13. Kane
“You’ve found them?” I repeat, my voice coming out less like an alpha and more like the boy I was when Trey and Anna were taken. “Where? Are they here?”
News I waited so long to hear. Only there’s no elation coursing through me the way there should be. Sorrow and a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach are all I’m experiencing now.
There was a time when I begged daily for their return, for Anna and my brother to be found. Then Kate and Trez appeared, and I no longer prayed to a higher power for our mates to be located. We still looked. I had a sense of duty. I wanted to find them, but over time, Anna and Trey weren’t my first thoughts when I woke in the morning, nor my last thoughts when I shut my eyes.
Kate was. And now…
“I meant, we think we know where they are. It’s our last option. The only place left I know to search.” My dad combs his hand through his dirty blond hair. It’s longer on top than when I saw him nine weeks ago. His beard is still neat and trimmed, but he looks tired and worn out.
When words fail me, he answers my unspoken question. “British Columbia.”
I swallow the lump taking form in my throat.
“That was the first place you searched,” I say, knowing damn well he told us so himself.
“We had scouts comb his territory. We never stepped foot within those borders ourselves. Maybe if I had… Fuck.” He sighs. “I need to talk to Kate or Trez. Both preferably. Do either of…” Dad steps forward, his shoulders pulling back. He sniffs the air. He smells her. He knows she was here.
“She isn’t here. She’s gone,” I say more to myself than to him. Kate is gone, and now, with this news, she certainly can’t ever return. I won’t allow it. I won’t bring my mate home only for her to be forced to live in a pack where the other woman visits each year.
“Then get her the fuck back here, Kane. There are things I need to know before I declare war on a pack that almost annihilated us thirty-five years ago.”
“She isn’t going to return for Kane,” Jag states matter-of-factly, his attitude grating on my nerves.
I turn my head, eyeing him, wanting to knock the shit out of him even though he’s right.
“You don’t know what happened. Maybe you know her version of it, but why the fuck are you automatically pissed off at me and taking her side when I’m your goddamn alpha? Your loyalty belongs here, not to a Marked Crest wolf,” I spit in his face.
“How old are Kate and Trez?” Storm asks almost too quietly, but with shifter hearing, she knows we heard her.
“Twenty,” my dad answers while Jag and I are locked in a stare-down. Neither of us is giving an inch.
“If you’d shut your fucking mouth for a minute and hear me out when I said we needed to talk, then you’d fucking know, Kane.” Jagger balls his fists at his sides, and knowing my best friend the way I do, he wants to hit me. Maybe more than I want to punch him in the mouth.
“Someone explain what the hell is going on,” Dad demands, his former alpha role showing in his tone. “What happened when Kate was here?”
“The alpha,” Jagger bites out, “fucked her and then kicked her to the curb after he’d had his fill.”
My eyes flash, changing. A lethal growl, slow and measured with purpose, leaks from my mouth. Jagger’s body goes deadly still, his arms locking to his sides. I snarl, increasing my control, making him feel the heaviness of my power weighing on his shoulders, his chest, the pounding thundering in his head so loud all he can do is grit his teeth and lower his eyes.
I’ve never used my abilities on my beta, my best friend. I never thought I would need to.
He can speak. I didn’t cut off his breathing ability. He could even fight against my power over him if he wanted, and he does, but he also doesn’t.
“She said that?” I ask.
“Let him go, Kane,” my father says. I don’t bother acknowledging the demand he no longer has the right to issue.
When my father stepped down as our alpha, he wasn’t mentally ready to give up his leadership role. It wasn’t his time to retire. He only relinquished because the need to find his younger son and my mate weighed heavy in his heart. He’s struggled for far too long, feeling like a failure in locating his wolves, our wolves.
When I became alpha, I felt his emotions as if they were my own. He truly believes he let down his wife, his best friend, Annalise, Jagger and me, the pack. He carries too much self-loathing regarding my missing brother and Jagger’s sister. It wasn’t his fault. No one should have been able to enter our territory without us knowing, let alone take two wolf pups without anyone aware it was happening.
I told him before he left this last time that he was never a failure, but he didn’t want to hear it. In all fairness, I understand why he feels the way he does. I think the same. I haven’t found them either.
“What did she say, Jagger?” I bite out.
“I’m sorry to interject, but is it possible for Kate and Trez to be your missing?—”
“No.” My father and I bark at the same time Jagger answers with, “Maybe,” followed by a deep growl.
I pull the power back, releasing my hold on my beta.
Dad’s stare flips to Jag, his eyes squinting, but he shakes his head and turns his focus back on Storm.
“Trez isn’t my son. If he were Trey, I would know. Kate’s spent enough time with Annalise. If she were her daughter, she would have felt it, smelled it, sensed it. They aren’t our wolves,” he says with such vigor that it’s almost as if the force is meant to reassure himself, giving me pause for the briefest moment.
