“If that’s what you believe, then I will not stop you. There is obviously nothing I can say,” Zane replied stiffly.
Karis looked back and forth in confusion before realization dawned. Stepping forward, he growled out, “Zane has been trying to kill you, my prince?”
“I think there’s more to the story than that,” Luke interrupted, nodding to the woman still struggling in his arms.
Kian looked over and seemed to notice Farrah for the first time. “Why are you holding onto one of my tigresses like that?” he demanded. “She should not be held so.”
“Oh, I think she should,” Damara spoke up, her accent thick.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Jax asked, not seeming to direct it to any one person. “Is Zane trying to kill Kian and Ian, or is Farrah?”
Zane remained quiet, but Farrah spoke up, panic briefly flitting across her features. “It wasn’t me. It was Zane. He tricked me.”
“Explain,” Seth barked out.
Stiffening, she glared at him, but didn’t argue. “He came home a couple months ago, acting crazed. He—he forced his attentions on me,” she said, casting her gaze to the ground before looking back up. “Afterward, he was ranting, telling me all these plans. Said that Kian wasn’t good for the War Cats, that he had become useless. And since he was next in line, he intended to take care of Kian and take his place. I came here to warn my prince. That’s all, I swear.”
Staring at Farrah, a woman he hated with every fiber of his be
ing, even he had to admit she wasn’t lying. He’d listened carefully, and there hadn’t been an off note in her voice. Zane had finally decided what side of the fence to fall on, and it was the wrong one.
“I fucking knew it,” Seth said, his voice quiet with rage. He took a step forward but Kian held up his hand.
Staring hard at Zane, he said, “Is this true? I want to hear it from you.”
Brow furrowing, Ian said, “Kian, I know he’s your cousin, and you’re close. You don’t want this to be true, but you had to hear what everyone else did. There were no false notes in her voice.”
Shaking his head, Kian finally took his gaze off Zane and looked at Ian, an apology in his eyes Ian didn’t understand. “I should have told you this earlier. I wanted to. I meant to. But I could never seem to find the right time. That doesn’t excuse it, though.” Pausing, he took a breath before speaking again. “Lying is Farrah’s gift. She can successfully tell a lie without one false note. It is not completely foolproof. If you listen hard, you can hear the truth when she speaks it. But not in the lies. You can never tell with those. The proof is when she tells the truth. Her voice changes slightly. Nothing noticeable unless you’re listening for it, though. It is how she gets away with so much. You have my profound apologies for not alerting you to this sooner.”
Ian stared at Kian, unable to comprehend what he was saying, and the magnitude of it. Farrah’s gift was the ability to lie without detection. My God. For almost nine years, he’d berated himself for being so blind, for being so weak, as to fall for who she pretended to be in the beginning. He’d thought he was defunct, a failure as a shifter. The fact that his gift was undeveloped, and he’d suppressed it deep back then, was still accurate. But everything else…
He’d been blaming himself for the way Shelby was treated. Blaming himself for years for the abuse his daughter endured. But it wasn’t all his fault. Sure, some of it still rested on his shoulders, but now he could lay the blame where it truly belonged—on Farrah and her tribe.
“You should have told me,” he said hoarsely. “All this time—you just should have told me.”
“I know. And I will always regret that I did not. But right now, we need to get to the bottom of this.” Glaring at Zane, who was standing stubbornly with his arms crossed and still not saying a word, Kian said, “Tell me what’s going on, Zane.”
When he still remained silent, Liam stepped forward. “Look, man. I know you’re offended to your core right now that everyone suspected you. But we need to know the truth. The enforcers need to know. We have a job to do, and if that one,” he said with a jerk of his head, “is the one behind this, we have to know.”
Exhaling, Zane unfolded his arms, staring off into the trees. “I went home as you ordered me to a couple months ago. I was feeling insecure, upset, angry, confused—I was feeling it all. And yes, I did go to bed with that viper, but it was consensual,” he spat, with a glare Farrah’s way. “It was an epic show of bad judgment, and I regretted it immediately. The next day, I was speaking to your father about some things, and I didn’t know it, but she was listening in. I only figured it out later by piecing some things people who had seen her told me, but by then, I was too late. She’d stolen my credit cards and my car and taken off.”
Eyebrows high, Ian registered the truth in his voice and glanced at Alex. Alex had hacked into Zane’s credit card activity, and they’d been monitoring him, but apparently it wasn’t Zane they’d been tracking. It was Farrah.
“I set out to track her,” Zane said stiffly. “I feared the worst. But it turns out, I am not as good a tracker as I thought I was, and she always stayed just beyond my reach,” he admitted grudgingly, looking pissed off at himself. “I didn’t catch up to her until just now. You know the rest.”
Everyone was silent as they digested what he said, and Ian glanced over at Seth. Seth and Zane had come to blows over Amelia, and he’d always been adamant that Zane was out to cause trouble. But the truth in Zane’s voice rang clear and true, and Ian could see by the way Seth’s eyes were wide and shocked that even he had to admit the truth of it.
“And what did she overhear that caused such a reaction?” Kian asked slowly.
Zane ignored him, looking off into the woods again. It was clear he was done talking. Ian looked at Farrah, who wore an expression that was a mix of defiance and fear.
“Why don’t you answer that, Farrah?’ he asked softly.
“Fuck you.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, I’ve had enough of this,” Damara said. Stepping closer to Farrah, she said, “I can see that these are good men, and they’re not going to do anything to hurt you, to force it out of you.” Smiling coldly, Damara put her face in Farrah’s. “But I’m not them. I’m not a man who has too much honor to beat the truth out of you. I’m a woman, same as you, and I will do whatever it takes to get to the end of this so we can all go home. Now I suggest you start talking, and you better tell the truth. We’ll all be listening very closely to make sure you are, and I’m sure Kian will tell us if you slip up with a lie.”
Farrah’s eyes flicked over the clearing, lingering on the War Cats. Looking back at Damara, she said, “I want protection when this is over.”