The Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #1)(48)

“I am.” She eyes me like she expects something. Eventually, I guess when I don’t give her what she’s looking for, she leans to rest her elbows on the table. “I’ll start on the sunny day. Una and Rowan Bell were braiding daisy chains. Rowan was watching her baby cousin Mari. Rowan wanders off home to get a snack.”

She tilts her head. I can picture it, but it’s not in my memory.

“Thomas Fane was getting wasted at the lodge. He was listening to his alpha, your father, brag about his conquests.”

My father was a righteous prick. This isn’t news.

“The alpha’s son—” She waves a hand at me. “He was throwing a ball as high as he could and still catch it, waiting for a friend.”

“I was waiting for Tye.” I catch a glimpse. Hiking the hard old pigskin I’d found in the woods into the blue sky, frustrated to be kept waiting.

“Thomas Fane had enough. He cursed your father and left. Stumbled home. And on his way, he came across a little girl and a baby in a basket.”

My gut knots. My memory offers nothing, but my wolf is alert. On edge. Like he knows what’s coming.

“Fane staggered over and punted the baby’s basket.” The crone sneers in disgust. “He would have stomped his own child to death if not for Una Hayes. She put her little body between Thomas Fane’s wolf and that baby, and she nearly died. She would have.”

Abertha pins me with blazing eyes.

“Except?”

“Except for Killian Kelly. The alpha’s nine-year-old son. He raced to the rescue, and on his way, he shifted for the first time. His wolf was a beast. He rent Thomas Fane limb from limb. It took Declan Kelly and three enforcers to drag him away from the corpse.”

“Bullshit.” That’s the kind of story that gets told at every bonfire. I’ve never heard it before. And I sure as shit don’t remember it happening.

“If the pack knew you shifted before your heat, you’d have a target on your back. Your father knew this. The others wouldn’t wait for him to die to challenge you. And you might have a beast inside you, but in human form, you were seventy pounds soaking wet. Eamon or Dermot or anyone with ambition could’ve easily beat you so many times, no one would’ve looked at you and seen a possible alpha. You’d be out as a contender before you could grow a beard. So your father swore his enforcers to secrecy, and it was never spoken of again.”

“My father would have told me about it.”

“Would he?”

The kettle whistles. The crone rises to take it off the fire.

I don’t think about my father much. He was an asshole. He started me sparring at five and let the males a few years older whale on me. He got off on watching me come back and take them down. He thought he taught me how to recover, and in a way, he did. He put me on the ground plenty before he put me in the ring.

He was always clear that I was to succeed him as alpha. His seed was the strongest. I was his trophy. His belt.

You don’t explain shit to a belt. So, yeah, maybe he wouldn’t have told me.

“How do you know all this? You were there?” The crone avoids the commons like the plague, and everyone is cool with that.

She comes back to the table, setting mismatched tea cups in front of us both. I give her a nod of thanks.

“I see all.” She rounds her eyes, and then she snorts. “Your mother brought you and Una up here afterwards. You were almost dead. You both were.”

I’m surprised my father let her. He was big on rubbing dirt in it.

“Fane didn’t get the chance to leave a mark on you, but your wolf tore you up.”

“He’s a monster.”

The crone uses her spoon to strain the tea bag and then sets it on the saucer. I follow suit and put my thumb through the wet sack. Now there’s flakes in my cup.

“There wasn’t much I could do but treat the pain. There were a few days—” Her eyes grow distant. “We didn’t think you’d make it.”

“But I recovered.” I always do.

“You did. But you weren’t the same.”

“First blood changes a male.” It is known.

She shakes her head. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You weren’t the same as other wolves anymore. It was as if to let him out, you had to consume him. Become one with him.”

“The wolf and man are one.” It’s such a common saying, it’s out of my mouth before I think.

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t bring that bullshit into my house. That’s just how backwards folk justify behaving like animals to each other.”

“Don’t tell the elders that. They’ll burn you at the stake.”

She snorts. “Not a single one of those mouth breathers could catch me when they were in their prime.”

“No doubt.” I’ve seen her wolf. She’s sleek and silver, and she’s got uncommonly sharp fangs.

“What I’m trying to say is that I thought it’d undo. Repair in good time. I thought the Fates would prevail. But I was wrong. You aren’t like other males.”

“Yeah. I’m a flip-shifter.”

“I’m not talking about that. You’re—” Her face scrunches like she’s searching for the right words. “You’re getting in your own way.”