Page 68 of Raven

I glared at him, silent, seething.

He inhaled deeply. "It's a curse sometimes. Pushes against you. Everyone's always the same, so damn needy. They want this, they want that. I have to close it off just to save my own sanity." His lips curled into a sneer. "People are so whiny. But it works the other way too. Did you figure that out yet? You can send out what you feel?"

That's what he'd done to me at the flat, when he'd murdered my mother. He'd sent me my own grief, bundled up like a fucking gift so it swamped me and took me down.

My father was sitting on a chair outside the door to my cell. He leant forward to look at me, his legs wide, hands clasped between them. His eyes were such a shade of green. Bright. He had to be doing that on purpose. He wasn't a half-breed. He pushed out his ability and it came to me, a ripple across the floor.

I shuffled back. "Don't you fucking talk to me. I am nothing like you."

He chuckled, a sound that sent chills down my spine. "Oh, but you are, son. More than you know."

My father's power slowly reached out to me. I tried to move back more, trying to get out of its reach, and I ended up hitting the wall. I didn't get up, but I felt it seeping into me, cold and dark. Through my hand, black tendrils ran along underneath my skin.

I pushed against it naturally, not wanting anything from my father, even this. I used my own shield as I'd trained myself to do, pushing against them, feeling like it was something I could manipulate in a place different to reality. As if I could reach inside myself, me and my panther, and we could grab my father's power and not only hold it back but put our hands around it, shape it into a ball and push it right back to him.

But the more I did that, the more he did it back to me. He was strong and I was inexperienced. There was a reason he was the alpha of a pack. He pushed it through me like a sweep of cold airthat went through the layers of my skin as if it travelled between muscle and skin all over my body.

He made my body wash with a lightness, a feeling that felt good and easy. I pushed against it because I didn't want to feel that. This wasn't the time nor the place. I needed to feel the grief for my mother, and I needed to get back to Tia.

"Stop it," I growled, teeth clenched. "Pack it the fuck in."

His green eyes bored into me, his panther clawing at mine. I pushed back, every muscle straining against his oppressive power.

My legs shook as I forced myself up. Sweat beaded on my forehead, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I didn't care that I was naked.

"You're strong," he said, a hint of pride in his voice. "With training, you'll be unstoppable."

"Fuck your training. You killed my mother," I spat, the words tasting like bile.

He didn't even flinch. "It was necessary."

"Necessary?" I slammed against the bars, ignoring the bite of the chain. "You snapped her neck like it was nothing."

"She broke pack rules. She knew the consequences."

My stomach churned, but I held my ground. "You claim to be my father. What rules could possibly justify murdering the mother of your child?"

He stood, matching my height. His eyes flashed dangerously. "She stole you from me. I am the alpha of this pack and you are my heir. She took that from both of us. All these years. Seventeen of them, I have searched for you. I have turned the world upside down looking for you."

"That still doesn't make it right."Tears burnt hot tracks down my cheeks. I didn't wipe them away. "You had a choice. Why didn't you just knock on my door and say 'Hey, Raven. Guesswhat? I'm your dad?' Why ..." My voice broke. "She was my mother, and you took her."

He stepped closer to the gate. Close enough that if I wasn't chained, I could have wrung his fucking neck. "There are rules within the pack. No one is above them. No one is immune to them. She knew them. She understood them and she made her choices. Her death was written years ago when she chose to steal you. Anything that happened to her was her own doing." He inhaled deeply. "I will not argue this with you. It is done now."

My hands clenched the bars, knuckles white. "That's bullshit, and you know it. She was a fourteen year old girl, when you got her pregnant, and a child herself."

His gaze raked over me, lip curling. "And because of that, she made you weak, I see. She didn't forge you into the man you were destined to become, but maybe her death will do that for you. Grief can be strength. This is your rightful place."

THIRTY

I didn't see my father for days after that. They brought me food and clothes, but that was it. None of them talked to me. I had nothing to say anyway. As soon as I got the chance, I was out of here. I didn't give a shit what they'd try to do to me for it. What could they do now?

Most days, they dropped a rabbit or something else small into my cage. Cage, because that's what it was, no matter what they called it.

I tried to resist eating, pushing myself to the point of starvation, but my panther always won out. If I refused to eat and got weak, he forced his way through and did what was needed. When he shifted, after a day or two of my stubbornness, there'd be a collection of animals for him to slaughter and eat.

But I didn't want to take my father's offerings. I didn't want anything from him.

When I pulled on the jeans and t-shirt they'd sent down, I did so reluctantly. How many days was I going to sit naked in my cell? They'd given me a bed, nothing special, just a camping cot that sat in the corner. I refused that too. I'd shift and curl into the corner to fall asleep. Most often, I woke up as myself.

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