Page 126 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“How did you get your hands on wolfsbane?” My tongue’s going thick. “We burned it all.”

“Let’s just say we found a supplier. One of your own actually.” He toes the spent dart, then fists my hair and wrenches my head back. “You’re animals in a coat. Two legs never made you men.”

“You slaughtered our young.” The words come up a growl. “Children who’d done nothing to you.”

“None of you are innocent.” He crouches again, close. “Your kind knows nothing about loyalty.”

Jessa’s wrenching at the ropes hard enough to cut her wrists. Mia’s a foot from her chair, that small chest barely lifting.

“Offer one of your own a little power,” Kylan goes on, “and he’ll sell out the rest.”

The two they put in the ground rise behind my eyes, their bones gone to powder in the dirt, and the rage nearly heaves me off the floor before the poison drags me down again. His boot catches me in the chest and puts me on my back before I get a word out. Jessa’s scream rips through the gag. I swallow my own snarl and make myself look at Mia instead. The terror of that stillness clears my head better than the pain does.

“I had no quarrel with you.” He looms in over me. “You were nothing to me at all. Then you went and touched mine.”

“I’ve never laid a hand on anyone of yours.” I drag the words up off the boards. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“You killed my brother.”

“Reuben?” Blood floods my mouth. “Why would I go near Reuben?”

His fist cracks across my jaw. “You know exactly why. One of your own sold you out. He stood in that room and watched you do it.”

What? What the fuck is he talking about?

This is payback for something I never did. My breath saws in and out. I set my spine against the floor and lift my head. “Give me the date.”

“What?”

“You say I killed your brother.” I spit red onto the boards. “Give me the day it happened. I’ll show you I was nowhere near him.”

He throws a date at me, six years gone, and I stare at him. “At least your brother had functioning brain cells.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t in the fucking city then!” I roar. “How could I kill your brother when I wasn’t even there?!”

“You’ll just say anything to get out of this.”

“That night I was the league’s guest at the playoff final.” I drag a knee under myself. “Out on the field before kickoff with my niece, on every screen in the country. You can check online.”

“You’re lying!”

He comes at me, and weak as I am, I get my forearms up, and we go down together with his knee driving into my gut. The wolf feeds me strength in short pulls, enough to hold him off, and I let it bleed back out so he never sees how much strength I’ve still got. I need the name of the shifter who pinned this on me before I finish this. He cranks my arm up behind my back and grinds my cheek into the floor.

“Whoever swore he watched me kill your brother,” I grind out, “lied straight to your face.”

“Why would he lie?!”

“Who is he?”

He doesn’t answer. He drags out a phone, thumbs a number, and tells whoever picks up to run down where I was that day. His eyes never leave me. I meet them and give him nothing to read.

“You came for my family,” I get out, “and never once checked your own story.”

The answer crackles back down the line. Whatever he hears pulls the color from his face, and for one breath he just stares at the handset. Jessa’s gone still in the chair, watching him, watching me.

“Cut her loose,” I tell him. “Take this to the man who aimed you at me.”