Chapter 67

(**Rayne’s POV**)

Her father stayed quiet for the entire car ride home. Rayne fears he will shut down emotionally again after tonight. Just like he did when she told him she was pregnant. A pattern is emerging with him when it comes to dealing with his emotions. He looks the issue square in the eye right before he turns around and hides from them until he had time to process.

When Parker pulls up in the back of the house, her father gets out of the jeep and heads straight into the house. No words exchanged, only silence as he closes the door behind him. The sound of car doors opening makes Parker walk around to the front of the house to greet Ryan and his Beta. She follows him to greet them too. Her uncle is looking at the ocean when she walks around the corner.

“This is an amazing spot you have here.”

“Nothing like what we had in Maui, but it is ours.” Parker tells Ryan while looking at Daniel. He thinks Daniel saw more that day in the woods.

She agrees with him after meeting Daniel again today. The way he watches her is creepy. It is almost as if he is seeing Mia’s face instead of hers. He looked at her with lust in his eyes before swiftly looking away. That makes her want to know the history between him and her mother, more now than ever. She walks up onto the deck, then motions at the benches for them to join her.

“I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about coming here. After Daniel told me he found Mia, I knew it was a long shot, but I had to come here to find out for myself.” Ryan walks to the deck stairs.

“Tell us where Mia is,” Daniel demands as he walks closer to the deck.

Parker steps in his way before he can climb onto the deck. “How about we all take a seat and relax for a moment? There is plenty of time for you to get the information that you came here for.”

“I want to know where she is. Tell her to come out right now!”

“ENOUGH, Daniel. Mia isn’t your mate, she never was, now show my niece and her mate some fucking respect.” Ryan uses his Alpha voice to shut Daniel up.

“Mia was my mate, and she isn’t here or anywhere else anymore. Mia is dead and has been for the last fourteen years.” Edmund says from the now open sliding glass door.

That simple statement makes both men look in his direction. Rayne pays close attention to the look on Daniel’s face when he sees Edmund. From the look he shoots her father, she can guess that there is no love lost between them. Daniel is still in love with Mia.

“How are you alive?” Ryan asks as he rushes up the deck stairs, then he stops in front of Edmund.

“I am trying to figure that out myself.”

“Why did you never come to Crystal Dawn after the wars? Why did you not bring my sister’s body home to her family?” Ryan’s voice rose in anger as he pokes a finger into Edmund’s chest.

“I think it would be a great idea if you back off my father. There is much about that night that you don’t know. More so considering who told you what happened to us. Wilson lied to you. So, if you want the truth, I suggest you sit down.”

Ryan turns around to look at her, then inspects Edmund. His eyes widen as if he is only just now taking in his appearance. The scar on her father’s face is glaringly obvious. It was not there the last time these two men saw each other. Without another word, Ryan walks to one of the built-in benches on the deck and takes a seat.

“How did Mia die and the two of you survive?” Daniel demands from where he still stands at the base of the deck stairs.

“Mia died protecting Rayne from Wilson.”

When Ryan asks why, it was my father’s turn to open that still fresh wound of his. Parker comes and sits next to her as Edmund repeats the events of that long ago night. His hand rubbing her back as Edmund tells Ryan the brutal details of how Wilson killed Mia. Ryan’s face goes from devastated to enraged as the story unfolds. His eyes flash to onyx and back again as his wolf tries to surface.

Rayne understands most of his emotions since she experienced them herself when the truth was revealed. Knowing that Wilson not only murdered her mother to hurt her father is one thing. Knowing why he wanted to kill her is another. A part of her heart feels sorry for Wilson’s pain at losing his mate. How he descended into madness afterwards was the end of Jade Moon, as everyone knew it.

How he willingly lied about all three of them being dead was horrid. His mind was so twisted and destroyed by the death of his mate that he would do anything to protect the secrets of what he did. Death for him was a blessing. However, he would never get to be reunited with his mate because of the crimes he committed. The Moon Goddess punishes those who commit murder out of cold blood.

