husband just to keep me blind.

Out on the patio, Silas's shoulders dropped in total relief. Inside, buried under the heavy duvet, I let out a long, silent breath of my own. Silas didn't know a damn thing.

Because exactly like him, I was hiding an impossible, desperate regret. Chapter 1 The call ended. Silas didn’t come back inside right away.

To burn off the restless energy radiating from his skin, he smoked a menthol cigarette out on the dark patio. Only when it was reduced to ash did he step back into the bedroom.

The mattress dipped as he slowly sat on the edge of the bed. I kept my eyes shut, leveling out my breathing to fake a deep sleep.

Just like always, I could feel the heavy weight of his silent stare. His thick, soft wolf tail instinctively draped over my bare foot where it had slipped out from under the duvet.

Cool fingertips brushed a stray strand of hair away from my temple. This gentle, lingering version of Silas only ever existed when I was unconscious.

For most of our marriage, he kept me at a polite, freezing distance. He accommodated my every need as his mate, but his eyes were always dead.

It was the exact look you give a cheap knockoff. I knew what it meant. His true love was my twin sister, Blair.

And I looked the most like her when my eyes were closed. "Sienna." His fingertips stopped right between my brows. He leaned in, the warmth of his breath washing over my ear.

He murmured the words like a sacred vow. "I will never betray you.

I just… I care about her too much." He was so deeply hung up on her that just the thought of finally seeing her made his tail wag on pure instinct.

Feeling the rhythmic, betraying thump of his tail against my ankle, I dug my nails into my palms to suppress the heavy pounding against my ribs.

Silas’s breathing was agonizingly close. "Sienna, the one that got away… they become a lifelong obsession," he said quietly. "But I refuse to be trapped by it.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you. Properly." "So, I have to see Blair. Just once. As her mate." Some ghosts can only be exorcised after you finally hold them.

I understood that perfectly. Marrying Silas was nothing but a sick, twisted joke played by fate. Years ago, he mistook his savior's identity.

When he submitted his official mate application, he wrote down my name by mistake. And I had only glanced at the photo the registry center sent before hitting accept.

We met for the very first time on the day we signed our marriage papers. It only took one glance. The second our eyes locked, the color drained from his face and his pupils dilated.

We signed the papers in the dead heat of September. The sunlight blinding off his shoulders that afternoon was so bright it made my head spin.

His tail, which had been swishing with eager anticipation just seconds before, dropped completely dead.

The burning, desperate hope in his eyes froze over the exact moment he got a clear look at my face. "You…" Silas's knuckles turned white around the edge of the marriage application.

He swallowed whatever words were on his tongue, just staring at me in dead silence for a long, endless minute. Chapter 2 But in the end, he never asked the question. Why was it you?

We both knew the brutal reality. Once a mate pairing was registered, there was no undo button. In our shifter society, there is no divorce. There is only widowhood.

So Silas swallowed the bitter pill. He paid for his own reckless mistake with the rest of his life.

Maybe because I grew up never getting what I actually wanted, I moved on faster than him. I even felt a sick, twisted sliver of relief. Silas looked exactly like him.

It wasn't like Blair and me. We were identical twins on paper, but in person, the difference was glaring. I was a few inches shorter. I lacked her blinding, centerstage energy.

I was the dull background noise, always staring at my shoes. "Nobody would ever mix up Blair and her defective sister," one of his friends said. "Except you, Silas," another chimed in. "You're the white wolf with the highest combat senses in the whole unit.

How the hell did you screw up something this massive and claim the wrong girl as your savior?

And honestly, with Sienna's garbagetier spiritual energy, she wouldn't be a worthy match for you even if she trained for fifty years—" Walking back from the restroom at the club, I caught the tail end of his friends pitying him.

Silas slouched deep into the leather sofa, entirely unfazed. He flicked his silver lighter open. Click. A flame ignited. He snapped it shut.

He watched the fire flare and die, over and over, his eyelashes casting long shadows. Finally, he spoke over the pulsing bass. "Everyone has regrets. We already signed the papers.

What's the point of bitching about it now. We'll just… make do." That night happened to be our first anniversary. The realization clicked into place.

That was why Silas looked so wrecked on our wedding day. I wasn't the savior he was obsessed with.

I was so painfully average that all he could do was tell his friends he was making do. The neon lights pulsed through the frosted glass. I stood rooted outside the VIP room.

Through the cracked door, Silas clinked his glass with a buddy, a rare smile on his face. He knocked back the amber liquid.

