21. Sam
Chapter twenty-one
Sam
Two in the morning. I was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table with a cold coffee and a list of scenarios, none of which ended well.
Scenario one: Annabella heals, sneaks out at dawn, goes straight back to Webster. He sends her on another mission. She ends up dead or injured or on the run for the rest of her life.
Scenario two: I show her the evidence before she’s ready, she decides it’s a Council fabrication, and bolts. Same result. Different route.
Scenario three: I somehow convince her that the man she’s devoted five years of her life to is a narcissistic sociopath who’d sell her out for a political advantage. She believes me. Hates me for it. But she’s alive.
Two out of three scenarios where she ended up dead. Best case? She lived but never forgave me. Solid odds.
Upstairs, I could hear her moving. She hadn’t slept. Neither had I, but I’d at least gone through the motions, lying on the bed in the room next to hers, staring at the ceiling, listening to her breathing. Her footsteps were light and careful as she paced.
I needed to outthink her. I needed to do the one thing no one in Annabella McGrath’s life had ever done: tell her the truth and let her make her own choice.
Even if that choice ripped me apart.
I took the stairs two at a time, not bothering to be quiet about it. She’d hear me coming, but I wanted her to know.
The guest room door was closed. Light spilled under it. I knocked once, hard.
Silence. Then: “It’s two in the morning, Sam.”
“Open the door.”
“I’m trying to sleep.”
“No, you’re not. Open the door, Annabella.”
A longer silence. When the door swung open, she was standing there in one of Sofia’s borrowed T-shirts and a pair of leggings, her dark hair loose around her s, that silver streak catching the lamplight. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry.
“Listen, Sam, I’m leaving. I’ve healed enough to travel. You pulled us out of the Kennel, and I’m grateful, but we have work to do, and we can’t do it from here.”
“Work.” I let the word sit there. “You mean Webster’s work. So you’d go back like nothing happened? Just pick up where you left off, kidnapping and mind-wiping Council members? Being Webster’s pet Shifter?”
“Being Webster’s pet Shifter?” she repeated, and magic sparked around her fingers, silver-green.
That was new.
“Is that what you think I am?”
Fear skittered across my spine. Not of her magic. Of losing her. If she walked out that door and back to Webster, I would never see her again. My wolf knew it with a certainty that went beyond instinct. But could I do this? Could I hurt her?
My wolf snarled inside of me. Show her the truth.
“I think he snaps his fingers, you jump. He says mind-wipe Council members, you do it. He tells you not to ask questions, and you don’t.” I pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room. “Sounds pretty obedient to me.”
“Fuck you, Sam.”
“Hit a nerve?”
“You don’t know anything about my relationship with Simon.” She put a hand to her hair, twisting it through her silver streak, then dropped it abruptly. “You don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish—”
“Simon,” I repeated. “You always call him Simon.”
It wasn’t just that she called him Simon; it was the way she said it. It was the blind faith she had in him, this one man. What hold did he have on her? What had he done to deserve her unwavering loyalty?
“That is his name,” she said.
“Most people call him Webster. Simon’s intimate. Personal.” I took another step forward. “So, what is he to you, Annabella? Really?”
She went still, and then her voice when she spoke was calm and cold. “He’s someone who actually gave a damn when no one else did. Who saw potential instead of a mistake—”
No, cold Annabella would not do; I couldn’t let her shut down, repeat whatever bullshit he fed her, I had to keep pushing, had to keep her angry.
“No,” I cut her off. “He saw someone he could mold into whatever he needed.”
Magic crackled along her skin, and the lamplight flickered.
Good.
“You weren’t there,” she said. “You don’t know what my life was like before him. You don’t know what it was like in that Pack—”
“Then tell me. What was it like?”
“Why? So you can pick it apart? Use it against me?”
“So I can understand why you’re willing to throw your life away for him.”
She laughed—bitter, sharp. “You want to understand? Fine. I grew up in a Pack that treated me like garbage because I was half-witch. They beat me. Broke my bones. Starved us. Because of what I was. My mom was barely holding on. We had nothing. No Pack support, no resources, no future. And then Simon showed up.”
My wolf raged. The image she’d just put in my head—a kid with dark hair and a silver streak, ribs showing, flinching from the people who were supposed to protect her—was killing me.
How dare they treat her that way. How fucking dare they take something so precious and grind it down.
