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“He already had enough heirs that he didn’t need me as a spare.”
“Your real dad was an alpha as well?”
“But not a wolf.”
“I’ve seen your shifted form. You’re a wolf, the same as Lowell was, except bigger and copper to his black.” Suspicion lurks in her eyes along with something else.
“Mom’s wolf royalty. It can cover a host of sins including paternity. Of course it didn’t keep her mouth shut when she wanted to use her infidelity as a weapon against her husband.”
“You’re mom’s a bitch.”
“Literally.” My chuckle seems to reel her in. She touches my chest, trailing her fingertips along my sternum, and I resist the urge to pull her to me because I recognize that deeper emotion coming off her in curling ribbons of blue—sadness. “I don’t want your pity.”
“What do you want?”
Truth. I can’t win her until I trust her with everything. “You.”
“The marshals don’t know about your real dad?” She skirts the real issue between us, and I let her.
“No. If the marshals knew, they’d either fire me or kill me. They don’t tolerate non-wolves. I’m trusting you not to tell them.”
She sucks in a breath. “Who else have you told this secret? Besides me?” She’s good. Like a targeted missile, she focuses on what really matters to shatter me if she decides to.
“No one. Lowell knew of course. He swore he didn’t tell—not even Hazel.”
“Then why tell me?”
The human part of me shuts down, refusing to confide the rest when she could hurt me so brutally with the information, but the wolf and even my fox agree that she has to feel some of the connection between us. “Because we’re mates. We always have been or at least since your fifteenth birthday.”
She curls her mouth into a slow smirk. “Drove you mad, didn’t it?”
“Out of my fucking mind.” I hesitate but she’s not running or screaming, and damn it, by the sparkle in her eyes, she knows. “In one day, you went from being a little sister to the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about while you still looked like a kid.”
“Which is why you were such a jerk to me?” She raises an eyebrow, daring me to disagree.
“Which is why I was such a jerk,” I mumble. Gods, I hate this truth-telling business.
“That explains the first three years until I turned eighteen.” She crosses her arms over her perfect breasts, revealing a sliver of cleavage below her collar, and my gaze lasers in on it. “So what about the next four years?”
“Huh?” Yep. Sadie’s tits render me stupid.
“Up here, Nolan.” She circles her fingers in front of her face. “I wasn’t a kid forever, and you didn’t come courting—to use what my parents called Lowell and Hazel dating even after their engagement. Instead, you became an even bigger asshole.”
“Yeah, I did.” Anger builds in me.
Anger at myself.
Anger at the situation.
Anger at everything and everyone except Sadie.
“Why?” She poke, poke, pokes like she means to unravel me, to undo me the same as she unleashes her magic whip. “Why treat me like I meant nothing to you?”
“Lowell was already mated to your sister, and he was supposed to be the next alpha. They were destined to rule the wolf pack together. I couldn’t screw stuff up for my brother or you and your family.”
“And you didn’t think to give me a say in the decision?”
“I handled it for both of us by keeping my hands to myself and your attention off me as anything but a soon-to-be relative that you didn’t want. Without a kiss, you wouldn’t have known we were mates. You were safer not knowing.”
