Page 30 of The Alpha's Warlock
It felt like hours before Dor stopped, holding up a hand to signal the rest of us. I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, but Ian nudged me, putting a finger to his lips. It took me a minute, without the enhanced hearing everyone else in the world seemed to have, but then I caught it: voices, not too far away, and rising and falling in the unmistakable pattern of an argument.
“What are they saying?” I whispered to Ian. “I know you can hear.” He didn’t reply, but his mouth dropped open, like he couldn’t believe his ears. “Seriously, asshole, I can’t hear what’s —”
“Neither can we if you’re yammering the whole time,” Charlie hissed as he brushed past me to stand with Dor a few feet in front of us.
And then he stiffened, leaning forward and peering through the trees. Fuck this. I stepped forward too, positioning myself just behind them and looking over Charlie’s shoulder. I couldn’t see much: a group of men, five or possibly six, standing in a clearing next to a small access road, on which Matthew’s car was parked. They were fifty yards away or so, and even with the moonlight I couldn’t make out any details. Ian was at my shoulder, leaning around Dor to get his own view.
“Fucking motherfucker,” he said. “What the — that’s impossible.”
“Apparently not,” Charlie growled.
“What? What are you seeing that I’m not?” I elbowed Ian hard. “Come on, this isn’t —”
And then the words shriveled and died in my suddenly arid throat as Dor whispered something and brushed his hand through the air in a circle. The group in the clearing jumped into focus, like Dor had crafted a giant telescope out of thin air. One was Matthew, facing down Sam Kimball, who stood a few feet away from him. I recognized the shaman from the ritual I’d escaped from, right at Kimball’s shoulder. Another Kimball stood on the pack leader’s other side; I wasn’t sure which one, but he was obviously closely related, by the identical heavy brow and thick neck and bulbous nose. One more man stood off to the side a little bit, and I stared in mounting horror, my heartbeat shooting up to hummingbird speed and my chest starting to seize up.
I’d never seen my father’s body. He’d been magically disintegrated, according to the medical examiner’s office’s supernatural investigator. All that was left was half an ear and spatters of blood, along with a few shreds of bone and sinew. Very Peter Pettigrew, right?
Only I’d been happily convinced that unlike the traitor from those books, my father was truly a scattering of atoms on the wind, gone forever to whatever hell awaited men like him.
Until that moment. Because there he stood, smirking at Matthew in a way that chilled my blood, arms folded across his chest in a casual pose that meant trouble.
Fuck, why had I been so insistent that I wanted answers, that I wanted the piece of information that was missing to make sense out of everything that had happened to me over the past few days?
Now I had it, and I wished I’d run to the ends of the earth instead of toward my own personal nightmare.
My father was alive. And he wanted me back.
I’d rather be dead. I swallowed hard, swaying on my feet and tasting bile. Well, at least that was probably an option.
Chapter 18
A Family Reunion
“No,” someone was muttering. “No, no, no, no, no…” It took a moment for me to realize it was me, sounding like I was on the verge of a panic attack.
By my tingling fingers and the way the top of my head felt like it was buzzing and about to fly away, I was past the verge and plummeting down fast.
“How the fuck has he hidden from us all this time?” Charlie, coldly furious. And glaring at Dor, like this was his fault.
Dor drew back, offense in every line of his stiff body. “I wasn’t looking for him,” he shot back. “Were you?”
“No,” I whispered. “Oh, no.” Everything was blurring in front of me. Tears. Those were tears, making my vision go all swimmy.
Charlie turned and looked at me, and thenreallylooked at me, frowning, his blue eyes narrowed and almost glowing. “You’re afraid of him. He’s your father. I’d think you’d be the only person who’d be happy to see him alive.”
I felt like I was choking. Happy? Fuckinghappy?
“He’s not happy because he already fucking knew. And now we know, too, probably sooner than he expected.”
Ian. Oh, gods. Ian. Arctic tundra was warmer than his voice, and when I managed to twist my stiffened neck and look at him, it would’ve been warmer than his expression, too. When had I gotten used to seeing his eyes shine with something like trust, something like affection, even, when they rested on me? Gotten used to that tiny little half-smile I’d hardly noticed when he was flashing it at me, and only really remembered now that his lips were pressed into a flat, unforgiving line?
“No,” I whispered again, the only word I could seem to force out between my numb lips. “No, Ian, no.”
Two words. Great.
Ian laughed, a raw, ugly sound that ripped out of his chest like someone was tearing out his lungs. “I knew. I fuckingknewyou couldn’t be for real, but I let you…what was the plan, Nate?” He spat my name out as if it tasted like filth. “Kill Matthew and me, help the Kimballs take over our territory? And all you had to do was play the victim and whore yourself out like you did with Jared. Did he tell you everything you needed to know to pull this off before you killed him?”
Ian’s voice had risen to a shout, and he lunged at me. I stumbled back a step and fell, hitting the ground hard enough to send a shock through my tailbone. Damp leaves clung to my scraped palms, and I couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t scream at him to go fuck himself or beg him to take it back.
