“The glove compartment. I have something important.” The page from Bryan’s diary.
“I’ll go.” Fly was on his feet and out the door before either of us could stop him.
“Drink the water, Aria.”
I picked it up and took a sip, my hand trembling. Fly came in, and we both turned. He held the envelope that contained the page and the anonymous letter.
“Was it him? Was it Obsidian who left the rose?” I asked Zane.
Fly’s forehead creased, and he glanced at Zane, but Zane kept his eyes on me.
“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Aria.” Pause. “What’s in the envelope?”
I took out both the note and the sheet from Bryan’s diary. I handed over the anonymous note first. I had it memorized.
The man you want is called Obsidian.
He read it then passed it over to Fly and waited for the next one.
“I think this was a page from Bryan’s diary.”
Zane took it and read it, one hand rubbing the back of his neck, glancing at me once before returning his attention to the sheet. There was so much he was keeping from me and if I wasn’t sure before, I was now. Zane Von knew much more than he let on, and it was time for answers.
“What was going to happen in two weeks, Zane? What is he talking about? Why would you tell him he had to leave us?”
Fly stood. “I’m going to do a perimeter check.”
Zane nodded, his expression heavy. He waited until Fly was out the door before he met my eyes. “Did your mother every talk about your dad? About where you come from?”
“She hardly mentioned him. I’d find her going through old photographs, but she wouldn’t talk about him.”
“Did anyone tell you how he died?”
I shook my head. “I knew he was killed but not how.”
He rubbed his face with both hands before running them through his hair, pulling at the roots. “This is going to be so freaking hard.”
“Well, it can’t be worse than the stories I’ve made up in my head all these years.”
“Oh, trust me…” He met my gaze. “Do you know what a shape shifter is?”
“A what?”
“Okay, let’s just back up. That may not be the best place to start. There are two…groups, rivals, one of which your father was a part of.”
“What do you mean by ‘group’?”
He put his hand up. “Just wait; let me tell you the story. Your father was part of one, and your mother the other.”
“Okay.” Not really, but at least he was talking.
“When they got married, there were more than a few people from both sides whose feathers were ruffled.”
“I’m not sure if you’re trying to be funny or sugarcoat this somehow for me, but there’s no need for that. My family was murdered. I’ve just received a death threat. Please, tell me what is going on. Tell it to me straight, Zane.”
He stood and walked over to the bar, taking a bottle of beer, offering me one.
“No, thanks.” Beer would not taste good to me for a very long time.
He twisted the cap off his and drank about half the bottle at the bar before coming back to the table.
“When your mom and dad got married, they pissed a lot of people off, Aria. And when your father was killed, your mom took off with you and Bryan and pretty much severed all ties with her father. I know you’re pretty angry about how your grandfather’s handled things, but I can understand why he did what he did. He let your mother go, thinking she’d be safer separate from him, from anything to do with him, but he was obviously wrong. I think putting you at the school was his way of safeguarding you.”
“So are you saying the same people who killed my father killed my mom and Bryan?”
“Maybe not the exact same, but most likely from the same group.”
“Why? I mean, who was my father? I can’t understand people being so opposed to their marriage that they’d kill them. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s 2015, and you’re making them out to sound like freaking Romeo and Juliet.”
He pushed Bryan’s letter in front of me. “Read this.”
“I’ve read it, Zane. A thousand times.”
“Well, read it again, for me. Just read it out loud.”
I looked at it and began:
“I don’t remember my dad. Aria doesn’t either. She searches photographs sometimes, but I can see in her eyes there’s no memory. Maybe it’s better she doesn’t know, doesn’t find out.
I’ll be eighteen in two weeks. That’s when it will happen. If it happens. I’m pretty sure it will. I see my body, how it’s changing, growing, and I know. I feel different inside, too. Hungrier. That’s the only way I can describe it. It scares me. If it happens, I have to leave Mom and Aria behind. Now that I know what I am… why and from whom we’re running, I’m not sure that’s a great idea. Zane says it is. He says it’s the only thing I can do to keep them safe. I can’t imagine leaving them unprotected, especially Aria. She’s just a kid. And she has no idea who what we are.”
Stopping, I looked up at him. “What’s he talking about? What is this thing that will happen? What does he mean what he is, ‘what we are’?”
“This is going to sound crazy, Aria, but you just have to put aside any — logical — anything when I tell you.”
“You’re scaring me,” I chuckled but, truly, my hands were trembling.
“Your family, the men in your family, they carry a certain gene. It’s an extra piece in their makeup. I have it, too. Actually, most of the people you saw at the bar are shifters.”
“Shifters.” I sat back and shook my head, but the longer I watched him, the longer he watched me, the more I realized he was telling the truth. Or at least telling a truth he believed. “What exactly is a shifter?”
“I think you know that.”
“Humor me.”
“A human being who has the ability to shape shift into a…wolf…in this case.”
I busted out laughing at that just as the door opened and Fly walked in.
“All clear, Z.”
Zane took his eyes off me for a minute. “Thanks, man.”
“What’s so funny?” Fly asked.
