Book 1: Chapter 26

I didn’t want to do this. Everything in me screamed to turn my ass around and go the fuck home. Nate was standing next to me, shifting his weight back and forth nervously. The second to last thing I wanted was to be stand here. The very last thing was to even step foot on the crumbing mass of wooden slabs and the plants that were reclaiming.

Nate was right. I took after my father with zero handyman skills. Hell, Aelia learned how to fix everything when she was four because no one else would. Clogged pipe? Aelia took care of it. Hole in the wall? She took care of it. Lights not working? She took care of it. Even one day when the AC broke she managed to crawl up into the attic and fix the issue.

The dilapidated cabin now before us was proof that not a single thing had been fixed over all these years. Part of me wondered if it was still inhabited. Maybe my father died years ago and we just ever knew.

*'You would have felt the connect break.'*

I hushed Eros. I was not in the mood for his sass right now.

“Do you think…” I turned to Nate but he looked like he had been gathering courage.

“Hey! Old man!”

I jumped as Nate shouted next to me at full volume and my eyes swiveled back to the cabin. There was some grunting and definitely some shuffling before the door slammed open and the whole house shook.

“The fuck do you want?”

Something caught in my throat. I couldn’t swallow, looking at the man in front of me. He was completely grey. Not in a good way. In a crack addict who gave up on life kind of way. It was mangy and matted and I wondered if maybe rats lived in it. His body looked weirdly misshapen. Thin arms and legs with a potbelly that rode his shirt, or maybe crop top, up higher than his belly button.

I remembered the day my father stood, cackling in front of the Elders as they passed down his sentence of exile to this place. He was crazy but there was still the figure, the shadow of the great man my father once had been. This, whatever the hell this was standing on the pouch scratching his ass like he was digging for fucking biscuits, was not my father. If anything though, this made it a little easier. My father was intimidating while what was left was revolting.

“Well, I’m not getting any closer. I don’t need to take a whiff of any of that.” Nate backed up a step.

I nodded and walked forward. He narrowed his eyes before they widened slightly.

“Silas, my boy, is that you?”

I swallowed and stepped forward.

“Damn, look at you. A man now. Bet you have a Luna and some pups now, right? You look like me when I was younger. More fit.” He slapped his gut which rolled and I heard Nate gag behind me. “Sorry, I would have cleaned up if I knew you were coming.”

“No you wouldn’t.” I snapped back at him.

His eyes narrowed and suddenly he stood a little straighter. “Is that any way to speak to your father?”

“You’re a disgrace. You are not my father. My father died the moment my mother did. A cruel man stood in his place and thank the Goddess he was kicked out of the house.”

I could see his anger but there was no Alpha power left in him. There was nothing to muster up.“What do you want, son?”

“Answers. I want answers. Specifically the truth.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “The truth isn’t as cut as dry as you…”

I cut him off. “No. The truth is cut and dry. It’s either the truth or it’s a fucking lie. What isn’t so cut and dry is the actions and the reason why you did it. But either way, I’m getting the answers to the questions I’m asking.”

He laughed. “I’m not giving you shit. So what? You can kill me? Ha! I’m already in hell.”

I unleashed my Alpha power on him and he fell to his knees in a whimper. Even Nate by the truck coughed a bit.

“I won’t kill you. But I promise you, I’ll let her kill you because at least she deserves that satisfaction.”

His eyes widened and his face paled. “Nnnn…no…no…I don’t…I don’t know who you are talking about.” He started to stammer.

“You will answer my questions fully and truthfully until I am satisfied with the answer, is that understood?”

His neck cocked to the side in submission. “Yes…Alpha.”

“Did you or did you not sell our own orphans to the Hunters?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t sell them. There was no profit. They promised to leave the pack alone if I gave them fifteen children over the course of a year.”

A knife stabbed in my heart and I heard Nate growl. He was headed this way, blazing with anger.

“What the fuck did he just say?”

I held my hand up. Halting his steps and anything further out of his mouth.

“On the last one though, they weren’t satisfied with just orphans…were they?”

