Chapter 61
Joe didn’t leave. He knew better.
“You think it was someone we know?” he asked after a while.
“Yes.”
“You think it was someone close?”
I stared into the flames. “I think someone in our pack wanted Elena dead before I ever knew who she really was.”
He didn’t respond, and I didn’t ask him to. I needed silence. I needed time.
After Joe left, I stayed there a while longer, watching the fire as it devoured log after log, sparks vanishing like secrets in the dark.
Eventually, my mother came in, her heels clicking softly against the stone floor.
“You’ve been quiet today,” she said.
I didn’t turn around. “It’s been a long week.”
She moved to the sideboard and poured herself a cup of tea–always tea, never anything stronger. “You’re not sleeping.”
“No.”
She took the seat Joe had vacated and crossed her legs neatly. Her eyes scanned me like they always did–measuring, evaluating. Not unkindly, but carefully. She’d learned that from my father.
“What is it?” she asked finally. “And don’t say nothing.”
I let out a long breath. “Did you and Dad ever deal with traitors in the pack?”
That got her attention. Her back stiffened, her expression cooling in a way that reminded
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me exactly why she’d been Luna for two decades.
“Why?”
“Because I think we have one now.”
She didn’t speak right away. Her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Your father handled traitors quickly. Quietly. Definitively.”
“That sounds like him,” I murmured.
She nodded. “Though there was one time… when things weren’t so clean.”
I turned toward her. “There was what?”
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She hesitated, fingers tightening around her teacup. “Do you remember your father’s
Gamma?”
“Sherman?”
“No. Before him. Pierce.”
The name hit me like a punch to the ribs.
I remembered Pierce. Barely. He’d been Gamma when I was away at school.
I hadn’t spent much time around him, but I remembered his voice–deep and rough, like
gravel. He’d always seemed just a little too quiet. A little too watchful.
“What about him?”
My mother set her cup down and sighed. “Information came out. Things he’d planned. Dangerous things.”
“Like what?”
“Attempts to manipulate alliances. Leverage secrets. Even suggestions that he meant to do harm to… other packs. Children, even. We couldn’t prove it–he was careful—but there
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were too many coincidences to ignore.”
I leaned back, letting the information sink in. Processing.
“Why wasn’t he executed?” I finally said.
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“Because your father was a good man. Pierce had served Silverclaw faithfully for years. He
was given a choice–banishment or death. He chose banishment. Your father offered his family clemency, but they refused. They left together.”
“So they were kicked out of the pack?” No pack meant death in our world. No family. No protection. Most werewolves sought out the human world. If you were excommunicated from a pack, no other pack would take you.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Just… Just before your father died.”
There was something in her voice that made my eyes snap to hers.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She looked away. “There were… rumors. That Pierce orchestrated it somehow. Your father’s death. Revenge.”
“Mother-”
“We couldn’t prove it,” she said, and for the first time in my life, I heard my mother’s voice crack. She answered my next question before I could even ask it.
“And you were grieving. Trying to hold the pack together with both hands. I didn’t want to put that on your shoulders.”
I ran a hand through my hair, heart pounding.
“Do you know where Pierce is now?” I asked.
“No one does,” she said. “He disappeared after the funeral. Some say he left the territory.
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Others think he was waiting.”
“For what?”
She stood. “To finish what he started.”
The words hung in the air, chilling in their simplicity.
At the door, she paused. “If someone crosses you, son… act swiftly.”
She looked over her shoulder, eyes colder than I’d seen in years.
“And permanently.”
She left me with that.
a
I barely had time to sit again before my phone rang. I looked at the screen. Elena.
I hesitated, emotions thrashing through my head like branches in a gale.
I answered anyway. I had to. It was her.
Her voice came through, sharp and angry. “Is it true?”
I leaned back in my chair. “Is what true?”
“Did Cassandra leak my identity to the press?”
P
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