“Just telling Aria where she comes from.”
Where she comes from.
“Ah.” He moved behind the bar like this was the most casual, most natural conversation. “Opening up as usual?”
Zane nodded and turned to me. “My office is in the back. Why don’t you go lie down and process what I’ve told you so far. I need to make a couple of calls, and we can talk again later, okay?”
“Okay?” I asked, rising to my feet as he helped me. “You just told me my brother was a…a…shape shifter. That my family descends from werewolves. Which means what for me, I have no idea, but I can tell you one thing—I’ve never changed into a hairy beast at the full moon—”
“Full moon has nothing to do with it,” he said, ushering me into his office.
“I was joking. That was a joke.”
“Lie down for a bit. Fly will be here if you need anything. Just…stay here. Inside. Don’t go anywhere until I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
He was halfway out the door by then, and it seemed like his brain was full to capacity when he paused to glance back at me. “I have to take care of a few things. Find out who left the rose.”
“You mean which werewolf?” I was going for a chuckle, but my voice broke.
“Something like that.”
“What am I supposed to do in here?” But he’d closed the door by then, and I sat down on the couch, trying to make sense of, well, everything.
Chapter Six
Zane
I told Fly to keep an eye on her and left the bar. I needed to figure out who was after Aria and why, which meant that, for the first time in six years, I’d have to return to the pack. I’d have to face the man who had lied to me. The man who had betrayed me. As I walked out the back door and int
o the woods, stripped off my clothes, and shifted, I couldn’t help but wonder what my reception would be like.
I wasn’t sure how Aria had taken what I’d told her. Actually, it hadn’t gone as badly as it could have, I supposed. I got it that this was as farfetched a story as they come, but it’s not like I had experience explaining what we were to others. Not like I’d ever had to tell someone that shifters exist and right under their own noses so be fucking careful. Anyhow, it didn’t matter. She was in danger so I couldn’t send her away. And maybe if she knew the truth about the monsters that exist out there, she’d be more likely to listen.
Doubtful, but I could hope.
It would take me almost the whole day to get to the compound and my thoughts shifted to Cain. How would he react when he saw me? He’d tried to reach out to me that first year after everything happened. Tried to tell me it wasn’t him, that he hadn’t ordered the killing, but it was the only thing that made sense. Xander wasn’t going to put a hit out on his own daughter and grandson. And he would kill anyone in his pack who did. No, it had to have come from Savage Blood. We’d killed Aria’s father, after all. And he was our own.
The sun was setting when I approached the property line. Slowing, I listened. He’d be protected. They wouldn’t leave their leader unguarded. Shifting to my human form would make things easier now, but it would also leave me vulnerable. I stalked slowly closer. The compound was large and housed several members of the pack, although most were spread throughout the United States. A twig broke as I left the cover of wood and stepped out into the quickly darkening night. Low growls surrounded me, alerting me to their presence. There would be no doubt as to who I was, though — by scent, if not by sight — which could be good or bad, depending.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out because a wolf stepped into my line of vision, joined quickly by a second and a third, the rumbling in their throats a warning. I rumbled back, taking a step toward them. I was bigger, stronger, but they had me outnumbered. Still, I had a reputation here. Most would be afraid.
Slow circling began, three against one, turning, keeping eyes pinned on eyes. I hoped not to have to fight. This had been my pack once, but when I’d killed those who’d murdered Bryan and Heather, I’d been blacklisted. I’d heard the rumors that had spread about me those first months after it had happened. Cain had even had the nerve to question whether I was the one who’d killed Bryan. He still denied having sent his soldiers to do his dirty work, but his hands were bloodied.
One of the wolves shot forward then, lunging toward me. But I was faster, and my attack had him on the ground, whimpering, as I closed my fangs around his throat. I wouldn’t damage him, not permanently, but he needed to understand with whom he was dealing. One of his friends was wise. He stepped back. But the other, not so much. He joined the fray, and, within moments, the sound of three wolves battling echoed around the compound, followed quickly by a thunk-thunk-thunk like a thousand horses approaching at a full gallop.
But before the attack I expected came, a single word command was issued: “Stop!”
I was amazed at the instantaneous response. I had forgotten the power of Alpha. It was…something. But the draw for me to obey was no longer there. That was something else entirely. I’d felt myself pull away from them six years ago, and now, no connection remained. It shouldn’t have made me sad, but it did. I was alone.
Straightening, I followed the direction the command had come from. There, among a collection of wolves and humans, a full head taller than most, stood Cain Von, Alpha of Savage Blood. My father.
Our eyes locked, his an oily midnight, mine a shade of black too dark. Too wrong.
“Son.” It was a statement of fact, not a term of endearment.
As if he’d given a silent command, the wolves around me backed away. Cain turned on his heel and walked toward his house. A woman left a pair of jeans and a T-shirt on a bench before following him. I shifted, eyes boring into my back, watching from shadows, the aggression around me thick, the hatred for the one who would have been Alpha, the one who had turned his back on his pack.