A few drops escaped his lips, trailing down his jaw and over his throat. Right above his collarbone, a faint pink bite mark peeked out from his unbuttoned shirt. My mark.

A shifter claims their mate by sinking their teeth in deep during the height of passion. It was supposed to mean he belonged to me. Ha. My spiritual energy really was pathetic.

Even a bite meant to claim him forever had faded into a meaningless scratch. I squeezed my eyes shut. My lungs tightened, the air suddenly turning to ash in my throat.

Maybe the bass in the club was too loud. Or maybe I just couldn't stomach looking at Silas for one more second.

I bypassed the VIP room and pushed through the heavy doors to the outdoor terrace. Make do. The words scraped against the inside of my skull as I gripped the cold metal railing.

It threw me back to the day we signed the papers. Looking at Silas's dead eyes, the exact same thought had crossed my mind. It doesn't matter if it isn't him.

Making do with this face is fine. But living under the same roof changes things. Waking up in the same bed, breathing the same air day after day. You get tangled up.

You catch feelings you never asked for. A bitter smirk pulled at my mouth. I slid the diamond ring off my finger. I let it drop.

A hand shot out from the shadows, snatching the metal out of thin air. "Sienna. Are you drunk?" Shifter reflexes were terrifyingly fast.

The diamond ring pressed firmly back into my palm. Chapter 3 I stared down at my empty hand, a breathy laugh escaping my lips. A shallow dimple pressed into my cheek.

The man in front of me raised an eyebrow. "Tsk.

You're completely wasted," he muttered, his tone dripping with exasperation. "How is your tolerance still this garbage?" A thick, silverwhite tail swept back and forth in the muggy summer breeze.

Arrogant. Blinding. It pissed me off. I lunged forward, crashing into his solid chest, and clamped my hand tight around that mocking, swaying tail. I hit his weak spot.

Every muscle in his body locked up. He froze solid. A smug hum vibrated in my throat.

Pressed against his chest, the heavy, rhythmic thud of a white wolf's heartbeat pounded in my ear.

Holding him, breathing in the scent of his shirt, a quiet sigh slipped past my lips. "Silas." I closed my eyes, my voice dead serious. "Whenever you're sick of making do… we can separate." That was a close call.

I almost fell for the understudy. I tilted my head up. The hazy moonlight washed over his features, and I just stared. Silas looked so damn much like him. Especially tonight.

Even his tone, the way his jaw set—it was eerily identical. Truth be told, I had only met him twice in my entire life. The first time.

I was locked in a suffocating, cramped supply closet. My lungs seized up. Panic attack. Hyperventilating. The noise woke up a boy.

He dragged a dirtmatted tail behind him, grumbling curses as he crawled out from under a pile of broken cardboard boxes. Then, it happened.

A rough, scartissuecovered hand clamped over my nose and mouth.

He dragged me against his chest, forcing me to listen to the steady, booming rhythm of his heartbeat, guiding my shattered breathing back into a normal cadence.

When oxygen finally hit my brain again, I asked for his name.

He just flashed me a cocky, shiteating grin. "I don't leave my name when I do charity work," he drawled, leaning against the wall like he owned the place.

The second time was high school graduation night. I tagged along with Blair to an underground shifter fight club. The octagon was a mess of stained steel and fresh blood.

And there he was. The crowd around me practically ruptured my eardrums, screaming a single chant: "ZeroSeven!" ZeroSeven. That was his name?

I stood paralyzed against the chainlink fence. Through the bloodspattered metal, his cold, crimson eyes locked onto mine. A splitsecond of raw shock fractured his gaze.

That was all it took. The hypedup, rabid hyenashifter across the cage lunged, ripping a massive chunk of flesh straight out of his side. Blood sprayed the mat.

The gash was cut down to the white bone. Next to me, the floor manager didn't even flinch.

He just kept pitching, his voice riding high on greedy adrenaline. "ZeroSeven never loses.

He could get shredded to pieces, get his guts torn out—as long as he’s drawing breath, he flips the board." "Just put your money on ZeroSeven, little lady.

It's a guaranteed payout!" The crowd roared, a deafening wave of static.

My throat felt full of glass. "How much?" I asked. "Whatever you want to bet, the sky's the limit—" "I'm asking how much it costs to buy him out!" My whole life, I had kept my eyes glued to the floor.

But right then, pure, unadulterated rage set my blood on fire. The manager blinked, totally thrown by the outburst.

Then his eyes raked over my young face, a greasy smirk stretching his lips. "Listen, sweetheart. There's a line of sugar mamas a mile long trying to buy that one.