But then Jagger opens his mouth again, shaking the remnants of my lingering power off before stepping back and pulling my gaze to his.
“Unless they are, and they’ve been under our nose this whole fucking time.” He grits his teeth and balls his fist so tight that his emotions send a shockwave down the inside of my forearms straight to my palms.
“Jagger, they aren’t ours. I had their blood tested to be sure,” Dad reveals, severing my connection to my beta.
“When did you do that? And how come I never knew about it?” I ask, not the least bit okay with being kept in the dark on something this important.
“You weren’t alpha back then. Elijah asked me to do it when he saw Annalise getting too close to Kate. He wanted proof his wife couldn’t ignore.”
“Then explain how Kate placed her fingers over my lips, and suddenly my fucking voice was gone. Or how she told me to stay like a dog so I wouldn’t stop her from leaving, or how I couldn’t move my feet for over three goddamn hours.”
I can shield my state of mind from my pack, but I can’t always block experiencing their emotions, so when Jag’s eyes go from my Dad to me, his feelings hit my chest like a ton of bricks. He’s at war with himself, feeling like he’s being split into two pieces. It hurts me the same as it torments him.
“That’s impossible,” my father answers while I stare, trying to figure out why he thinks he’s being torn apart.
“Well, I guess it’s not.” Jag’s stare flips to mine. “Her eyes glowed blood-orange. It only lasted a second, two at the most, but I saw what I saw. Explain that, Alpha.”
“That would only happen if?—”
“My wolf bit her,” I say, cutting off my dad, knowing that’s the only plausible explanation.
“You claimed her?” Dad’s eyes visibly widen in front of me, shocked, perhaps even horrified, as they should be.
“No!” I shout, the word sour on my tongue. “I have a mate, and it’s not Kate.”
“You bit her and then rejected her?” Jagger growls, his face reddening as his blue eyes darken.
“Kate bears Richard’s pack crest tattooed on her back. She claimed to hate her father but permanently inked herself as one of them. She is our enemy, the same as all the rest. No, I didn’t reject her, but I didn’t solidify the bond either. She didn’t bite me. Nothing was sealed.”
“What the fuck, Kane?!” my father says, all but screaming at me.
“My wolf wanted her and took someone that wasn’t his. He didn’t have the right. Yes, I told her to leave. She doesn’t belong here. For all we know, she could have known where my brother and mate were all along. Kate isn’t my fated mate. Her wound will heal. The claim my wolf wanted will fade. It’s time for us to focus on finding our missing wolves. If any of them get in our way, we make good on the promise I issued before she left.”
“Which was what?” Dad asks, anger laced in his voice.
“You really told her you’d kill her and even Trez, didn’t you?” Jagger accuses.
“Yes. And I meant it.” I didn’t mean it, but fuck, it’s the way it has to be. What’s done is done.
My father looks horrified at my admission.
“That’s a problem, brother.” Jagger stares, waiting for me to push him further.
“They’re our enemy,” I say again, this time more adamantly. “I ignored that fact for too long. So did you. We made our pack ignore it. No more. Kate is one of them. But if I find out she did know about Anna and Trey, that she knows where they’ve been this whole time, you better believe I’ll make good on that promise. I’ll kill them all.”
I’ll have to. I’m the alpha. If it has to be done, it’ll be done by me and me alone.
“Her pack may be our enemy, but she is not. Trez isn’t. Let’s be clear on that because my wolf won’t allow anyone, even you, to harm them. That’s something else she did,” he informs me, a bitter taste on his tongue. “She used her alpha power to force me to promise I’d protect Trez from you. My wolf is now loyal to her.”
“That shouldn’t be possible.” My dad combs a hand through his hair as he looks between Jag and me.
“Then I suggest you fix whatever spell or hex she put on your wolf before I force your beast on his back. You’re both loyal to the Bloodmoon pack and to me, or you’re both not. I can’t have a beta whose wolf wants to rip my throat out.”
“There’s no spell or any magical element at play against Jagger or the wolf inside him, Kane,” Storm tells me. “I’d know if there were.”
“Then how is it possible for one of our wolves to be controlled by someone who isn’t his alpha? If a bond wasn’t formed, how is magic not in play?” Dad begs Storm for an answer, the same one I desperately want. Need.
“I can’t answer that,” she says, her head moving from side to side, “except that I’ll ask again: are you sure Kate isn’t Kane’s fated mate?”
Steps on the patio past the open front door save me from snapping at Storm. I turn to see who it is. We all turn.
My body goes rigid. A beat later, a single word falls from my lips, but it’s the relief I feel at seeing him that confuses the hell out of me.
“Trez.”