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Violet blinked at him with eyes hard, jaw tight, and shame clinging to him. Her brain did backflips trying to process what he’d said with the history she knew.
“The big accident at the Conroe building that killed Mayor Kline and a bunch of other politicians?”
He nodded.
“That was a gas line explosion. Someone had maybe fucked with the lines. I was like ten, but it was huge news in town. They never figured out what happened.” Violet remembered it so saliently because even her ten-year-old self had wondered if her dad could have had something to do with it. That her mom died that day made it stick in her head.
“Cover story,” he offered, but her brain refused to accept it.
“The blast took out half of the middle school—thank god it was at night—the post office and two stores. How do you explain that if your dad shot the place up?”
He got out of bed and pulled sweats up his legs, and Violet was afraid he would leave until he turned to pace instead.
“He didn’t shoot it up. He changed and tore those people apart.”
Violet squinted while she tried to marry his version of events with the one in her head, wrestled with the cold that crept over her whenever she wondered what really happened to her mom.
Mikel paused at the window, looking haunted. “The council came for him. Vance, my brother, tried to stop them, and he changed too. Kane was voted in as alpha the next morning. I was too young at twenty, and almost half the council wanted me destroyed anyway in case I was like them.” He ran a hand over the scruff on his face. “I’m not,” he added, like that was something she might worry about.
“Mikel.” She frowned, studying the hardness in his bearing, the extent to which this haunted him. “There were survivors. They didn’t see any psycho wolves, just a huge explosion. And why would they blow up half a block to cover it up? The fire marshal thought the lines may have been tampered with, but they never figured it out for sure.”
“You’re being naive.” His voice was quiet, but the words ignited her temper. Violet fought to keep a cooler head. Grief, she understood, was a powerful thing.
“Don’t you think it’s strange that Magnus and Kane—” She couldn’t bring herself to call him “the alpha” without feeling stupid. “The two guys who succeeded the leader in both towns know each other and continued to meet for years after this happened?” Her brain was putting together pieces faster than her mouth could share them. “My dad was supposed to be at that meeting, but he had stomach flu. Isn’t that just fucking convenient?”
Conviction blazed to life inside her. Her long-time suspicion of her dad being involved in the accident that killed her mom was being confirmed, and it was something she just flat refused to touch. Years of compartmentalizing meant she could set it aside.
“First, I see Jared, who Iknowhas been in and out of my house the past like ten years, then Kane shows up at the hardware store and heknowsthat I know him, and he tries to call my bluff.” She sucked in a breath. “What if Magnus was working with him, and they somehow used the gas accident as a way to get what both of them wanted?”
With the riddle finally solved in her mind, she looked to him for validation, relieved that he seemed to be chewing it over.
Finally, he sighed. “It’s too fantastical, Violet. I watched my dad change when they took him. He slaughtered those people. I’m sorry your town got hurt more in the cover-up.”
“How does the fact that he could change automatically make him guilty?” she demanded. “Maybe they set him up.”
“That would mean knowing he had the ability to start with. No one did, not me, not my mom. I don’t think Vance knew he could change until he did. Never got to ask him.” His grief was palpable in his voice. She sensed the end of the conversation looming.
“So why do you think Kane is interested in me?” she tried.
“Because he’s interested in everything I do. The whole town has watched me for years, wondering if this is the week I crack and turn.” He closed that line of questioning with ease.
“Why do you think he was meeting with my dad?”
Mikel huffed out a sigh. “I don’t know. There’s some alliance between the towns. The mayor and the alpha must have an understanding. Kane’s probably paying him off to look the other way, keep the Frankston police on their side of the woods and not squint too hard at our ‘gated community.’”
Violet couldn’t deny that the logic held. Maybe it was just reluctance to rewrite the history she knew and had learned to cope with, but she wassurethat tragedy had been a gas explosion, if an intentional one.
“Something about all this just doesn’t sit right,” she finally told him. He ran a hand through his hair.
“It’s the past. I’m on edge because of the interest in you. That’s probably got you spooked,” he added.
Violet could see him resolve himself, push it out of his mind.
“What do you say to breakfast”—he glanced at the clock—“lunch? Jack’s been out breaking down that lumber this morning, gotta help pick it up after. I’ll be back before the moon tonight.”
Violet considered it. She wasn’t eager to let it go, but she recognized the olive branch in the offer, and that for now, he was finished talking about it.
“Fine,” she conceded, only a hair of annoyance in her tone, and got out of bed to dig through the drawer she’d claimed for something to wear.
