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“He was close to us, a big part of our family. We all trusted him. He was like an uncle to Delaney as she grew up, too—he was around when she came of age and her animal didn’t show. He helped her through the emotional side of it when the rest of us didn’t know what to do or how to deal with the fallout that came along with being sodifferent.” Jameson swallowed hard. “I mean, we all had so much on our plates already, we appreciated the help. I realized far too late that it hadn’t been help, it had been a setup to get what he wanted.” His words were laced with bitterness, his face twisting with resentment as he talked.
I knew how that resentment felt. I’d tasted its acidic burn for years.
Was that true? My dad hadn’t been in my mom’s life for very long before he’d disappeared. It must have been through her being in Jameson’s circles that she’d met my dad, then. I didn’t know why he’d left, where he’d gone. A pang of jealously shot into my chest—he’d been there for Jameson’s family who hadn’t been his blood. How could he not have been there for us?
Power. He had always been after power, and that was all that mattered to him. It wasn’t about who was important, butwhat.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I found out he’d been stealing from me. He’d been sneaky about it, too, squirreling away money from different places, little bits at a time so that it wasn’t a glaring thing. Felix was the one who figured it out. When I realized Tate had betrayed us, I told him to fuck off. I kicked him out of my territory and told him if he ever set foot here, there would be hell to pay.”
I nodded slowly without answering. I didn’t know what to say. The pieces fell into place, creating the story I hadn’t understood, and with every bit of new information, I felt like I was hit by a ton of bricks.
He’d come to her one night and begged my mom to elope with him, and when she’d said she wanted to do it the right way… he’d disappeared. He hadn’t been allowed to stay, I realized now. He’d been a low-life good-for-nothing piece of shit, but he’d had a reason.
It wasn’t an excuse, but the pieces fit. That was why my dad had ended up in Montana. When my mom had died, and I’d been forced by law and the fae foster system to go to Montana to live with my dad, I’d been furious. Not only had I lost my mom, I’d been forced to leave my world, my friends, my home behind.
It had been the first time I’d felt the fae were my enemies, not my friends. I’d begged Augusta to step in, but she’d told me there was nothing she could do. I’d hated her for years for that statement. Knowing she was gone now, and that had been the last interaction we’d had, tasted bitter in my mouth.
“Delaney couldn’t shift,” Jameson said flatly. “I’m sure you know that, though. The whole city knows about that, I’m sure. Gossip is a fucking currency among the shifters, and considering how diverse we all are, it’s a joke that they didn’t accept her just because she didn’t have a beast.”
I stayed silent, letting him talk. He was lost in a different world, and it meant everything that he was confiding in me.
“What about the fae?” Jameson asked with a bitter laugh. “They have magic, too, and they’re not shunned, are they? What was so different from the fae and Delaney, who had magic but no beast? It’s the same thing, but they shunned her and made her life a living hell. They made her feel like she wasn’t good enough. No matter what we said to her, no matter how much we loved her… the acceptance of the pack is always a thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t doubt that you were always there for her,” I said softly.
“Not the way I should have been,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I should have done more. If I’d just known…”
He took a deep shuddering breath. “She was young—at least by shifter standards—when she died. She’d lived with the fear that she wasn’t good enough, the belief that she was lacking. Shifters live too long to be able to carry that much pain along with us and survive. That’s the only thing I envy about humans and their short lifespan, sometimes. It’s all over in a flash, and then it doesn’t matter anymore.”
I ran my hand up his chest, trying to ease his pain. He beat himself up over what he’d done, and how he’d done it when Delaney was still alive, and it was understandable. I just wanted him to know that no matter how guilty he felt—which I could feel through his bond—it couldn’t be his fault.
“She wanted fae to create a beast for her, but it’s not that simple,” Jameson said. His hand gripped my arm as if he was holding onto me for an anchor. I wasn’t sure he was aware he was doing it. “We told her it wasn’t possible. Fae can do a lot of shit, but they can’t conjure a shifter beast out of thin air. Hell, we weren’t created from the fae, were we? It was angel blood that made us shifters, so if anyone could help her…” He took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “When she felt like we weren’t going to help her, she found help elsewhere.”
“She went to Tate,” I said, putting the last pieces of the puzzle together.
Jameson nodded, his jaw clenched.
“He said he would help her. He helped her, all right. He took away what made her an anomaly—the power without the beast. He took away her power, too.”
“How?” I asked, frowning. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“He used dark magic of some kind. I guess he has ties with demons who have possession of that kind of magic. He used dark magic and siphoned her power, draining her dry.”
My blood ran cold.
The magic in that thing is stolen.Autumn’s voice rang clear in my head.
“Along with her magic, they took her life force, too. Dark magic is fucked up. It takes without giving back in return. It’s a pretense of power, but all it is, is theft and murder.” The more Jameson said, the more he trembled, anger boiling under his skin. He grew hot, and his voice turned from the deep velvet of his human form to the growl of his bear.
“Jameson,” I said softly, but what was I supposed to say? Calm down? He had every right to be upset. I couldn’t tell him it was okay, because it wasn’t.
My throat swelled shut, and I struggled to breathe. It wasn’t only Jameson’s emotions I felt—it was mine, too.
My dad had murdered Delaney. He couldn’t have done it only to her—that amulet carried the kind of power that didn’t come with just one person. He’d always been power hungry, but stealing it that way… I felt sick to my stomach.
I rolled away from Jameson.
