Day 21

CHAPTER 30 Bellamy

Bellamy stared at Wells, wondering if the kid had finally cracked under the pressure. Why was Wells looking at him like that?

Bellamy shrugged. “It’s just something my mom used to say about Octavia and me. How we were lucky to have each other, and how it was my responsibility to take care of her.” He snorted as the bitter memories stirred inside of him. “My responsibility, because she sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.” He fell silent for a moment. “I think it’s something my father used to say, though he used it to explain why he was never able to see us.”

Wells seemed to pale at these words. “Hey… are you okay?” Bellamy asked, shooting a glance at Clarke to see if she’d noticed how strange Wells was behaving. But before she had time to react, Wells continued.

“Was… was your mom’s name Melinda, by any chance?”

The word landed with a thud on Bellamy’s chest. He hadn’t heard anyone say his mother’s name in years. Not since the day the guards came inside their flat and found her lying cold and still on the floor. “How—how did you know that?” Bellamy asked hoarsely, too stunned to inject a note of hostility or suspicion into his voice.

In a strangely calm voice, Wells told Bellamy about his father’s secret past, his affair with the Walden woman and his long-standing commitment to her family. “We live not for ourselves… it’s what my father always said to justify the sacrifices he had to make, like not spending enough time with me and Mom… or not marrying the woman he loved. But I never knew they had a child together.”

The world around Bellamy seemed to spin, melting into a blur of shadow and starlight as his brain reeled. The only thing that kept him tethered to the ground was the sensation of Clarke’s hand on his arm. The Chancellor—the man who’d been shot because of him—was his father? He couldn’t talk. Couldn’t breathe. But then he felt Clarke’s arm around him, and he took a deep breath. As he exhaled, his surroundings came back into focus. The dark outlines of the trees, the patches of star-filled sky, Clarke’s stunned expression, the nervous face of the kid Bellamy had once thought he hated, but now seemed to be… something else entirely. “So that makes you…”

“Your half brother.” Wells let the final word hang in the air, as if giving both of them time to examine the shape of it before they claimed it for their own. “I guess you and Octavia aren’t the only siblings in the Colony anymore.”

A laugh escaped from Bellamy’s lips before he had time to stop it. “Half brothers,” he repeated. “This is insane.” He shook his head, and with a grin, extended his arm and reached for Wells’s hand. “Brothers.”