Tania growled, “Yes, you’re right, for thequeen. At this rate, I’ll make a hide out of her.”
Anger fueled him, but duty rooted him to look directly at Jemma as he said, “Everything aside, you are valuable in this pack. Do what you can to keep the peace and gather the strongest. You wanted to help—well, this is how.”
Her sharp, green eyes darted to him, pain and regret in there. “And if you bringherback? Whichever one has caught your eye?”
“If that’s how you plan to tackle such an extreme violation of our kind, then I have severely misjudged you. This is beyond either of us.”
He was about to call for another guard to ask for them to do what he requested from Jemma, but the she-wolf stopped him with, “No, I will do it. For mykin, not you.”
“Get it done,” he commanded, not looking at her, breathing heavily. The sound of bones and ligaments shifting preceded the glimpse of Jemma’s red wolf running through the halls, rounding a corner in haste.
He looked down at Tania, his tone gentling. “Access whatever you need to treat your wounds. You look terrible. Then, I need you to come with me to prove to everyone of Enola’s betrayal to those of Warden. Your presence will mean more than any of my words.”
Her aged but vibrant blue eyes glared up at him. “Be careful, Ronan. Whatever is happening is deep and rotten. I sense old magic, like a nightmare you thought you had long forgotten about...”
“What else do I need to know before I go?”
“I don’t know. I only overheard a brief conversation with the queen and Imari, then they saw me… Guards came after me, and then right as I was deep in the woods and surrounded, Lothar appeared and mauled them bloody. Took a lot of blows to his legs and stomach. I fled, as much as I wanted to stay. I knew I had to get to you…” her eyes glinted with a hidden truth, like she wanted to say many things, but settled with, “I have more magic in my fur than they are aware of. But not enough to get the Silvers out. I knew I had to get to you, even if it killed me.”
How wrong they all were not to make Tania the queen. “The other Alphas? The Silvers? Rem?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t assume the best. They are all outnumbered. TheytrustedEnola,” she said through pained eyes, as if reliving her own betrayal. It made her bloodied, dirty face and neck appear worse.
“And my mother?” he cautiously asked, not wanting to hear the answer, but knowing he had to ask.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I am sorry, but I don’t know.”
A dreadful sensation pulled his stomach in many ways, his heart beating with an alarmed rhythm like when his father died, all twisting with a blind fury that warmed his veins.
Blood was about to be shed.
R E M
Present Day
Gooseflesh crawledover Rem's skin, her eyes widening at the revelation that Deacon was a half-breed. "What do you mean the witches were going to help you? And you did all of this just because you’re a half-breed?Really?”
He frowned. "It fucking sucks, okay?"
She pressed on. “I don’t care… What. About. The witches?”
He re-positioned himself once more, never seeming to find the right spot. "Fine, but I’m only telling you because, well, so far… I don’t like what I have seen… Let’s see… It stems from me being a half-breed. My mother did some black magic, really dangerous stuff, to allow herself to become impregnated by a shifter. My father cheated on Owen, Jackson, and Gally's mother, fucking mine after she lured him. Didn't take much. Father had a wandering eye and being intimate with humans is safe. But not with my mom. She got pregnant and wanted to use it as blackmail to get my father to let her live in the estate, maybe even turn her into a shifter. She was poor, you see, and in bad health, and her family was gone. She liked the blonde hair of the Callons. She wanted that for her child,” he said, like speaking to a ghost of a lost loved one.
"Father killed her as soon as I was born—had a wet nurse lined up already to take her place. She never got to pay the witch back that helped her, and so, I am sort of indebted now, cursed as a half-breed. The witch that gave her power promised to release me, give me full shifter powers, if we helped take down the Alphas of Scarlet."
Rem leaned back, her entire expression falling. She stared at the steel bars before looking back up. "You mean to tell me that there is a giant plot, like a genuine takeover from the witches?”
She could see him struggling with something. "I am sorry, Rem. I just wanted to be whole. I wanted to be a shifter. Every time I transform, it hurts my bones—literal permanent damage. I basically can never do it… It’s why I rode the horse with you, back in Ashmire. I—" His voice grew more emotional. "I didn't mean to hurt your family. I at least got Oliver to Murphy’s—"
“Yourecommended that?”
She gripped the bars, slightly bending them. She was too angry to be amazed at such a display.
“It was either that, or Fiona was going to have him locked up in a basement somewhere. He’d grow weak, probably malnourished, covered in his own waste. Murphy’s is hard work, but those are useful hands, and they feed the children well. He’d even have his own bed and get to be in the sun. I chose it over theotherorphanage because Fiona would never have allowed the nicer one. She would have seen through my suggestion, then.
“I convinced her it would make you angry to see him at an orphanage, and she liked that. I just felt so bad for luring him away. I didn’t want him in a cell like this.” His eyes glistened with tears as he looked around his predicament.
Her gaze darted around the room, to the floor, then to her hands as she lowered them to her lap. She eventually rose to her feet as her throat burned. His confession didn't quite help, and yet it did, all at once. She lightly paced, not sure what to say.