They drop stacks on him every night." "But he is never leaving that cage. He tried to run once.

And there's only one rule for a shifter who tries to run and gets dragged back." He pointed at the bloody octagon. "He fights in that cage until somebody stops his heart." Before he could finish his villain monologue, Blair, who had been leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, let out a harsh bark of laughter.

She stepped up, her tone dripping with venom. "Are you serious, dude?

Is scamming kids your main gig? 'Fight until his heart stops'—what a load of bullshit." "If the zeroes on the check are right, there isn't a dirty deed in this building you wouldn't do." Blair was right on the money.

I locked eyes with the manager, refusing to blink. "Name your price." Chapter 4 The manager rolled his eyes at my stubborn glare and spat out an astronomical number.

He did it on purpose. He knew damn well I couldn't afford it. The heat of helpless tears prickled the backs of my eyes. But Blair didn't sneer at me.

For once, my sister didn't drop a sarcastic comment.

She just pressed her lips into a tight line and shoved a plastic bank card against my chest. "For as long as we've been alive, this is the first time you've actually fought for something," Blair said, her eyes holding this twisted mix of pity and guilt. "I won the spiritual energy tournament.

The prize money hits this account in two months. Consider it… my compensation." Compensation for what?

The years of sitting alone at the dinner table while our parents fawned over her? The suffocating silence of being the invisible, defective twin?

I couldn't even process the static in my head. I just gripped the plastic and mumbled, "Thanks, Blair." It still wasn't enough.

I emptied my entire life savings just to cover the deposit. That bought me exactly one visit with 07. A heavy iron collar was locked around his throat.

Thick, rusted chains tethered him to the floor of a steel cage. He lay there perfectly still. His chest barely moved.

As my sneakers squeaked on the concrete, his shredded wolf ears twitched. A second later, that bloodmatted tail thumped weakly against the floor. My throat closed up.

I gathered the hem of my skirt and crouched by the iron bars. The boy cracked his eyelids open. His dark eyes locked onto mine, completely hollow and dead.

He definitely didn't remember me. It had been three years since that supply closet. I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to force a single word past the lump in my throat.

A low, raspy chuckle broke the silence. My head snapped up. 07's eyes crinkled at the corners. He flashed that exact same cocky, shiteating grin from three years ago.

He tilted his head against the bars, staring right at me. "Sienna. So that's your name. You look like a deer in headlights, but screaming at the manager to name his price?

That was pretty badass." He dragged his battered body up onto his elbows, mocking me. Heat rushed to my cheeks.

But then, a heavy sigh rattled in his chest. "But seriously—why drop all that cash on me?

I'm already dead, Sienna," he said, dropping the fact that he was bleeding out like it was the weather. "Surviving getting your guts ripped open… even I can't pull that off." "Plus, hanging onto life like this… honestly, it's exhausting.

You've got twentyfour hours to cancel the transaction. Go find the manager and get your money back." He always smiled. It made my stomach violently twist.

I dug my nails into my knees, fighting to keep my voice steady. But my chest seized. A pathetic, ragged sob tore out of my throat.

I leaned into the cold metal bars, practically hyperventilating. "Just… just wait two months. I can take you home in two months.

You'll never have to wear that collar again." "You won't sleep in a cage. You'll have a massive bed, and actual food, and nobody will ever make you bleed again…" I babbled.

I threw out every piece of a fake future I could think of. All just to beg him to stay breathing for sixty more days.

But 07 just leaned his head back against the rusted corner of the cage, giving me that lazy, halfdead smile.

Finally, maybe because I was choking on my own tears and giving him a headache, he let out a long, defeated exhale. "Fine, fine.

I'll try my best to stay alive until you take me home, Sienna. Pinky promise." I stubbornly reached through the iron bars to grab his hand. My fingers brushed against his.

Every single one of his fingers was shattered, bent at sick, unnatural angles. Chapter 5 The boy dropped his gaze, awkwardly hiding his shattered hands behind his back.

Instead, he meticulously sifted through the fur at the end of his tail, found a patch that wasn't matted with dried blood, and wrapped it around my extended pinky. "Yeah, yeah.

Liars are dogs," he muttered. He was a bastard for that. I was crying so hard my vision blurred. I completely forgot that wolves were dogs.

Two weeks later, the fight club wired half the deposit back into my account. The manager left a threeword voicemail. ZeroSeven is dead. Two brief encounters. That was all it took.

The lazy, reckless slope of that boy's eyes had been burned into the back of my eyelids. I had traced his face in my mind a thousand times over in the dark.