The moon lit the path to my childhood home. It had been six years since I’d been here, and it felt strange now. There was a sense of regret, of loss, now that I was back and walking up the porch steps to the front door. Mourning the loss of my family and my pack was something I hadn’t really done, hadn’t given any thought to. When those feelings came up, I shut them down, forcing myself to remember the betrayal. It was the one thing that kept me going, that kept the guilt at my part in things from eating me alive.
The front door was open and a light on inside. A woman’s voice whispered, followed by that of my father telling her to go. It was Maria, the woman who’d raised me after my mom had passed. She met me at the door on her way out and looked at me, her eyes still holding that tenderness I remembered. Without a word, she cast her eyes down and walked around me and out the door.
That hurt. I understood why, but it still hurt.
I was an outcast. I’d exiled myself.
Steeling myself, I walked into the house and toward my father’s study. He sat behind his desk waiting for me, his face hard, his eyes cold, as if I’d been the one who had betrayed him.
“It was a dangerous thing for you to come back,” he said.
There was a chair, but I remained standing. “I realize that.” He wanted more. He wanted a thank you, but I wasn’t in a grateful mood.
“It’s good to see you.” My father wasn’t a polite man; he wasn’t a sentimental man. He was the Alpha of one of the largest packs in the United States. He ran a well-oiled, well-disciplined organization. Some of the pack’s activities were even legal.
“It’s good to see you.” I bit the words out, the anger I’d felt for six years as potent as ever. I’d never confronted my father for his betrayal. I’d simply left, my rage enough to kill. “How are you?”
He studied me, his eyes revealing nothing. He was in his sixties now, and the black hair he kept long was graying. His skin had an olive tone weathered by too many years in the sun, and, sometimes, looking at him, I saw myself as I would be, as I would someday look. We shared similar features, but seeing him after all this time brought that home. When I left, he’d still been taller than me, but now I nearly matched him in height, and build. Two generations of Alphas.
“Good.” He gestured to the chair before the desk, and I sat. “You look good.”
I nodded. “I look like the son of an Alpha.”
He paused at that, but I had no more to say. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“Aria Hale.”
Something passed through his eyes when I said her name.
“She showed up at the bar last night after receiving an anonymous communication about the killer of her family.” I studied him as I spoke, hoping I’d see if he already knew about Aria, about the letter or the rose. “This morning I found her car had been broken into, a black rose inside it. The tear to the canvas roof was not done by any sort of knife.” They’d been claw marks. I wasn’t sure if Aria would have noticed that.
He inhaled sharply and opened a desk drawer, turning his attention to whatever was inside, taking out a stapled packet of papers.
“And you’re asking me if it was Savage Blood? You think I would order a hit on an inconsequential girl.”
“You and I both know she’s not inconsequential.”
He snorted.
“Did you order the hit?”
He set the sheets on his desk and pushed them toward me. “I’ve been aware of where Xander hid her from the start. If I’d wanted her dead, she’d be dead.”
It was true. The pages contained the address of the school Aria had been attending along with information collected monthly over the two years she’d spent there.
“Did anyone else in the pack have this information?” I asked, pushing the page back to him.
“No. Only me. Your distrust in your brothers sickens me.”
Wel
l, I guess he’d picked up on what I was thinking. Many of the pack hated the Hales. And Aria wasn’t inconsequential. She carried powerful genes to create powerful heirs. Heirs who would belong to both packs.
“Funny side effect to betrayal. It makes you distrust people you thought you knew,” I said, my insult the direct hit I’d wanted judging from the narrowing of his eyes.
“Those murders were not initiated by me.”
“Then why were the two who committed the crime from Savage Blood?”
“You mean the men you killed. Your brothers.”
“They were not my brothers. Not after what they did.”
He lifted a hand to stop me. “Enough. Past is past. The damage done irreparable. I did not order a hit on Aria Hale. My business with the Hale family was over the day Bryan died. My intention was only to bring him into the pack he belonged to. His father’s pack.”
“You mean his father whom you had killed?”
He stood, his fist slamming down on the desk so hard it made the room rattle. “Enough! You speak of things you have no understanding of. Times were different; the packs were different. And sometimes, as Alpha, you have a duty, even if that duty opposes everything you stand for.” He sat down. “But what would you know about duty?”
The last sentence was delivered with fatigue rather than malice.
Cain had been Alpha for a long time. My grandfather had died early, and Cain had risen to power at eighteen. He’d had no mentor, no guidance, and I believed he thought he’d done the best he could. But ordering the killing of his foster brother? How could he live with himself?
I had heard the story from several sources and, from what I gathered, Cain’s grandfather had taken Derek in when his parents had been killed during fighting with a rival pack. He’d treated him like a son and loved him. Cain and Derek had been inseparable for a time. But when Derek married Heather, some had considered it a betrayal to Savage Blood that he’d take a daughter of Rage, their fiercest rival, as mate, and in doing so, as next in line if anything happened to my father, he posed a threat. My father had been young and his decision perhaps swayed, and that was something I could understand. But ordering the killing of Bryan and Heather Hale after sending me to find and befriend them? That was unforgivable.
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