I shattered it. “For now. When your rotation is finished, you’ll be discharged from your service. You will never return here—and I will run this camp as I see fit.”

His eyes fell as a new level of disappointment hit him like a ton of bricks.

“You called my bluff and won.” I nodded to the guards to release the crying women and put out the torches. I’d allowed my brother to humiliate me publicly because killing him was something I just couldn’t do. So, I had to do something else instead. Something deep. Something permanent. “I won’t kill you. But we aren’t brothers anymore. When you leave…I don’t want to see you again.”

Hurt moved into his features, as if what I said was just as bad as a knife to his stomach. Now he was the one who looked betrayed. I didn’t take his life, but I took our relationship—and that was just as bad.

I spoke to my brother one last time in this life. “You’re dead to me.”

Days passed.

Once that final conversation happened, I didn’t think about my brother again.

He didn’t exist.

When he left the camp, it would be over.

I wouldn’t have a brother anymore.

My decision spared some of my humiliation, but not nearly enough. And that wasn’t the only reason why I did it.

I did it because I wanted to.

I watched the TV in the dark, my thoughts drifting to Melanie. Now that my brother had been exiled from my life, it would complicate my relationship with her. She’d want to see her sister, and I wouldn’t be there in order to avoid Magnus. But she wouldn’t leave me.

I knew that.

She was the only family I would have left.

Magnus’s voice was audible on the other side of the door, talking to Eric. He overpowered Eric and entered the cabin, sharp hostility in his eyes. His anger hadn’t abated over the course of the last few days.

Neither had mine.

I turned off the TV and stared him down.

He stared back.

“Say what you want to say so you can leave.”

His eyes narrowed at my coldness. “I’ve never been disloyal to you—”

“Bullshit.”

He stepped closer. “I haven’t. I would take a knife for you in a heartbeat. I would hang for your crimes. I would do anything for you—”

“Clearly not.”

His hands tightened into fists before he dropped into the chair across from me. “The reason this camp has been untouched is because I’m here. I’m your eyes and ears when you’re elsewhere. You trust me, and without me, this place will go to shit. You fucking know it.”

“And it hasn’t already?” I gave him a cold look.

“No. It’s being remodeled, which we needed—”