Who is Axel?

Amaris

Thankfully, instead of shifting, the siblings lead me across the clearing, through another small wooded area, ending with us emerging at the beginning of a road that has several buildings on either side of it.
"Where are we?" I ask, glancing around the area resembling a small town with people milling about, the laughter of small children playing in the jets of water that keeps spewing from the ground catches my attention, drawing me in their direction.
I stop next to one of the buildings and just watch with a sad smile on my face as they play, laugh, and have fun, not having a worry or care in the world, trying to imagine where Axel and I would be, if he would still be here, if we had grown up in a place like this, in a pack.
"Amaris," the sound of Zach calling my name draws my attention away from the children, and back to him and his siblings. Zach and Zara are wearing matching sympathetic smiles, while Zane just looks annoyed as I make my way back over to them.
"Sorry…" I mutter with an embarrassed shrug at being caught in a moment of vulnerability. Looking down, I watch my feet as we begin walking again. "Axel and I, we didn't get the have that growing up," I explain, still unable to meet their gazes.
"Who is Axel?" Zara asks, at the same time that Zach asks, "Didn't have what? The jet streams?"
Shaking my head, I softly chuckle, "Fun, we didn't have very good childhoods—lives, actually. We didn't—" stopping mid-sentence, I sigh, momentarily forgetting that it's no longer us, because now it's only me. "Axel, he was my brother," I say, answering Zara's question.
"Was?" Zach asks.
"What happened to him?" Zara finishes, all the while Zane listens silently, walking slightly ahead of the three of us.
Licking my lips, I swallow thickly, then blow out a steadying breath. "He took his own life a week ago.”
"Shit!" Zach says under his breath.
"Oh my God!" Zara's eyes fill with tears, and she covers her mouth with her hands, glancing at each of her brothers, then back to me as the first tear falls. "I am so sorry. I can't even begin to imagine what that must be like for you."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Zane says, surprising me once again when I find his face softened with compassion.
I nod, muttering, "thank you." My own eyes beginning to fill with tears at their emotional response to my loss.
"Come on," Zach says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. "The pack house is right up ahead." As he says this, he points to a massive three-story log cabin that resembles something that I've only seen in vacation home ads.
"Do you guys live here?" I ask, still gawking at the sight before me.
"Yeah, pretty cool, huh?" Zach chuckles when he sees my face. "Okay, Guppie, better close that mouth before you start catching flies."
"I-I…I've just never seen anything like this before—at least, not in real life," I explain as we climb the steps to the front door—or what I assume is the front door, but with the size of this place, who knows—and find several more kids running around and voices of people coming from a room to my right.
"Who else lives here? Surely not just you guys."
"Nah," he says, grinning at me and squeezing my shoulder. "Along with the Alpha and his family, the Beta, Delta, and their families also live in the pack house.”
"Alpha, Beta, Delta?" I mutter to myself, silently chuckling and shaking my head, unable to get over the fact that this is my life now. "There is so much about this world that I don't know."
"If you decide to say, we can tell you most anything that you want to know," Zara tells me as she turns toward me with her blue eyes twinkling, an excited smile on her face.
*Stay? I hadn't really thought about whether I'd stay, keep moving on, or go back home—not that there's anything left for me back at home.*
'*Our mate is back at hom*e', my wolf reminds me. The mention of Kenton makes me think about the man that she claims to be ours.
I'd be lying if I didn't find him incredibly attractive with his dark chiseled features, bright leaf green eyes, and full lips. His body is built like nothing I have ever seen before, even Zach—who has been shirtless since we met—isn't as ripped as Kenton, nor does he evoke the same type of response from my body that just the mere thought of my mate does.
'*Told you*', my wolf snickers, making my cheeks and ears heat with embarrassment.
"Come on, you don't have to decide what to do right now. Let's just go speak with my dad for now," Zach says, breaking me from thoughts of my mate and instead, causing panic to take over.
His dad, the Alpha.
The siblings lead me up to the second story of the pack house, and then halfway down a long corridor before stopping at a closed door, where Zane lifts his hand to knock, but before he can a deep voice says, "Come in."
I follow Zara, Zach, and Zane into a large office, natural light filtering in through two floor-to-ceiling windows. My eyes immediately fall upon a man that is an older version of Zane and Zach, but instead of having their blonde hair, his is black as night. His blue eyes assess me just as I do him before the realization hits me once more that this is an Alpha and I should probably show some respect.
Lowering my gaze, I nod my head, and with as much strength as I can muster, I say, "Alpha."
Zach chuckles and claps me on the back, "Relax, Amaris."
"Sorry," I mumble nervously, not knowing what the proper etiquette for this type of this is. "I don't—"
"Amaris," Their father says, his deep voice holding a gentleness that I wasn't expecting. "Please, have a seat. I won't bite—that's something I reserve for Rogues, duels, or my mate." He grins when his kids groan at his insinuation. "My son," he says, nodding his head towards Zach, "tells me that you're newly shifted and unaligned."
I nod in confirmation, still not making direct eye contact, "Yes, sir. That is correct."
He smiles kindly, his eyes twinkling just as his daughters had a few moments before. "Tell me about yourself. Where are you from and how did you become unaligned without being a Rogue?"
"Well," I say with a sigh, looking around to find all four of them watching me, waiting. "My twin brother Axel and I," I start but Zach interrupts when he mutters, "Twin?" looking confused.
His father waves him off, then motions for me to continue.
"We grew up bouncing around between foster homes—we never knew who our biological parents were—and never stayed with a family for more than a year, some not even three months."
Stopping, I take a deep, steadying breath and begin picking at my nails as I prepare to divulge my brothers' secrets.
"We were placed with this last foster family three years ago. Although, we still moved around frequently. Our foster dad would hurt us. Axel would try to take the beatings for me, but apparently, that just caused him to receive additional abuse that I was unaware of. Eventually, the beatings stopped, but Axel had become withdrawn, barely even a shell of the person that he had once been."
Tears begin to fill my eyes, and I try to blink away before glancing up at the man in front of me, anger clear on his face at what I've told him.
Taking another deep breath, I look back at my lap and with my chest aching over everything Axel went through, I continue. "I didn't know until after it was too late, but my foster dad, several of them apparently, had been sexually abusing Axel. Then, he started being bullied at school. His final straw was when he was…" my breath hitches and a loud sob escapes, tears now falling freely from my eyes. "He…he was r-raped by s-some of the b-boys from the h-hockey t-team. He t-took h-his o-own life thr-ee days before w-we tur-turned eight-t-teen.”
"Amaris," Zara whimpers my name, taking a step towards me. I shake my head no and put my hand up to stop her.
Closing my eyes to give myself a moment, I take a deep breath and wipe the moisture from beneath my eyes and cheeks, then continue speaking. "I didn't know that I was anything other than human until I almost shifted in class."
Glendon's muttered, "Oh, crap," clues me in that that would have definitely gone badly.
"I fully shifted once I was in the wooded area behind the school. Scared, I ran…"
"I'm sorry for the loss of your brother," the Alpha tells me. "You have been through a lot."
"Thank you," I mutter, quickly wiping my face with the back of my hands as a few more tears slip out.
"You were a twin?" Zach blurts, not at all reading the solemn atmosphere—or maybe he did and that was the point of the interruption.
"Zach!" His dad growls his name, clearly irritated with his son's insensitivity. 
"Are you not curious about it?" He asks, turning his attention away from me and to his father. "I've never heard of wolf twins before."
*Well crap!*