The humid night air pricked at my skin. I reached out, my fingertips brushing the jawline of the man standing in front of me. His eyelashes fluttered. But he didn't pull away.

He stood dead still, his pitchblack eyes swallowing the desperate, starving look on my face. An eyebrow arched. I traced the sharp bridge of his nose.

Just as my thumb hovered a millimeter over the peak of his lips, the man let out a low chuckle. A large hand came up, lazily wrapping around my wrist to stop me. "Sienna.

Sisterinlaw." My blood went cold. The moonlight caught the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

His voice dropped into a raspy, mocking drawl. "If you don't stop touching me, my brother is going to smash a bottle over my head." My lungs stopped working.

I followed his lazy gaze, twisting my neck around. Silas was standing in the doorway leading to the terrace. I had no idea how long he'd been there.

Half his face was swallowed by the shadows, his jaw locked tight enough to crack teeth. That was the Silas I knew. The freezing, suffocating presence. My brain shortcircuited.

Then who the hell is holding my wrist? Silas stepped out onto the concrete.

He tossed the jacket he'd been carrying over my bare shoulders, pulling the fabric tight before dragging his dead eyes over to the man leaning against the railing. "Axel," Silas's voice cut through the humid air like a knife. "Did you forget how to buy your own clothes?

Take my jacket off." Axel let out a sharp bark of laughter. The neon light hit his shoulders, and it finally clicked. He was wearing the exact same jacket I had bought for Silas.

No wonder I screwed up. "It's a good jacket," Axel drawled, entirely unbothered by Silas's lethal glare. "Saw you toss it in the donation bin.

Seemed like a waste, so I fished it out. Fits me better anyway. Right, brother?" Everything snapped completely off its axis the second Axel showed up.

Silas's face hardened into a slab of concrete. He ignored his brother's bait, reaching down and clamping his hand over my wrist. His grip bruised.

He yanked me hard against his side. "Mixing up your own husband?" Silas muttered, a harsh exhale punching through his teeth. "Idiot." He reached up, aiming to pat the top of my head.

I flinched, jerking my head away before his palm could make contact. Silas's hand froze in midair. A deep crease instantly formed between his brows. I barely registered it.

My eyes were glued back to the man leaning casually against the railing, staring out at the city skyline. Silas stared at the side of my face. He should know that exact expression.

It was the same hollow, starving look that bled into his own eyes whenever he watched Blair from across a room. When that person is in the room, everything else turns to static.

Silas knew that better than anyone. But Silas didn't put the pieces together. He wrote it off as shock. He thought I just couldn't process staring at his identical twin.

That was the only reason I couldn't look away. I let Silas drag me back inside without fighting his grip. I kept my mouth shut until we were back in the dark, thumping VIP room.

Only then did I lean close to his ear. "You never mentioned you had a twin," I whispered over the bass. Chapter 6 The bass was too loud.

Silas completely missed the tremor in my voice.

He leaned his weight against my shoulder, mindlessly tracing the knuckles of my hand. "Axel," he answered, completely indifferent. "After my parents split, my dad took him overseas to live the high life.

Now the old man is dead and the money dried up, so he came crawling back." My lungs tightened.

I curled my free hand into a fist, digging my nails into my palm. "So he… he's been out of the country this whole time?" The sudden urgency in my voice caught his attention.

Silas raised an eyebrow, shooting me a sideways glance. "…You're awfully curious about my brother." I didn't miss a beat. "So?" I forced the corners of my mouth up, flashing a sickly sweet smile. "You ask about my sister all the time." The words hung in the air.

Silas's hand froze halfway to his glass. The muscles in his jaw locked tight for two agonizing seconds before he forced himself to relax, leaning back into the leather sofa.

He dropped his gaze, his thick eyelashes casting long shadows. "Fair enough." He threw back a careless, empty smile. "He looks exactly like my mate.

Anyone would be curious." Silas always had an excuse locked and loaded. I still remembered our wedding day. Right before we were supposed to walk down the aisle, he vanished.

He dragged it out for over half an hour. When he finally hauled himself up to the altar, the words looked like they physically choked him. I do. Later, he brushed it off.

He claimed his commanding officer had called him in. Classified pack business. Not even his mate had the clearance to ask questions. What a flawless, bulletproof lie.

A single sentence to shut my mouth and force me to swallow thirty minutes of pure, humiliating agony. Looking back, the truth was brutally simple. He had just seen Blair again.

He was spiraling, so he found a dark corner to chainsmoke and get his grip back. Just like right now. Every time I dropped Blair's name, Silas instantly shortcircuited.

