1. Paul #3
Also, I liked how much of my mother I could still see in the place: the drive where she’d taught Luther, Chris, and me to ride a bike; the gardens she had once tended to so lovingly; her craft room on the second floor of the east wing.
I couldn’t imagine living in a place where I didn’t get to see, touch, or smell those things anymore.
Maybe that made me a mama’s boy, but I didn’t particularly care.
Thinking of my mother always made me a bit contemplative, and I was very much in my head by the time I pulled into the garage and parked my car with our dozen or so other vehicles.
While my family was quite well off, none of us had ever really been motorheads, so we had a much more modest collection compared to the Chelsington, Chevalier, or DelMartino families.
The Chevaliers, McElroys, and my own family made up the triad of the most powerful packs along the East Coast.
We VanMarches were ostentatious in other ways, mostly food and our estate, but I liked to think that was more subtle.
Once I was inside, I hung my keys on the rack our mother had made. It was a kitschy little thing made of clay and acrylic paint, but I loved it dearly.
Not that long ago, one of our staff members would always be at the door to greet us and collect our keys for us, but with three of the five children having moved out, we downsized a lot of the auxiliary support our family once had.
Even the Parracidas, the head staff family who supported all three of our region’s top packs, had largely stopped working for us.
Their daughter, Alexandria, still made her elaborate cakes and confections for our special events and holidays, and their son occasionally provided rotating guard when needed, but that was about it.
Much to my surprise, I rather liked the reduced staff. It made it easier to linger in the quiet and not feel like someone was watching me whenever I needed to destress. Whenever I needed to not be the oh-so-perfect and on-the-ball middle son anymore.
And it was most certainly quiet now, which wasn’t entirely unusual. Luther and my father were likely in the study, no doubt going through proposal after proposal of potential mates for my eldest brother.
After grabbing a bottle of water from our fridge, I headed upstairs to my father’s preferred place of business, but when I was about halfway up, I realized I couldn’t hear anything.
I paused, listening intently. The utter silence was completely alien to me.
Even if my brother and father were reading silently, I should have been able to hear their heartbeats, the shuffle of paper.
I should have been able to scent them—their personal smell or any pheromones or emotional signaling.
I should also have been picking up their personal security.
Something was amiss.
Hair raising on the back of my neck, I called my wolf close enough to the surface that my claws hardened and extended, the muscles of my arm thickening and layering upon each other.
If someone was going to try to get the drop on me, they would have a most unpleasant surprise.
I may have not been the next in line for our family, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a force to be reckoned with.
When I reached my father’s study, I paused on the other side of the door to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating the oppressive quiet.
The utter absence of sound. But it was as if there was nothing on the other side of the door.
No creaking floor, no old manor expanding and contracting or moving with the wind. Just...
Nothing.
I took a step back and kicked the door. I kicked the door hard.
If it turned out that I was merely paranoid, I would have no problem apologizing and living with the embarrassment of making a scene.
But every instinct in my body was screaming at me that there was something unnatural about the situation.
“Fath—”
I never got the full word out, because what greeted me shook me down to my core, stealing away any words I might have had. Caspian VanMarche, my father, was sitting in his chair, a silver blade sticking out of his chest.
My father.
I stood there a moment, trapped within my own shock. Only my eyes moved as I took in the grizzly scene. Technically, my father and brother’s security detail were also in the room, bits and pieces of them flung everywhere in a macabre version of a Rorschach test made with blood and viscera instead.
Shaking myself out of my shock, I ran to the closest—God, what did I call it?
— pile of bloody matter. I could see bits of clothes shredded this way and that.
An occasional finger, chunk of flesh, a foot, a discarded shoe (did it go with that foot?).
It was as if I was outside my own body, unable to connect what was in front of me with reality.
But then, glinting in the mire, was the edge of a ring I recognized instantly. Although my brain was screaming at me to stop, to not touch anything, I pulled it out.
I had no expectations for what would happen—who could know in such a situation?—but the last thing I could have ever anticipated was for a hand to come with it, then a heavily muscled arm.
“L-l-luther?” I sputtered, dropping the shredded limb and falling onto my ass as I scuttled backward.
My heart thundered, and I was sure I was going to throw up, but instead I just sat there while my mind tried to rationalize the horror scene I’d walked in on.
Someone had just killed our alpha and his heir.
And they had done it in our home.