Page 105 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

I purse my lips, and after a moment, I growl, “Thornes. Check under the Thornes.”

Damien goes through the pack records on his phone, and this time when he speaks, he hisses, “Corinne just bought a small restaurant there.”

“Corinne?” My jaw clenches. The girl lives in her brother’s shadow. I know for a fact that Silas controls every inch of her life. He wouldn’t give her enough money to spend on purchasing a dress, much less a restaurant.

“Send me the address.” My wolf is lingering close to the surface, and my voice is raspy as a result. “Get there and bring people.”

It takes me close to an hour to get to the city, and as I’m entering, Damien’s name pops up again on the screen. “You’d better have something useful for me.”

“Samuel is calling an urgent pack meeting right now,” Damien says harshly. “He’s ordered you to be there.”

“Ordered me, has he?” My blood is boiling at this point. “I’ll deal with him later. How far are you?”

“Ten minutes from the city.”

I push the speed limit, and by the time I reach my destination, my claws are already breaking out. I spot Ariela’s car down the street. The windows are up. I’m out of my car and heading toward it when I smell the faint scent of blood. Anger and fear crash into me at the same time. I pull open the door, and my wolf immediately raises its hackles. The stench of blood inside is thick and metallic. Marek’s eyes stare soullessly at the window, his chest cavity crushed in. Somebody ripped out his heart.

Not somebody. I can smell Isabella’s scent on the inside of the door, a faint trace of it, under the thick smell of blood. If I had any wisp of a lingering doubt, it fades away. She killed Ariela’s guard, one of my people.

The service door in the alley is locked from the outside with a heavy padlock. I check the insignia on it. It’s one of ours. This was put here to keep someone in. My claws go through the housing, and the mechanism comes apart in my palm without noise. I quietly open the door, and as soon as I do, another wave of thick blood hits me.

There are twelve bodies piled by the door, still in aprons. The staff, a few customers. She killed the humans. Disgust and anger roil within me. These were innocent lives. One of the girls barely looks seventeen, and my wolf rages in the confines of my mind. Such senseless violence.

I walk past the bodies, enraged, careful not to make a sound. I can hear voices through the service doors ahead of me. I don’t walk through them. Not till I know what I’m walking into. I put my shoulder beside the round window in the left door and look through. Ariela is on the floor twelve feet away. The chair went over sideways with her still tied to it, so she’s lying on her hip with both hands behind her back, working her fingers at the rope. Four of her nails are gone. There’s a split running down from her cheekbone with blood dried along her jaw.

My wolf’s reaction is visceral. It rears its head, howling for blood. My human side agrees for once. However, I haven’t seen all the players in the room. I’m useless if I walk into an ambush. Isabella is one of the best strategists within the pack. I’d be a fool to underestimate her. I look around the room and spot Corinne against the far wall with both hands over her mouth. Silas is on the tile a few feet from her, one leg moving as if somebody threw him there. In the middle of the floor, standing over a small black wolf, is Isabella. My jaw tightens. The wolf is half the size of a large dog, dark to the root, ears pinned to the skull.

Luca.

How my six-year-old came to be standing on four legs is something I’ll deal with later. But from how everyone is situated, it seems I was right. The Thornes were just a coverup. The real mastermind has been Isabella. I’m reaching for the door plate when I hear a name that has my hand going still.

“You think you’re the first pup I’ve killed?” Isabella’s voice is pleasant. “I made sure that Elena’s child never saw the light of the world.”

Silas gets to his feet. “What are you doing? We need to capture the pup, not kill it.”

“Capture him? No. We’re going to kill him. I thought you wanted to be alpha, Silas. I will make you the alpha. As long as you make me your luna, I will put you in the alpha position myself.”

“Let him go.” Corinne’s whisper barely reaches me. “He’s just a child.”

Isabella’s head turns toward her, an irate look on her face. “Can’t you shut your sister up?”

Silas crosses the floor and backhands his own sister into the wall. She slides to the floor with a pained cry.

“He is the alpha’s son,” she’s pleading. “He’s an innocent child. You can’t hurt him.”

“This is why you are the most useless shifter there is, Corinne. You have no ambition, no drive. You had one job: seduce Callum. You couldn’t even do that.” Isabella scoffs. “Don’t you want your brother to become the alpha?”

Corinne looks over at Ariela on the tile, then back. “If you kill Callum’s fated mate, he will never forgive you.”

“He doesn’t have to forgive me. I don’t care what he feels. I was supposed to be the luna. I gave him plenty of chances.” Isabella sighs, running her fingers through her hair. “I got rid of his first child. I got rid of Elena. I cleared the path for him, but he’s ungrateful for everything I’ve done for him. He’s ungrateful for everything my family has done for him, and now he thinks he can choose this filthy human to be the luna of this pack.” Her upper lip curls into a sneer. “I will never allow it.”

Behind the swinging door, I keep my hand on the plate without pushing it. Elena’s death had been tragic. She had gone on a run by herself, which she never did. I had been away on pack business, and I got word that she had been attacked by rogues. I came back to a body that could not even be recognized. They had torn her to pieces.

I never knew she was pregnant. She never mentioned it to me. Inside my chest, my wolf howls for a life neither of us got to smell, then for the mate who was murdered by someone I trusted, someone I placed by her side.

The black wolf moves. Luca leaps off the tile, sinking his teeth into Isabella’s thigh, and she screams. Grabbing him by the scruff, she throws him at the wall behind the till.

Two things happen at the same time. Ariela screams in terror, and I’m through the doors before he’s halfway across the room. I wrap my arms around him midair, falling to the floor gracefully. One arm around the whimpering wolf, I straighten up, looking at the shocked faces in the room. Luca is thirty pounds of hot fur with a heart beating way too fast. I set him down on his feet behind me, and he growls at Isabella from between my legs. One any other day, I would be amused. But today, all I feel is the sickening betrayal from the one person I trusted above everyone.