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“But what was that?” she asks, her voice pitching up. “How did you—”
“My pack gift is fear. I reach in and pull out the terror,” I cut in, pacing the thick carpet in front of her, grateful that her tears have banished the fucking hard on I’ve had since I put her on her knees twenty minutes ago.
I’m not above using my ugly gift to prove my point, but I’ve never been turned on by scaring someone.
I’m glad that hasn’t changed.
I can be monstrous, at times, but I don’t want to be a monster.
“So, you…” She swallows hard, her throat working. “You did that on purpose.”
“I told you that you should be frightened of me. Do we understand each other now, little wolf? And what happens to people who threaten the safety of my pack?”
“But I wasn’t… I’m not…” She blinks faster, fresh tears rising in her eyes. “Did you… Did you pick that one on purpose?”
“I don’t know what you lived through. I can’t see into your head, I just…feel your fear with you,” I say flatly, trying to ignore the way my conscience is prickling.
She has a lesson to learn, and I can’t tolerate her defiance.
I have to find out what her sister’s up to and for now, Willow’s cooperation is the only way to make that happen. Her newly found Pathfinder gift may be able to give me clues that will help stop another attack on our tower before it happens, not to mention track down her sister and, maybe, my long-lost brother, Bane, as well.
But I can show a little mercy.
Or at least assure the woman I was half naked with earlier tonight that I didn’t pull up memories of sexual trauma or something on purpose, like some sick fucking bastard.
I’m not sure if that’s what she saw, of course, but just in case…
“If it was something about Pax. About what he did to you…” I clench my jaw, shocked by how much I want to destroy Pax for daring to lay hands on this woman, the one who feels so much like mine, though she isn’t now and never will be. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Her breath shudders out. “It wasn’t that. It was…” She shakes her head, her eyes so haunted I hope she’ll keep her trauma to herself. Instead, she says, “There was a man. His pack gift was bringing people back from the dead. He grabbed me and…killed me. Over and over again. He got off on the moment when my soul left my body. I could hear him groaning when it happened.” She gulps air. “I was eight.”
My teeth grind harder together, but I don’t let the emotion surging through me show on my face.
Sadly, I’ve heard worse during these sorts of interrogations, especially from shifters who grew up in The Parallel. It’s an ugly place where ugly things happen to those too weak to defend themselves. Children are prime targets.
But to think of a grown man grabbing little Willow when she was not much more than baby and doing that to her.
I want to gather her in my arms and hold her until the horror fades. I want to rock her and kiss her forehead and promise I’ll never let anything like that happen to her again.
But I’m the one who made her relive it, and I don’t have the luxury of mercy. I’m the Alpha of the North Star pack. Thousands of lives are depending on my leadership. I can’t afford to lose my head, or my heart, right now.
And then she says in a shattered whisper, “Mama helped me forget it. That was her gift, banishing memories, but I didn’t…” A soft sob escapes her lips. “I didn’t remember any of that until just now.”
And then she starts weeping for her mother, on her knees on the floor, and I just…can’t.
With a savage growl, I storm out of the room, out of my apartment.
I run down the halls, fighting the urge to partially shift, to transform just my hands and drag my wolf claws down the walls on either side of me. I want to destroy something, to shred the people who hurt Willow, to bloody my hands with their life force and watch the light fade from their eyes.
But I’m one of those people.
Maybe I am one of the monsters.
And if that damned prophecy that my father’s so fixated on is true, maybe I shouldn’t take it for granted that I’m the brother who will turn toward the light.
Maybe my heart is as fucking black as I’ve feared since the day I learned that my “gift” is pain.
With a howl of rage, I shift into my wolf form and run for the stairs leading to the roof, silently sending out a telepathic order for Hermione to fetch Willow from my rooms and lock her in her apartment for the night.