I took a breath; if I got out of Adarcan I would deal with the Ashridge Pack, and if not, I’d send Derek to do it.
Right now, I couldn’t get distracted. I was close to something.
I could feel it the way you feel a storm shifting direction.
“And Webster offered to save you?”
“He was the first person who didn’t see me as an abomination. The first person who told me my witch side wasn’t something to be ashamed of, wasn’t something to hide. He offered to help. To train me. To teach me how to use my abilities instead of suppressing them.”
“And what did he ask for in return?”
“Nothing! Don’t you get it? He didn’t ask me for anything. I begged him to take me out of there. Begged him to let me help. He was the only person who believed in me. Who gave me purpose.”
I could see it. The whole picture, sharp and terrible.
A teenager so broken by her own Pack, taught to hate herself so completely, that when someone as charismatic as Simon Webster turned up and told her she was special, that her magic was a gift and not a curse, of course she’d gone with him.
Anyone would have. But Webster hadn’t saved her out of kindness.
He’d identified a weapon and spent years sharpening it.
But there was one thing that didn’t fit.
“You were an outcast in the Ashridge Pack. A werewolf Pack.” I kept my voice level, working through it the way I’d work through intelligence at Shaw Investigations and the Council: pulling threads, watching what unraveled.
“So what was Simon Webster—the most hated and hunted witch in the north—doing in a backwater wolf settlement?”
She went absolutely still.
“Unless,” I said, “he came looking specifically for you.”
She shook her head again but didn’t deny it. Her fingers found her silver streak again. This time, she didn’t let go.
The pieces locked into place. The way she said his name. The personal loyalty that went beyond ideology. The fact that Webster kept her close but never claimed her publicly. The resemblance I hadn’t wanted to see…those sharp cheekbones, that stubborn jaw, the raw power simmering under the surface.
“Simon Webster is your father.”
Annabella stood rigid, every muscle locked, her magic pulsing in waves around her; silver-green light that made the air shimmer and the shadows on the walls jump and dance.
Holy fuck.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“You don’t know him.” Her voice was barely there.
“I know he wants to destroy all Shifters. I know he and his coven are behind ripple. I know he’s working with Kane to take down the Wolf Council. And I know he left you in Adarcan.”
“He couldn’t risk exposing himself—”
“He couldn’t risk exposing himself to save his own daughter?”
I was pushing too hard, and I knew it. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw that cell in the Kennel. I saw her curled up, bleeding, alone, waiting for someone who was never coming. “What kind of father does that? What kind of leader?”
“The kind who understands the bigger picture! The kind who knows that one person’s sacrifice might save thousands—”
“But you’re not one person, are you?” I moved closer. Close enough to see the way her pulse hammered at the base of her throat. “You’re his daughter.”
The magic around her flared brighter, more violent. Somewhere downstairs, something made of glass rattled against a shelf.
“Stop it, Sam.”
But I couldn’t. Not when she was talking about going back to him. Not when every instinct I had was screaming that if she went back, I’d lose her.
And I couldn’t lose her. She was my mate, and I would do anything to protect her, even from her own fucking father.
“He came looking for you,” I said. “He recruited his own daughter. Trained you. Sent you on missions that could have gotten you killed. All while keeping you a secret, because acknowledging you would cost him politically.”
“That’s not—He had to keep it secret to protect us both—”
“To protect himself,” I corrected. “If anyone knew Simon Webster had a half-Shifter daughter, it would destroy his credibility among his followers. So he kept you hidden. Kept you useful, doing his bidding. And called it love.”
“Fuck you, Sam Shaw!” Magic exploded around her, light flaring so bright I threw an arm up against it.
When I looked again, she was standing in the center of a magical storm, her eyes glowing, the silver streak in her hair lit up like a live wire.
The books on the nightstand flew off. The curtains billowed. A crack ran up the wall behind her.
She was terrifying and utterly magnificent.
“You don’t know anything about him! About us! He gave up everything to help me—”
“What did he give up, Annabella?”
“He gave up having two daughters!” The words burst out of her like they’d been held behind a dam for years. “He gave up being able to claim me and Ellie, acknowledge us, be our father publicly! Do you know what that cost him?”
There it was. The confession she’d never made to anyone, maybe not even to herself.
And all I could think was that he didn’t give that up for them. He gave it up for himself.