His brows crashed together. His fingers mechanically reached for his silver lighter. I clamped my hand over his. "Don't.

You haven't answered my question." He knew damn well the smell of menthol made my stomach turn. "…Fine. Princess." Silas yanked his hand away, rolling his eyes.

He tossed the unlit cigarette onto the glass table and let out a heavy exhale, staring at the ceiling. "I wasn't going to dig up ancient history—" His tone flatlined back to absolute zero. "I never brought up my dad or Axel because they never came back.

Not once. Even when my mom's spiritual core went into full meltdown, they ghosted us." "She survived on backtoback suppressant shots.

I will never forget the sight of her crawling on the floor, unable to move from the pain." The rawness in his voice shut me up entirely. He was right.

That was the exact reason this world didn't have divorce. Just widows. The mating mark was a life sentence. Humans suffered core meltdowns; shifters suffered feral ruts.

Once you marked each other, that was it. Only that specific person's pheromones could pull you back from the edge of insanity.

The mark only fades when a heart stops beating. "So…" I started. The heavy VIP room door swung open. Axel walked in. In a fraction of a second, Silas's eyes went pitch black.

He snatched my hand. He forced his fingers through mine, crushing our hands together in an ironclad grip that completely cut off my circulation.

He leaned in close, biting off every single word. "So. Sienna. I am never leaving you." Chapter 7 Silas was always feeding me these hollow, ghostlike promises.

I never knew if he was trying to give me peace of mind, or just desperately trying to convince himself to let go.

Because the second an actual window opened to get close to my sister, he was the first one scrambling for the door.

The day we heard Blair was widowed, Silas froze. "Are you serious?" When I gave him a slow nod, the corner of his mouth twitched, fighting like hell not to curve upward. "Her mate is dead.

That's a damn shame. He was so young." "Your sister must be devastated. Should we… go keep her company?" He watched my face, testing the waters.

He layered his voice in fake sympathy, but the raw, buzzing anticipation bleeding through was impossible to hide. I didn't even blink.

I just kept scrolling through my phone, pausing when Axel's new post popped up on my feed. I didn't bother looking up. "No need. Blair bounces back fast.

She already submitted a request for a new mate to the registry. The match results will be out in a day or two. She doesn't need us babysitting her." Dead silence.

Silas's face dropped into a thunderous scowl. He crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the bedroom doorframe.

He blocked the sunlight, casting his eyes into pitchblack shadow. Whatever gears were turning in his head, I didn't care. I was sick of staring at his foul mood.

I dropped my gaze back to the glowing screen. Then, a massive hand slammed down over mine. "What the hell, Silas—" He ripped the phone right out of my grip.

The screen was still glowing, displaying the zoomedin photo of Axel. My stomach dropped. I lunged forward, clawing to get the device back. Silas didn't even flinch.

With one single hand, he clamped around both my wrists and pinned them hard against the mattress. The sheer, terrifying biological advantage of a shifter.

Crushing a human's resistance didn't even cost him a breath.

He stayed perfectly still for three agonizing seconds, letting his eyes burn a hole through the screen before dragging his gaze to my face.

He tilted his head, staring down at my flushed, humiliated expression from a terrifying height. "When did you add Axel.

Did you ask for my permission." I squeezed my eyes shut and wrenched my head to the side, locking my jaw. A harsh, airless laugh punched out of his throat.

He tossed the phone aside. His fingers clamped around my jawline, violently snapping my face back to force eye contact with his freezing glare. "…Zooming in on his pictures?

What, you think he's better looking than me?" "Sienna. Answer me." "Yeah. I think your brother is hotter than you. Are you happy?" I snapped.

His interrogation cut off like a severed wire. I snapped my eyes open, shooting an absolute, freezing glare straight through him. The muscles in his face went slack.

It was the coldest look I had ever given him in our entire lives. I stared dead into his eyes, biting off every single syllable. "At least your brother knows how to smile.

He doesn't walk around with a miserable scowl twentyfourseven.

If I want a single damn smile out of you, I have to beg on my knees for it." We had never fought since we signed the papers. Because he wore that face, I folded. I accommodated him.

I spoiled him. No matter how much static he built up in my chest, I would always swallow the bitter pill and wrap my arms around him at the end of the day.

This was the very first time I completely ripped the brakes off. "What the hell are you pretending for, Silas? I have tolerated your bullshit for long enough.

If we can make this work, fine. If we can't, then get the hell out—" It wasn't like I couldn't afford suppressants