He shook his head, bowing it low. “They wanted someone with strong blood. At first, they asked for you or your sister but I convinced them to take a beta. To take Nathaniel.”

My heart started to pound faster. “Did you tell them we would be in the forest that day?”

My father nodded and I had to reach out to grab a beam from the house. “I told you kids to go out. They were supposed to take Nate and knock you two out. But instead…instead they took my baby girl. My little angel.” He cried out but I growled.

“All you wanted was her power. You hoarded her like an object.”

His eyes were wide as he looked up at me. “Ferrah made her for me. She was mine. Mine to use and mine to teach. I would have been the greatest Alpha with her power under my control. I could make every single wolf happy. Making connections where they should have been. Omega’s getting eradicated out of our pack.”

My hand made a fist but I held it back. “You stopped the search party. You declared her dead. Why?”

“The Hunters contacted me and said that if I didn’t stop looking, they would take you too. That it would be going back on our contract and a war would destroy our pack. So, I declared her dead. Her pack link wasn’t removed until two years later but you weren’t old enough to feel it.”

Nate yelled into the wind as he dropped to his knees, his hands grabbing his hair. He rocked back and forth on the grass.

“I did it to save our pack! I did it so that we would be safe from the Hunters!”

“Why didn’t you speak to the other Alphas? The Alpha King? Why didn’t you just get help instead of giving away the next generation of our pack to be tortured and killed?” My voice rose and the walls shook.

My father cowered at my feet. “It would show weakness. Weakness that I couldn’t handle my own business. They would have come in, taken over, ruined every plan I had.”

I scoffed. “She did say you were a coward. Now I know you are. You put your pride before your entire pack! You lost Aelia! It’s your fault!”

My foot came up and I slammed it into his side. There was a satisfying crack as his screamed out in pain. “Can you imagine the pain she went through? The torture? Every single day? Your own flesh and blood that you turned your back on.” I crouched down to look at him as he was curled up in a ball. “You destroyed her and then any hope she ever had of being found because you were a fucking coward!” I slammed my fist into the side of his face.

“You gave up too! You just accepted it!”

“I was twelve!” I screamed at him. “You were my father! I trusted you!”

He whimpered and curled up into the tightest ball his fat ass could make.

“Do I need to know anything else important that you lied about?”

He gulped and I could see him fighting my command.

I focused more and asked again, “Is there anything else I need to know that you fucking lied about?”

“I…I…she was going to leave me. She planned on taking you kids and leaving. I don’t know where the hell she thought she would go but I wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t.”

My eyes widened and I shook my head. “You didn’t…”

“I caught her with Derek, my own beta, my best friend, going behind my back to sneak her out.” He cackled. “How could I let her go? She was mine. All mine. She couldn’t leave. So I made her stay. She stayed with me. Never left me. Not once.”

I started to shake, feeling the fur sprout from skin.

“You killed Mom.”

“I wrapped my hands around her neck and I squeezed and suddenly, she wasn’t trying to run. She wouldn’t run away from me. She would be with me. Forever. Just like you kids. With me. Forever.” His cackle turned into something else entirely.

He started rolling around on the floor. “My best friend betrayed me. So I had to deal with him. I sent him and his mate out and pulled all the patrols on that side. They died. I knew the Hunters would be there. They were picking up another child. Boom. Dead. Though, the Hunters thought it was war and attacked until I had to explain it wasn’t they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time but then it was fine. It was perfect. No one knew. No one knew.”

He started to chant it over and over again. My nerves were frayed and I dared to glance at Nate. His face was pale as a ghost, heaving on the ground. Suddenly, the anger snapped and I felt Eros roar within me. We stepped forward only to be stopped by a hand on my shoulder.

“Sil, stop. This isn’t you.”

The voice soothed me. It fought back the flames and I felt my shoulders sag.

“There we go, Sil. This isn’t you. You or Eros. Let it go.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt my skin shift and the fur come back.

“I…I can’t…”

“Don’t worry. I’ll catch you. I won’t let you fall.”

My vision blurred and darkness took over.