AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re missing the point,” he said.
I wasn’t. I was thinking like a pack ruler, and he was thinking like someone who was too emotionally attached to the girl’s death to see anything else. I felt for my brother and was heartbroken he’d been so hurt, but if he was going to be king, he couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of looking for the truth.
For the first time it struck me that maybe I should be gunning to take over Callum’s throne. I hadn’t seriously considered it because Ben had been grooming himself for the job his entire life. He was literally born to be king. But wasn’t I just as good? We were the same age, the same rank, and all the claims he had to the throne applied to me as well.
I’d never wanted to fight him for it, and I’d long convinced myself I didn’t want it. But things felt different. I felt different. And I was starting to wonder if I was more cut out for the role than I—or anyone else—had given me credit for.
“What’s your point, then?” I asked.
“My point is Wilder killed her.”
Chapter Ten
I stared out my bedroom window, watching the sun fade from yellow to orange and the sky darken around the light like a closing fist. When all the light had vanished, I opened my windows and the double doors onto the veranda and let the night air waft in.
The heat of the day was still heavy, but with the ceiling fan going and the cool evening breeze sweeping across the floor, soon my skin was prickled with goose bumps. I wasn’t cold. Werewolves rarely got cold. But I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy either.
Thanks for nothing, Ben.
My brother had managed to derail my plans before I’d gotten a chance to fully act on them. I’d been hell-bent on running off to Wilder and helping him find Hank. Then Ben had said those three magic words.
Wilder killed her.
If—and it was a big if—Wilder had killed Holly, it explained a lot about why he’d left town and why he wasn’t popular with the pack. He’d put everyone at risk, and he’d murdered a girl. Maybe murder was too strong a word. As a young wolf he might have lost control. There were legitimate, albeit awful, reasons that sort of thing happened. If he’d been out on his own without a pack member to guide him, if he hadn’t yet learned to control the wolf instead of letting it control him… Things went disastrously wrong from time to time.
I didn’t know this man well enough to be making excuses for him, yet they kept popping into my head unbidden. I wanted reasons to think well of him while still believing my brother. Ben wouldn’t lie to me about something this big. He might willfully mislead me on smaller points, but not this. He wouldn’t ruin a man’s reputation for kicks.
Doubt nagged at me, but I ignored it because I wasn’t sure which of them I was doubting.
“Dammit.” I kicked my bag, knocking it on its side and sending my textbooks sprawling onto the floor.
School seemed foreign to me right now, like something people on another planet did. Studying and writing papers felt wildly unimportant in the face of everything else going on in my life. People were threatening my pack. How could I be expected to write a criminology paper when truly abominable things were happening all around me?
I grabbed my phone and sent Cash a text. Miss you, hope the house doesn’t feel too empty without me.
A minute later I got the reply, Don’t worry, I’ll welcome you home in every room when you get back.
Cheeky bugger.
I was in the process of flirting back when a flicker of light outside caught my eye.
My bedroom faced the woods rather than the collection of small cabins behind the mansion. There shouldn’t be any light in the trees now that the sun had set.
Unless someone was out there.
I slipped on my shoes and went onto the veranda, squinting into the gloomy darkness, trying to understand what I was seeing. My senses should have been at their peak right now, the day after a full moon. Scent and hearing were more reliable than sight, but still I should have been able to spot someone standing in the trees without difficulty.
The light had vanished as quickly as it appeared, making me think I must have imagined it.
I was ready to stop looking and go back inside when a pungent waft of sulfur hit me. I wrinkled my nose, and my eyes watered at the suddenness of its arrival.
“Oh God.” I gagged.
The smell was so powerful I could taste it. It coated my tongue like poison. A cold sweat broke out across my skin because the memory of my last encounter with that smell was still fresh in my mind, the woman with her blistered, peeling skin and her limbs all jumbled and wrong.
I ran across the veranda until I reached a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading from the second-floor balcony to the one below and made it to the main floor in record time. I looked around, hoping I might spot someone to drag with me. If it was the woman I’d seen before, I wouldn’t mind having someone else around to back me up, confirming she was real.
And if it wasn’t her, having someone else with me would be more strength against whatever was out there.
