Page 85 of Fractured Mates

River’s lips form into a thin line before he replies. “You can trust me. I won’t allow any lines to be crossed. She deserves better than that.”

I expect Jules to pull away and say something about them discussing her as if she’s not present, but the young she-wolf doesn’t budge from her position in River’s lap as she clings to him.

The trauma of what she’s been through, of knowing that her parents are dead, and what might have been if Sophie hadn’t killed Astor…I’m sure it’s all too much.

If I were her, I’d be blocking out the rest of the world, too.

“Come on,” I tell Sophie. “She’s fine where she is, and I’d like to know what the hell happened here.”

Sophie stands and slips her hand into mine, a slight rumble in her chest. “So would I.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sophie

My shoulder still burns like a son of a bitch from the bullet wound, but there isn’t an injury on my body that is going to keep me from hearing what Joseph has to say.

He left his pack. Left them to Astor.

I know Dawsyn said he was missing, but my brain took that to mean he was dead and the body just hadn’t been found yet.

Having him show up when we were already nearly done cleaning up his mess… I have no respect for the man. He’s lucky I don’t want to cause trouble for Roman and Dawsyn or he’d know it, too.

I mean, him showing up helped save our life so…, my wolf chimes in.

No, it saved the lives of the others Kyler would have continued ripping through to get to me, I reply without a doubt in my mind. We were already positioned to kill Astor.

And what a glorious moment that was. The delight in her tone matches that in my chest.

As worried as I am about the other casualties, and as much as I hate that my mother died while finally protecting me, I had let this pack go the moment I decided to come back, even if it took me a while to realize that.

It seems contradictory, but I really only needed closure. Not anything my parents might have offered me had things been different.

I may mourn my mother—definitely not my father—at a later date, but this is the path she chose. I at least don’t hate her, and that alone gives me the peace I need to move forward once and for all.

We enter into the blood-soaked room. There are multiple dead shifter bodies beside that of Astor’s, and I realize now how lucky Kyler is to have come out mostly unscathed from that fight.

He should have had River as backup, but clearly, the protector hadn’t been capable of returning after he left to get Jules to safety.

I shudder a little at the thought of her being mated already, especially to someone so much older, but now that I know River is the same person who saved me all those years ago and from what I’ve seen with my own eyes, I’m trying to hold back my own teenage trauma.

River isn’t Thane and Jules isn’t me, even if we seem to be a lot alike without having grown up together.

We’ll find a way to make this work, even if my sister hates me for a little while. We’re all we have when it comes to family by blood, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she has the future she deserves.

Joseph is already standing in front of Maciah and Amersyn when we join them, but it seems we haven’t missed much in the conversation.

“After he told me Astor was initiating a coup,” Joseph says, “I knew leaving was the best choice.”

“How the hell could you think that?” I snap, gaining the attention of the three higher-ranking supernaturals before me and my mate, but that doesn’t stop me. “You left them to bow to that psychopath or die. What kind of alpha does that?”

“The kind who knows his job isn’t as easy as some people think,” the alpha replies. “What you didn’t hear before is that I lost my daughter to that bastard. He stole her right out from under me and sold her to humans, who then sent me a picture of her bludgeoned body as a warning not to put my nose where it didn’t belong or more would suffer her fate.”

Well, shit. Maybe I should have kept listening.

“I had a choice to make,” he continues. “I could fight Astor, or I could let him think he’d won, leave men I trusted here, and figure out how to stop him from behind scenes. Yes, I knew some of my people would die, but sometimes a sacrifice has to be made in order to save the whole. But I didn’t know how deep this problem with the stolen wolves went, nor who I could trust. Still don’t, really, but when I was notified a fight was coming, I began making my way back immediately.”

Him and Maciah share a hard stare. The alpha’s inability to trust the protectors is a direct slight to the vampire, but I don’t entirely blame Joseph for going out on his own. I can’t deny I would have done the same thing.

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