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“My name is Joseph Bennett,” he said quietly, voice rusty with disuse. It’d been months since he’d spoken in more than a grunt.
“Alpha,” the witch said with a deferential tilt to his head.
Joe’s eyes widened slightly. “And these are my brothers. My second, Carter. My other brother, Kelly.”
Carter waved.
Kelly elbowed him in the stomach.
I sighed.
The witch nodded. “I knew your great-grandfather. William Bennett. He begat Abel. Abel begat Thomas. Thomas begat you. Tell me, Alpha Bennett, who are you?”
Joe balked.
“Because,” the witch continued, “I’m not sure if you know. Are you an Alpha? A brother? A son? One half of a mated pair? Are you a leader, or do you seek nothing but vengeance? You can’t have both. You cannot have it all. There isn’t enough room in your heart, though it beats as a wolf. There is strength within you, child, but even one such as you cannot live on rage alone.”
“My father—”
“I know of your father,” the witch snapped. “I know he fell much like his father did. One would think the Bennett name is cursed with how much you suffer. Cursed almost as much as the Livingstones. You have so much in common, it’s a wonder you can even find where one of you ends and the other begins. Your families have always been intertwined, even if the bonds were broken.”
Carter and Kelly turned slowly to stare at me.
“I’m doing what I have to,” Joe said, a quiet growl in his voice.
“Are you?” the witch asked. “Or are you doing what your anger has demanded of you? When you give in to it, when you let your wolf become mired in fury, you no longer have control.”
“Richard Collins—”
“Is a monster who has lost himself to his wolf. He has forsaken a tether, and his eyes have become clouded in violet because of it. He is an Omega, a monster hell-bent on taking something that never belonged to him. But you, Joseph. You are not him. You will never be him, no matter how much you have to be in order to justify your actions.”
“Didn’t I tell Joe that exact same thing?” Carter whispered to Kelly.
“No,” Kelly whispered back. “You told him he was a fucking idiot and you wanted to go home because you hated how motels smelled like spunk and regret.”
“So… almost the same thing, then.”
“They understand,” Joe said, sounding angrier.
“They?” the witch asked, though we all knew full well who Joe meant.
“They,” Joe said. “Them. My pack.”
“Ah. Those you left behind. Tell me, Joseph. You face the monster from your youth. You lose your father. You become an Alpha. And your first response is to tear your pack apart?” He shook his head.
“Ox—”
“Oxnard Matheson will play his part,” the old witch said, causing all of us to freeze. “He will become who he is supposed to be. The question that remains is whether you will do the same.”
Joe bared his teeth. “What do you know about Ox?”
The witch remained undaunted. “Enough to know the path you have set yourself on has diverged from his. Is this what you want? Is this what you set out to do? Because if so, then you have succeeded.”
Joe’s eyes started to bleed red. Before I could move, he launched himself at the old man.
He barely made it a few feet. The witch raised a hand and the air rippled around his fingers. Joe was knocked across the room into his brothers. They all fell to the floor with arms and legs flailing.
I shook my head.
