Black Moon (Alpha Pack #3)(59)

What was right?

He bolted through the rec room, leaping and easily clearing A.J. and Kira, who were sprawled on the carpet watching television. He ran straight for the outside door-and right through the glass, which shattered on impact. Alarms blared. Somebody would have to fix that. He didn't give a f**k.

There was no pain from any possible injury. Only pain inside that had no outlet.

He ran through the forest for a long while, moving in the direction of Malik's cabin. The place that was nothing more than an illusion, filled with wickedness. So wrong. But he needed to know what the damned Unseelie was talking about. Was his mate really keeping something else from him, or was it a trick? If she was, he might not be able to forgive her.

But didn't everyone deserve another shot? What if nobody had been willing to give him a chance when he arrived in Cody? What if Nick and the Pack had turned him out? They could have at any point in the last few weeks, when it had become obvious Kalen came with a battleship full of trouble. If they had, where would he be now?

Right where he was currently headed. Of that much he was suddenly sure. Malik would have simply lured him in sooner. In an epiphany, it struck him that Malik was, almost without a single doubt, the one responsible for bringing Kalen to the Shoshone in the first place. Until now, he'd always chalked it up to fate that he'd ended up here.

Now he knew better.

The rustic cabin came into view and he slowed, trotting into the yard. The front door opened before he even reached the porch, Malik standing there in his guise as Kerrigan, looking as handsome and urbane as ever.

"You could have teleported," the Unseelie observed with impatience. "I don't appreciate being kept waiting."

Letting his magic flow, he shifted back into human form. "Tough shit. I'm here now, aren't I?"

A flash of anger sparked in his fathomless eyes, but then Malik's lips turned up in amusement. "Come inside, whelp. The last time you were here you asked me a question. I have the answer."

Kalen followed him into the house. Nothing had changed-but something was about to. The air was heavy with the weight of a secret that might soon crush him with the telling. Any secret Malik was excited to impart could only mean bad things for anyone around him.

"What is this answer going to cost me? You want blood?"

"I already have that," he answered cryptically. "And so do you."

Kalen suppressed a shiver. "Are you going to dance around this all night? I don't even remember the question I asked."

Malik walked to the wet bar and removed two tumblers from the glass shelf. Into each he poured two generous fingers of the fine Cognac he'd served before, his stance all too casual. But Kalen had no trouble reading the growing anticipation in the Unseelie's expression. His posture. He turned, a feverish light in his eyes as he brought Kalen the drink, handed it to him.

"You asked me, why you? Why, of all the powerful beings in the world, did I choose you?"

"I remember now." Kalen took a fortifying sip of the liquor, let it warm his insides as it went down. "I assumed it had to do with what Grandma told me. That I was born under a black moon, which makes me vulnerable to dark forces."

"That is true, what she told you," he allowed.

"But there's more."

"Of course. Isn't there always?" Malik swirled the amber liquid, took a drink. Then he closed the distance between them, standing casually a mere couple of feet away. Too close. "You are one with the darkness because it's in your blood, Kalen. It's a part of you that causes you intense pain to deny, and yet you fight it so." He seemed genuinely saddened by this.

"I feel it," he admitted. "All the time."

"There is no point in your fighting it any longer." The other male gazed into his eyes. Kalen couldn't look away if he tried. "You were born to be the greatest Sorcerer, the most powerful Fae in the universe. I want you to learn all that you can so that one day, when my time in the universe is done, I may pass the torch. You will rule as I have. You're the only one who can carry on my work."

Kalen shook his head. "That's crazy. I'm nothing like you."

"Remember what I said about blood. You were born under a black moon, which means your sire was a creature of power and darkness. This is what your grandmother kept from you," the Unseelie said earnestly. "Don't you understand?"

His brows furrowed. "Not really. You're saying that my father was, what? A 'creature of darkness,' as you put it? Dave was Unseelie or something?"

"May the gods damn David Ray Black for the spineless human worm he was!" Malik thundered, hurling his glass of Cognac across the room, where it shattered into a zillion shards. The Unseelie's fangs lengthened and his human glamour began to slip. Claws emerged at his fingertips, and his ebony wings erupted from his back as he raged.

"That worthless slug could never sire such a force as you! That is why he hated you so f**king much! That's why he beat you and your mother daily! Why he tossed you out of his home that night, so afraid of you that he almost pissed himself when he realized you were coming into your magic! Don't you get it, boy?"

Kalen swallowed the sickness rising in his throat with the liquor. "He wasn't my father? Then who is?" he rasped.

Oh, God, no. If there's any hope for me at all, please-