“She would never betray me, but now that’s the issue I am having. See, Tabitha is very sick, and she hasn’t got long to live left. I need you to heal her every few months for the rest of her life. That’s where you come in,” he beams, and I fight the urge to shiver.
“Go fuck yourself,” I spit.
“No, but you will after you reject your mates. Did you know Lunar wolves could reject their mates even after being marked and literally heal themselves of the mate bond? Tabitha told me, she found that rather interesting.”
No, I didn’t know that, it had been left out of my little Moon Goddess lessons. I glare at him. I was not rejecting my mates.
“First, I need you to heal my sister, then we will get down to this mate business, you will reject Ezra, then I will mark you, so I have you. Though I am curious as to how he managed to mark you twice,” he says, flicking my hair over my shoulder and staring at my mark.
This idiot has killed his own father, knowing nothing of what is going on, knows nothing of me being a Gemini wolf, and clearly has no idea I even have two mates. With them having marked each other, their scents blend as one, and he has no idea what he has gotten himself into.
“You really should have left the pack to your father. Clearly, you are too stupid to run it. All those brain cells are used for breathing only,” I inform him, and he growls before the back of his hand connects with my face.
My head whips to the side, and my teeth rattle. My face burns before he grips it. His fingers dig in painfully to my cheeks when I hear a growl beside me. Darian smirks, turning his gaze to Ezra.
“Hey, Cuz, just having a friendly chat with your mate, not that you can do anything about it. How is your bath, is the water alright, hasn’t gone cold?” he taunts, as Ezra growls. I turn my head to see Ezra glaring at him. Darian laughs sadistically, and I realize he has lost the plot severely. Growing up, he was always a jerk, but something is seriously unhinged in him.
“It must suck knowing not even your father wanted you as Alpha,” I remind, and he looks back at me, his lips pulling back over his lips as he snarls. “Was it to do with your intellect? Clearly that is lacking. Or was it to do with the fact that Tabitha always surpassed you in everything? Or was it-”
His hands wrap around my throat as he cuts off my air. I could feel my face changing color as he deprived me of oxygen. Ezra struggles with his chains as he tries to break free, but his strength would do him no good while in a bath of Wolfsbane, and he couldn’t heal.
His voice flits in my head. “Mateo will come for us. Just do what he says,” Ezra orders, yet my eyes are pulsating in my head as Darian’s grip gets tighter. His face is inches off mine, and Ezra yells at him still struggling, but I couldn’t focus on what they are saying.
Darian suddenly lets go, and I gasp, sucking in much-needed air. “You will mind your tongue, or next time I will cut it from you,” he growls at me.
The door opens again before a gurney is wheeled in. Andrei is strapped to a table. His entire body is covered in blood, he has wounds all over him, and I smell the wolfsbane that had been crushed into his wounds. The sizzling of his flesh as the toxins ate away at it like the water was doing to Ezra, just at a slower more torturous pace.
“I am curious as to why he is helping you, even after he killed your mother. I will admit I jumped the gun a little before discovering all the facts. But can you blame me? My father was standing me down, I kind of lost it. Tabitha told me what she could, but even she didn’t know much, just that Andrei here traded your mother’s life for some old documents. So Kat, tell me why the forest howlers pack is now helping you, and you seem to have forgiven him for your mother’s murder. What am I missing?” he demands, tapping his gun on his forehead as he thinks.
I stare at Andrei. Half his skin is missing from the gravel rash, his arm is broken, the bone juts out of his skin. I am beginning to understand why Jackson’s pack attacked Andrei’s. Not even Jackson was even stupid enough to go to war with not only Ezra, but Andrei.
His son, however, being the brain-dead twit he is with a god complex, clearly knows nothing and just attacks for the sake of it, trying to scare off his rivals. He has lived behind his father’s reputation for so long, but now he is trying to make his own. Not even Jackson has been stupid enough to send his men over pack territory he has no control over. This was purely for this sick bastard’s entertainment.
It made sense why Jackson refused to give him the pack. His son is sick and depraved, a danger to his own Pack with his cruelty and the insanity lurking behind his green eyes. No wonder why he wanted to give the Pack to Tabitha and why he needed me.
This is why he needed me to heal Tabitha, she was the only one ever able to keep Darian in check. He and his sister were always close, he was always quick to defend her and she, him. We all heard the rumors growing up about how Tabitha would cover up for her brother to bribe his victims to remain quiet, but I always thought they were merely rumors because, for the most part, he seemed well put together, the king of the school.
Clearly, his father had heard them too, about his wild partying ways, the drugs and the girls that fell victim to him. But everything was usually swept under the rug by Tabitha. No one wanted to get on her bad side, and her brother’s even less. No one wants to go against their future alpha, and he exploited that for years, but now, with his father gone, and no one to cover up for him. He was a whole other level of crazy.