Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81808 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81808 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
“Tell me where my brother––”
“No,” Matthias snarled at him. “First you listen.”
I moved forward and put my hand gently on Cole’s back. I could feel the fear and rage leaping off him and knew that staying calm was his best option. He knew it as well, but in the moment, the emotions were choking him. What was good was that the second I touched him, he took a breath.
“I need you to know that this all started because your father said no to me.”
Cole shook his head. “I have no idea what you––”
“I offered your father land in New York worth millions. I promised him a mansion, and money, so much money, if he would only give me what I needed.”
“And what was that?”
“I required then, as I do now, an infusion of pure lupine blood.”
No one said a word.
“I need a stallion to put with my broodmares,” Matthias explained. “I have the women. I just need them impregnated with seed to produce the wolves I require.”
It sounded so clinical, not at all the horror that it would be.
“And if that’s not what they want?”
“They belong to me. I don’t care what they want.”
“You have your son.” Cole barely got the words out, the disgust clear in his voice.
“No. My son can’t shift, and neither can I. That’s why they all carry knives and machetes—we have so few shifters in our ranks. My mother was half human, as was Tuss’s, a truth I found out only after she was sold to me by her father.”
When I glanced at Tuss, I saw the rage simmering in his eyes. As much as he may have hated us, he hated his father as well.
“By the time I went looking for a pure-blood female, the only one I knew had already mated with Abel and given him Justin. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t breed with Narah, even if we took her, because I’m not pure.”
“And my mother?”
“The same issue. And then she died giving birth to your brother, and I thought here, finally, was the answer.”
“What was that?” Cole rasped.
“You,” Matthias said simply.
“I don’t––”
“Anson could give you to me. I could have you impregnate all the females and give me the shifters I need to make our pack the most powerful.”
“But my father said no,” Cole whispered.
“Which was idiotic,” Matthias retorted angrily. “He was so short-sighted. He could have been rich, as well as his family and his pack. But he kept ranting about how he wouldn’t take away your choices any more than he would the females in my pack.”
Cole nodded. “That sounds like him.”
“He had Evan, he didn’t need you too. He had an embarrassment of riches and refused to share. It was insane.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to Abel, of course.”
It made sense.
That was what Justin had meant when he said that Anson had only cared about Cole and Evan. Why couldn’t Anson just barter away his firstborn son for the prosperity of the pack? Wasn’t that what a true alpha did? Think of the pack first?
“Abel always wanted to be alpha, and I could make his dreams come true and take away the only person who could ever challenge him at the same time.”
Anson and Cole both gone in an instant. Hearing it out loud was worse than I could have ever imagined. It had to be excruciating for Cole.
“Abel set the time and place so my men and I would ambush your father when you would be with him. It was so simple. We would kill him and take his son, and no one would ever know what happened to you.”
I shuddered, thinking of what they would have forced the loving, caring man I was crazy about to do.
“But Abel jumped the gun, grew a spine, and attacked his brother, the alpha.”
Cole remained silent, listening.
“When we reached the warehouse Abel had led your father to, he was hurt, yes, bleeding a bit, but Anson had disarmed his beta, and the blows weren’t fatal.”
“But the ones you gave him were.”
“That’s right.”
“Abel attacked my father, stabbed him in the back, but you and your men, you were the ones who killed him.”
“And staged a beauty of a car accident, yes.”
The truth revealed made sense of Abel saying the other night that he hadn’t killed his brother. Truthfully, he hadn’t, but it was semantics more than anything else. By his actions, Abel had placed Anson in harm’s way, weakened him, led him to slaughter.
Cole took a deep breath. “And what then?”
“Well, then you weren’t there. In his haste, Abel had forgotten all about you. He’d forgotten what he promised. And later, when I came to collect you, he grew a conscience, or more likely, he realized that the Swann Pack needed pure lupine blood just as much as we did. But then, as the years went by, I didn’t see either you or Justin fucking the pure-blood wolves in your pack, and all I did was grow more and more angry.”