“They laid Mia to rest in the cemetery in what is left of Jade Moon. A few neighboring packs have taken in some of the survivors of a recent attack. Those survivors take care of the cemetery.” Edmund tells Ryan after he finishes the story of how Mia died.

“How did you survive Wilson’s attack?”

“I honestly don’t know. I woke up with no memories, in the middle of nowhere, and left to wander alone. It was pure luck that I wandered into Shadow’s Retreat and found the daughter I didn’t know I had.”

“Explain to me why you never came to Crystal Dawn when you left Jade Moon?” Ryan looks at Rayne as he asks her that question.

“Wilson told me when I was ten years old that you didn’t want me. He told me you refused to take me in because I would remind you of my mother.”

“If I knew you were alive, I promise you I would have come for you. I never came to retrieve her body because the grief of losing my sister nearly broke me. She was the only family I had back then. Believing that the three of you died together hurt even more.”

Rayne nods her head but says nothing to him. There were entirely too many times she prayed to the Moon Goddess to save her from Wilson. To send her uncle to Jade Moon to rescue her. All of her prayers went unanswered over the years. Knowing he wanted her and would have come for her makes all of those years harder somehow.

Something must have shown on her face because Ryan shot up off the bench with anger flaring in his eyes. “What did that man do to you, Ray? What did he do that made you not come to find your family?”

“He broke me,” is her simple reply.

“Do you really need the details of what Wilson did to my daughter?” Edmund burst out when Rayne’s voice cracked.

Ryan looked out at the water, then back at Rayne. The pain in his eyes made her want to go give him a hug, but she stayed where she was with Parker next to her. She knew telling him about the past would cut open all those old wounds. Telling him all that was done to her was not a conversation she was going to have with him.

He is a stranger to her in so many ways, even if he is family.

“I left Jade Moon the moment I had the best chance. I haven’t looked back in all these years. Going home to visit my mother’s grave was hard enough. Rehashing all of my painful past with you will not happen.”

“Where is Wilson now?” Daniel demands as he walks up onto the deck. He has been quiet through everything until now. “I want his blood for killing my girl.”

“Your girl? Is that what you have been telling yourself all these years? Mia was never your girl, Daniel.” Edmund yells at him.

“She would have been if she never met you. If she never went to that Mate Ball, she would still be alive today. Her death is your fault!”

Ryan surprises everyone by moving to Daniel and punching him in the throat. Daniel drops to the deck, wheezing and holding his throat. Rayne feels a nice bit of satisfaction seeing her uncle punch Daniel like that. Listening to Ryan struggling to calm down made her happy because he defended her parents.

“Mia never thought of you that way, Daniel. She only saw you as my best friend. There were too many times when she came to me asking for me to say something to you. I said nothing because I never saw the things you did around her. Now it all makes sense. You were obsessed with my sister and wanted her as your mate. How many times did she refuse you?”

“She would have come around eventually if she never met him!” Daniel coughs as he points at Edmund.

“Get off my property, right now,” Rayne yells at him. “Uncle Ryan, you can stay, but he is no longer welcome here.”

“Says the whore who fucked this abomination, right there for anyone to see from the road.”

Parker is on him in an instant, his hand transforming into a tiger’s paw as he got right up in Daniel’s face. “I suggest you leave before I kill you for disrespecting, Rayne. I had a feeling you watched what we did. Did you imagine it was you with Mia against that tree? How sick are you?”

Daniel’s face turns white as Parker wraps his claws around his neck. His eyes widen in fear when blood trickles down his neck. He opens and closes his mouth, trying to say something, but no words come out. Parker finally lets him go when there are five trickles of blood running down his neck. Stepping back, he walks back to Rayne.

Daniel stutters as he stands up, “Are you going to let them treat your Beta like this?”

