My body went rigid. “My mother is dead.”
“She’s not.”
“Your pack raped and devoured her,” I bit off.
His expression was of mortification. “No. Fuck no. She’s my aunt. And the lead healer for our pack. I assure you, she’s very much alive and wants to see you. You were taken from her, from all of us. Come. I’ll show you. You’ll know as soon as you catch her scent that she’s your mother. He took you young, but that bond was already formed.”
My eyes narrowed. Lies. Had to be.
“Where’s my father?” I bit off.
“Gone,” Riley’s head dropped with sadness. “At the hands of Cornelius. They found him dead and you gone. You’re our true top alpha. I’m getting ahead of myself. Please. Consider coming. We know you know how to get to us.”
Uncle told me they might try to approach if they saw me or caught my scent; might tell their lies to get me there so they can kill me, eliminate me as a threat.
I folded my arms across my chest.
“Leave,” I ordered.
“I just wanted to –”
“Leave! Or die.”
He bared his teeth at me. “We’re your family,” he snapped angrily. “You don’t have to be alone. It’s not right and could harm you. In here.” He pointed to his temple. “ And here.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “Our pack is non-traditional and that’s for a reason. Our lines are so strong, we have six alphas, but we’re meant to have seven. You’re meant to be at the top of the pack.”
I bared my teeth at his insolence.
He went on. “We’re incomplete without you. We’ve mourned you for thirty-three years, Tyson. We live a good life and we’re a strong family, but we mourn you. You’re supposed to be part of us.”
I stared, still baring teeth.
“You don’t have to live alone,” he repeated.
“I choose to live alone,” I snapped.
“Because you want that or because it’s all you know? Because it’s what you need and chose for yourself or what he told you was better?”
I frowned. His words felt like they punched me in the gut.
That was when I caught Ivy’s scent becoming stronger and felt a spike of immediate worry. I shifted, ready to go for his throat.
He immediately shifted as well, his wolf eye-level with mine. Uncle was much smaller as man and as wolf and the size of Riley Savage’s brown wolf didn’t scare me, but it gave me pause. I bared my teeth and he partly submitted, though kept his teeth partly bared, defiantly. This stubborn asshole was determined to make me hear what he had to say. He’s alpha to his bones; I instinctively know it. I’m not sure if he’s a match for me or not, but he feels very strongly about telling me his tale. And maybe that was why I didn’t kill him. Because I had always had doubts about Cornelius and because I wanted to know if there was any truth coming from him at all.
I also realized right then that my Uncle Cornelius was not alpha. Having grown up around only one of my kind, I had no way of knowing. That thought had never before occurred to me. He talked of pack hierarchies when I was a child. I never asked him where he fit in all of that. Why hadn’t I? I’d always been of few words and Uncle Cornelius didn’t like questions. We would go for long stretches of time where we barely spoke and then he’d occasionally begin spewing facts at me rapid-fire out of nowhere and then just as suddenly, silence would fall again.
He was all I had. He was all I knew. And when words came from him, it was often simple directions, which I followed. When it was more, it was usually spewed at me with the scent of whisky and made little to no sense.
When Riley Savage showed that partial submission, she was there, suddenly, standing on the porch wearing my shirt, her beautiful legs bare, golden and purple hair everywhere, her eyes wild with fear, and my scent all over her. My little Ivy stirred emotion in my gut, standing there and holding the fireplace poker in her hand and pointing it at Riley Savage’s wolf form.
To protect me?
I warned her and this made her halt. I got between them, letting him know with my stance that I would not hesitate to rip his throat out if he made a move in her direction.
He left. But not before giving me notice with his eyes that told me we weren’t done.
The sensations I felt were so foreign then. Strangeness at how I could feel a sort of connection to him, how I could know the meaning of his expression.
How I knew he was alpha, and the knowledge, that his strength was formidable. Not just from his size. From more.