The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(75)

“The basement was Declan Kelly’s personal harem. He’d reward his sycophants and punish the females who ran afoul of him. Take out his aggression. He didn’t need much of a reason. There were many days the females who did time down there didn’t eat. Many days they didn’t see daylight. More than a few who never came back up the steps.”

“I didn’t know.” I knew the broad strokes of what used to happen down there, but I guess I thought it was survival—females doing what they had to do. Horrible like so much in those days, but not—not this.

Why would I have thought it wasn’t an unspeakable horror? Because the females who endured it have never spoken of it? And why would they? Why should they rip themselves open so a pup who’s never had it that hard can understand?

Shame bites at me.

Abertha continues, “When Killian became alpha, he resettled many females who’d spent time in the basement with other packs.”

The weight on my chest grows heavier. Darragh’s sister lives in North Border.

“But the story I’m going to tell you happened long before Killian became alpha.” Abertha’s gaze drifts toward the ceiling like she’s calling up an old memory. “It was the winter we ran out of heating oil right before that bad blizzard. Darragh would have been nine. His sister, Iona, would have been fifteen. That full moon, their father, Cormac Ryan, had lost his challenge, and his entrails were still settling in Declan Kelly’s stomach. Declan, of course, didn’t waste any time sending the new unprotected female to his basement. A warning to any male who considered doing what Cormac had done.”

My stomach hurts. A sour taste floods my mouth.

Abertha lowers her gaze to meet mine. “And of course, Iona’s brave little brother fought his way down with nothing but his pocket knife to bring her back up again.”

My torn nails dig into the bedsheet.

“He was outnumbered, but he was as fierce then as he is now. He put out Declan’s second’s eye. As the story goes, he came a hair’s breadth from the alpha’s own throat before he was pinned down by Declan’s lieutenants.”

Dread coils around my throat.

“Declan Kelly was an uncommon evil. He didn’t have the villain’s usual blind spots—the narcissism, the hubris. He could see clearly into the hearts of males. And females.” Abertha’s gray eyes go vague. “He gave Iona a choice. Darragh would get a beating for his crime, but who would deliver it was her call—his males or the females in the basement.” Abertha’s thin lips quaver. “And who do you think she chose?”

“The females,” I whisper.

“Of course. The females. It’s hardly a choice, is it?”

“What happened?” My heart already aches.

“They didn’t fall on him at first. They hung back, and when the males shoved them at Darragh, they pulled their punches, protected him with their bodies from the more feral females. Declan lost his temper. He warned them—if they didn’t give Darragh a beating he wouldn't forget, his males would give him another he wouldn’t walk away from, and each of them would get one, too. Several of the females had sisters with them down there.”

I’m going to throw up. I don’t want to listen, don’t want to hear, don’t want to know.

“Declan backed the females into a corner. He opened Pandora’s box, and when they had no choice but to use their claws, all their rage, all the pain and anguish and despair that they were never allowed to show, that would have been death for them to show, came spilling out like flushing a septic wound.” Abertha stops, blinking her eyes. “They say that by the end, the males couldn’t pull the females off of him. They gave Darragh up for lost.”

My stomach lurches. “His sister?”

“Declan had her held back. She would’ve protected her brother, and the females would’ve torn her limb from limb.”

“But Darragh lived.”

Abertha nods. “It was a miracle—although I don’t think he would call it that. At the very last moment, by some power that I do not know and have never seen or heard tell of since, his wolf burst out of his skin.”

“But he was a pup.” Males don’t shift until their voices have dropped and their facial hair is at least starting to come in.

“He was. Too young to control the wolf. And the wolf—it was huge, but it wasn’t fully formed.”

I think of the great, golden-brown beast and his glowing, unfathomable stare as he dropped the bloody head of the man who hurt me at my feet.

“What’s wrong with his wolf?”

Abertha tosses her shoulder. “I can’t see into every mind, especially a wolf like that. Maybe he’s insane. Maybe he has a justifiable thirst for revenge against a people who forced him too early into a cruel world.”

“But Darragh isn’t mad.”

“No, he’s not.”

“The man and the wolf are two sides of the same coin.” That’s what the elders teach us.

“Are they?” Abertha raises an eyebrow.

I answer without hesitation. “No.”

They can’t possibly be. Darragh’s wolf is arrogant, vicious, a monster with a lust for blood. Darragh—Darragh tries to feed me apples. He doesn’t want me to chip a tooth on buckshot. Nearly mindless from rut, he still coiled his own arms in chains so he wouldn’t hurt me.