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“He swore me to secrecy, Raven.”
I pointed my finger right at his chest. “Tell me now, or things get ugly for you.”
“Raven?” Dean asked.
“Not now, sweetheart!” I said with a mockingly sensual voice.
I heard his feet barreling down the steps anyway as I backed that snub-nosed lawyer all the way into the kitchen.
“First, paperwork,” Elias said.
I took the folder from his hand and tossed it to the ground. “First, answers. Or you won’t get anything signed, which means you’ll be hounding me until you die. Now, what in the absolute fuck happened to my father? And you better start with the truth, otherwise things are going to get really ugly for you.”
“Raven,” Dean warned.
I whipped my head over my shoulder and pinned him with a look. “You have your orders. Now, go.”
“Orders?” Elias asked.
I hated the sound of his smile in his voice.
“If you need me,” Dean said as he reached for the front doorknob, “I’m only a thought away.”
“Yeah, I know,” I murmured as I turned back toward the lawyer.
I waited until Dean had closed the door behind himself before I spoke again.
“Now, you’re only betraying my father to one person. So, spit it out,” I growled.
Elias’s eyes dragged their way down my body. “I knew you could do it.”
I fisted his shirt and drew him close. “One last shot.”
He kept his cool very well, which was impressive to say the least. “Your father swore me to secrecy, and when I say that, I mean that the only reason he did it was because he knew your life was in danger.”
My heart stopped in my chest. “Explain.”
He sighed. “Your father lost control in Portland. The pack, I’m sure they’ve told you about the ancestral meadow up north?”
I tilted my head. “Keep talking.”
“Good, I’m glad they’re educating you,” he said as he shoved my hand away from his shirt and rearranged the neck opening. “That meadow is important to them. I don’t understand all of the mechanics behind how it feeds the pack, but it does. However, the further away from it you get, the more a shifter’s wolf will rage out of control.”
“No, that’s when there’s no Alpha. That’s what they told me.”
“That part is true as well. No Alpha, no personal control over their powers. Not their wolf. The ancestral meadow helps feed the strength of their powers, but the town of Bend is home for them. And home is where the heart is, right?”
My eye twitched. “The further away from home you get--.”
“The more foreign you feel.”
“Like homesickness, only amplified.”
“Exactly. The human side of them feels just fine out there in the world. But, the wolf? Not so much. When I tell you that I have no clue what happened to your father, I’m being very serious. All I know is that he left Bend, ended up in Portland, lost control of his wolf, and was killed. I don’t know how, and I can only assume as to why. But, in the paperwork your father left behind for me, he wrote down in his own blood a stipulation I needed to fulfill.”
I held out my hand. “Let me see.”
Elias dipped down and gathered up the folder of papers I had tossed onto the floor earlier. “Maybe next time, don’t toss them around.”
