Page 51
He sits down near the fire and begins methodically skinning the rabbits with a small knife from his pocket, and I take this opportunity to ask him the question that’s been burning my brain since my nightmare. “Are there wolf shifters out east?”
He doesn’t stop his work, but his movements slow, like he’s focusing on his answer as much as prepping the meat. “Why do you ask?”
I swallow nervously, my scent thinning with my uncertainty. “There was a lot of bloodshed the day I was kicked out. I was blamed for it and truly had no reason to think it wasn’t my fault.” I pause, heart racing. “I lost control and killed my father. I don’t remember what happened after that, only that when I regained control, every alpha leader in the community was dead at my feet and my brother was exiling me.”
Dair’s eyebrows draw together, and his mouth sets in a serious line. “You don’t remember killing anyone but your father?” I shake my head no, and he rasps, “Ferris, standing up for yourself isn’t losing control. Protecting yourself is not a failure.”
My shoulders immediately tense, and I snarl, “You don’t get it! You are so confident, so self-assured. You’ve probably never had to worry about losing control even once. Never had to look at your reflection and be scared you’d see the man that destroyed you looking back. Do you know how exhausting it is to feel like your instincts rule your body? Your entire existence? That at any moment your alpha might possess you, react without your input, and you can’t stop it? My own father knew how dangerous I was and he tried to fix me, but I can’t be fixed.”
Dair’s eyes flash with animalistic danger and his scent darkens with the promise of violence. When he speaks, it’s a growl forced past elongated canines. “Tried to fix you how?”
My body shakes like I can remember the agony of fighting my own dominance to allow my father’s barks to hit me. “He would bark at me, control me, try to use his dominant compulsion to make me a beta.”
Dair’s wolf claws punch through his fingertips, leaving trails of blood. I continue, “No matter how far down I pushed my alpha, no matter how much I fought my own instincts, the commands never stuck.”
“Good,” Dair growls. “You are exactly as you’re supposed to be.”
He lets that proclamation settle in the air between us before continuing, “Now, you asked me if I knew what it was like to feel like you can’t control your instincts? Fuck yes, I do. I have a wolf inside of me, Ferris. An animal prowling under my skin with his own logic and desires that don’t work in the human world. The only reason I appear so confident, as you say, is because instead of fighting the beast inside of me, I made him my friend. Maybe it’s time you do the same, yeah?”
What would it feel like to be friends with my alpha? Since I emerged, I’ve always thought that accepting my nature was too dangerous, but if Dair can coexist with the spirit of a wolf without becoming a monster, maybe there’s hope.
He continues, “Believing that you are predisposed to be a certain way is not only harmful, but wrong. Alphas are not genetically destined to be like your father, Ferris. The belief that our biology makes us incapable of choice is backward. You choose to be the alpha you want. Your father chose to be the way he was. Biology and instinct have nothing to do with that.”
His fascinating mouth quirks with a hint of a smirk, and he asks, “Did you know that you’re the most dominant human alpha I’ve ever met?”
“Yeah, right,” I hiss, secretly shocked, and more than a little terrified.
Dair pins me with his storm cloud eyes. “I’m very serious. You just said that your father’s barks didn’t work on you, that you have a hard time handling your own instincts, yes? Well, now I’m curious.” He pauses, his voice dropping lower as he asks, “Why did you ask about shifters in the east?”
“Unless it was just a bizarre trick of my brain, my nightmare made me remember something that I had forgotten. I definitely killed my father,” I say, “but I don’t think I killed his allies. I think a wolf did.”
Dair’s eyes narrow, calculating. “Did anyone in your community ever speak about wolves?”
“Not that I can remember, but I wasn’t allowed at my father’s meetings with his people. He did make some interesting remarks about my mother over the years, though. All of his children have the same mom except me, the eldest. He told me that he killed her after I was born and then mated another woman.”
His eyes sharpen into steel. “What would he say?”
“That she was nothing but an animal, that I was as untamable as her, that she was a mistake and he was happy that he put her down, that I never should have been born, and more.”
“I’m going to need you to explain to me in as much detail as you can what it feels like when your alpha tries to take over,” he says, voice calm but heavy.
“Why?” I breathe, heart pounding like it knows whatever Dair is about to say is going to change my whole life.
“Because I think your mother was part of a community of shifters that the Lunar Mother is desperate to find.” My heart stops beating, but the shock continues. “Which could mean that you’re half shifter, Ferris.”
[ 35 ]
DAIR
Abandoned Farm
“But . . . I’ve never shifted,” Ferris gasps, desperate to breathe through the shock of this revelation. I pump out as many calming pheromones as I can, wrapping him in my scent until I see his shoulders begin to relax.
“You likely won’t,” I say calmly. “Hybrids often have a few of the same characteristics as full-blooded shifters, but they do not shift. I’ll admit, though, almost all hybrids are betas, which is why we say betas aren’t capable of having wolves. In your case, I think it’s likely that your alpha is a rare alpha wolf that cannot shift. If you were full-blooded, the inability to shift would have killed you.”
“What does that mean for me, though?” he asks, amber eyes so dark with emotion they resemble wet bark.
“It explains why you’re so dominant, why it’s not easy to control your instincts, why you sometimes get lost in a haze during stressful events like killing your father, or emotional ones, like finally claiming Raine. It’s why you couldn’t stop yourself from biting her when you had sex for the first time, Ferris. You two are more than scent-matches.”
