“Sure, as soon as you help me,” he said.
I growled and glared at the scruffy, giant male in front of me. “I will not be bullied by anyone. I don’t care if you are my blood.”
“That’s the fight I need.” He smiled. “You’re going to be just fine with this task.”
“What’s this favor?” Malcom asked.
“You help me overthrow the king. Then you won’t even need the claim broken. You’ll be safer than you ever have been in your life,” he said.
“No,” I blurted out. “I am not going to help you kill someone.”
“She’ll help,” Alec said.
“What?” I stared at him. “I am not committing regicide.”
“If he’s right and the king is that deranged, breaking the claim might not be enough. If word leaked about who you really were, the king could still kill you,” Alec said. He turned to face Spencer. “It doesn’t have to be murder, right? You can overthrow a king without that.”
“Whatever makes you sleep better at night,” he said.
“My mate is trying to kill me, my pack is hunting me down, and you think it’s a good time for me to make enemies with the royal family?” I asked.
“You are part of the royal family, like it or not,” Spencer said.
I shook my head. “No. You’re not family. They are.” I gestured to my friends. “We don’t get to choose the family we’re born into, but I am not going to deprive myself of choosing a better one.”
“If she helps you, will you help her in return?” Sheila asked.
I turned to her. “Not you too.”
“This could be exactly what we need for you to claim your pack,” Sheila said.
“It wouldn’t hurt to have help,” Kyle added.
“Whose side are all of you on?” I hissed.
“What do you know about your family history?” Spencer asked.
“I learned most of it in the last few weeks,” I admitted.
“You know what your grandfather was working on?” Spencer asked.
I nodded.
“You know who financed that?”
“I can guess,” I said.
“After my brother got what he wanted in that toxin, he’s the one who had the witch curse him. It was supposed to wipe his memory entirely, but his witch wasn’t always accurate. Gorgeous, yes; good with spells, not so much,” he said. “My brother wanted to make sure nobody else would get the recipe. Which meant that the mind who created it had to be silenced.”
“So? He’s the one who agreed to create something so awful,” I said.
“Yeah, cause your mom was being held as collateral,” he said. “She was locked in our family estate for three years while her dad worked in our lab downtown. That’s how I met her.”
“If you’re trying to paint yourself as the good guy while you sat back and did nothing to release my mother from captivity, you’re no better than him,” I spat.
“You’re right. It took me time to figure that out. Once I did, it unraveled everything my brother was doing. I freed your mom and your grandfather. The recipe wasn’t erased from his mind, but his sanity was slipping,” he said. “As soon as they were out, I tried to take my brother down. I failed.”
If what he was saying was true, it made sense that my mom had cracked in Wolf Creek. Living there was a lot like living in captivity.