“Yes, because you are no longer my Beta. I, Ryan Larkin, Alpha of the Crystal Dawn Pack, strip you of your position. When you get back home, I want you out of the house. You no longer have rank in my pack. I suggest you find your own way home.” Ryan put all the force of his Alpha command into his voice. Towards the end of his tirade, his voice turns hard as his wolf peeked out.

“You would side with these people over your best friend?”

“These people are my family. The woman you called a whore is my niece. Her father was Mia’s true mate. You have been my best friend since we were kids, but there are lines you should not cross. You crossed one of those lines and there is no going back. Get out of my sight before I do something that I will regret.”

Daniel looks like he is trying not to swallow his tongue as Ryan denounces him. Guess he wasn’t expecting the outcome of today’s events. Rayne has a thought about what his true purpose of coming to Bodega Bay. It wasn’t just to get answers about Mia He wanted a fight with someone and he picked the wrong people to fight with.

“Did you come here with the expectation of fighting with someone over my mother? If you believed my father was dead all these years, who did you come here to fight?” Another thought occurs to her right after she asks those questions. “I get it now. You called me Mia that day in Maui. Did you watch us have sex and assume I was my mother? You came here under the delusion that she is still alive and planned on fighting Parker.”

“Someone needs to pay for her death. Since she is dead, then I want you to take her place by my side as my mate instead.”

Holy shit! That is sick and creepy as fuck.

“That will not happen, you sick, delusional, bastard. She has a mate if you haven’t already figured that out. Not only does she have a mate, she is pregnant with my child.”

“Both of those can be remedied quick.” Daniel steps closer and his eyes turn to onyx.

The second he became a threat to Rayne and Parker, an electric current can be felt in the air around the house. The wards are primed to go off. Before anyone can process his threats fully, Ryan reaches out with his hand and swipes it across Daniel’s neck. Blood blooms across his throat as a wound appears.

Daniel reaches both of his hands up to cover the wound that is now bleeding profusely. His eyes stare at Ryan in horror at what just happened. Opening his mouth to speak causes blood to spill from his lips and air to gurgle up his throat. When he reaches out to grasp Ryan’s hand, he is met with thin air as her uncle takes a step back.

Rayne stares in shock as Daniel falls to his knees. His eyes are pleading with Ryan to help him. He will heal quickly if they stop the blood loss. She grabs a towel off the lounger and hands it to her uncle. Ryan ignores the towel as he kneels down to be on eye level with Daniel. The wound on his neck is already clotting.

A sigh of relief leaves her mouth, but a second later a bubbly scream makes her look away from what her uncle did. Ryan reaches his hand out with his claws fully extended and rips Daniel’s heart out. The thud of his body hitting the deck makes her lean over the edge to throw up. There have been many gruesome things she has witnessed before, but never quite like what just happened.

Her uncle just executed his Beta right before their eyes.

“Ryan, he is dead, put your claws away.” Edmund quietly asks as he steps closer to him.

Ryan breathes heavily as looks at Edmund but he does as asked. His eyes have gone back to their normal color and his body shakes. Pain, regret, and fear cross his face in rapid succession. He just committed one of the most grievous crimes in werewolf culture. Murder of a high-ranking werewolf. Not only that, but he did it without hesitation.

Some would say it was a cold-blooded act.

Everyone on the deck right now knows there was more to it than that. Daniel became a threat when he threatened to take Rayne, kill Parker, and their unborn baby. Ryan defended her, but he didn’t have to kill him to do it. They could have used her magical handcuffs to subdue him while he was weak from blood loss.

What would she say to the Werewolf Council when they are informed of what happened? Could she tell them he had no other option but to kill Daniel? The better question she asks herself is would she tell them there was another option at all.

The man had threatened to take her as his prize, like she was something that could be owned. Then he threatened to kill the only person who stands in his way and her child to get what he wants. Maybe he got what he deserved for his delusions?