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“If you’re a vampire and vampires can’t bear children, what am I?”
“My masters’ spawn,” he hissed. “An abomination.”
“You’re scared,” I suddenly knew. “You’re scared of everything. You hide here scared of the wolves who run the city. You fear the vampires who sired you. And most of all.” I stopped in realization. “You’re afraid of me. I’ve confronted you before. You compelled me to forget. But, you never tried to hurt me or my mother because… You’re afraid of what they will do to you.”
I looked away when the confusion overwhelmed me. Who was the “they” I was referring to? Could it be a demon? Was I a spawn of the devil like my father had implied?
Wait, he wasn’t my father. Vampires can’t have children. He compelled my mother to believe she was pregnant so I could exist.
When I looked back up, the man who I had thought was my father, had disappeared. With him gone, the room slowly faded back to normal. Whatever sight I had had was gone.
How long had I turned away for? Had the vampire compelled me again so he could escape? And more importantly, what was I? I certainly wasn’t human. Nor was I my father’s son.
I had come here for answers and now I had even more questions. Who was I? Where had I come from? And, why was it that no matter what I did, I was still a guy who no one loved?
Chapter 2
Remy
I stood in my father’s once grand office, now transformed into a makeshift hospice room. Hil and my mother were next to me, all of us looking down at our father’s lifeless body. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the soft sobs of my mother trying to hold back her tears.
Heartbreak washed over me. But gazing over the shadows cast on my father’s face by the dim light, I felt more than that. His was a mixed legacy. I had spent my life proving my worth to him, my alpha. And I had done things I wasn’t proud of. Now that he was gone, I wondered if it had all been for nothing.
Hil broke the silence. “I’ll organize the funeral. I want to do this for Father,” he said, his voice wavering with emotion. I could tell he was still desperate for our father’s approval, even after his death.
I glanced at him, my heart aching for my brother who had tried so hard to escape the life of crime our family had been born into. He hadn’t been built for it like I was. Unlike me, he had never been able to hide his attraction to men. It hung around his neck like a scarlet letter. To my father’s credit, he never judged Hil for it. But when my father and I were alone, he didn’t hide his disappointment.
It wasn’t for what Hil wanted to do with other men. It was that my father believed that his attractions were what was keeping him from shifting. “Gay wolf shifters weren’t meant to exist,” he once told me. “The Gods wouldn’t allow it.”
My shifting made that theory a hell of a lot more complicated. Yeah, I wasn’t gay, but neither was I straight. I was in that happy middle ground. Would my father say that that was why I took so long to have my first shift and not because my mother was human?
In either case, my father was right about one thing, our unforgiving world was hard to survive without access to your wolf. Other alphas wanted my father dead. Given the way Father claimed his power, I understood why.
That meant that no one in our family was safe. Hil, his sensitive human son, would always need someone to keep him alive. As our pack’s alpha, Father had no problem in doing that, even as he made clear that he wanted an heir who could take care of himself.
That was what I became for him. I took care of myself. Always unsure of when the pass he gave Hil would end, I soon took care of Hil too. I didn’t mind. He was my little brother. It was my job. But having to be the wolf my father wanted me to be took its toll.
“Thank you, Hil,” I said, my voice betraying the pain I felt.
My mother reached over and squeezed my hand, her touch tingling with a mix of sadness and gratitude. I could see the hope in her eyes for a better future, free from the violence and danger that had plagued our pack for so long.
My thoughts drifted to the pact I had made with Armand Clément, my father’s most vicious rival. I had agreed to hand over my father’s illegal businesses to him in exchange for keeping the legal ones and securing the protection of my pack.
My father’s wolves would become Armand’s and my true pack would be free from the criminal underworld. It was a desperate gamble, but I couldn’t stand the thought of replacing my father as his pack’s alpha. Not with the attractions that I had and a brother like Hil.
How many of my father’s wolves would I have to kill before they yielded to me? I had no doubt that I would defeat them. But, I wanted a different direction for my pack.
Besides, our family already had so much to make amends for. At some point, I was going to need to figure out how to give back to the community. Father’s obsession with power had caused a lot of pain. That couldn’t be my family’s only gift to the world. Wolf shifters were more than just human nightmares.
It was then that Dillon flashed through my mind. He was Hil’s human best friend and the boy whose presence never let me forget that I wasn’t straight. His lean lines, his lightly tanned skin, his loosely curly hair that I dreamed about pushing my fingers through.
They all turned me into a wolf who dreamed every night about nuzzling him. A guy who fantasized about sliding my hand up his tee shirt and wrapping my large hands around his narrow chest. He was my anchor in my father’s turbulent seas and now, the ocean that kept me from Dillon lay in front of me, dead, missed, and regretted.
Excusing myself before my family saw the smile that slowly crept across my face, I headed to my childhood bedroom. I couldn’t wait another second. I needed to hear his voice. My wolf paced at the thought. I had to call him.
Retrieving my phone, I found his number. Taking a deep breath, I dialed. My heart pounded in anticipation. The phone rang and my palms grew sweaty.
“Hello?” Dillon’s voice came over the line, warm and soothing as always.
