Page 67 of Wolf's Endgame

“You want to stay there?” I asked him. “You are an alpha, you deserve your own pack, is Anterrio the pack you would fight for?”

I didn’t think he was going to answer when he shook his head. “Once, maybe I would have. But…” He looked away from me, anger creasing his forehead. “The way they turn a blind eye to all the wrongs, their impassiveness and lack of empathy. I don’t doubt that there will be many of them who fight against us. Against me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Kris gave me a genuine smile. “We can start a new pack. Once we’re clear of this business, we’ll have options.”

“I hope so,” I told him honestly. “You deserve happiness.”

“Thank you.” We watched each other for a moment before I sighed, and Kris let out a low chuckle.

“You can be nice to me all you want, Kez, but you know me better than to think I will let this go.”

“I know, I don’t know what I was thinking,” I told him dryly. “He told me the Pack Council knows how to break the bond. I thought he meant mine and Cannon’s.” Kris was stony faced and I carried on. “But they mean you and Cass.” He said nothing and I wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry.” My brother still said nothing, and I didn’t take it personally; it was a hard thing to know. “She would never go through with it, you know that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

His voice was clipped, and I knew better than to push. “Um…”

“Use your words, Kez,” Kris murmured, his brow still furrowed in thought about the fact Bale wanted to break the bond.

I took a deep breath. “He admitted it,” I said softly. “Bale. He told me he killed them. That he killed our parents.” I felt how still my brother was. “He thought I was a stray. He never knew I was your sister when he shot me that day.” Rubbing my nose to stop the tears, I couldn’t look at him. “He told me, so easily, that he killed them, and I could do nothing.” I felt my chest tighten as I spoke. “Landon told me that Cannon was dead.” It was my turn to break eye contact. “I believed him. The pain was…a lot. I didn’t care about anything. I’m sorry, I should have been fighting for you and me.” I hesitated. “I gave up.”

“I’m going to kill that bastard,” Kris vowed, his voice a tight whisper. Looking at him, I saw his pain and anger. “You did not give up. You were beaten, and your mate was full of silver. The pain would have been excruciating,” Kris reasoned. “Even without the bond fully made, you would have felt your mate’s suffering.”

“Bale called me broken,” I remembered. “Landon told him I needed time.”

“Time for what?”

Puffing out my cheeks, I blew out a loud breath. “To be his mate. He was spinning a story that he and I were more than we had pretended previously. There are cameras everywhere, even in Landon’s room, and he would whisper in the dark that I had to play along. He said he was being watched more than anyone.”

“Watched for what?”

“I don’t know.” I debated whether to tell him my fears and then decided that Kris needed to know. Kris would understand. “I don’t know if he was always honest,” I admitted. “He seemed too eager for me to be his mate.” Pulling my hair over my shoulder, I tugged at the ends as I told him all the ways in which Landon had confused me. “He was too good at acting, if you know what I mean? He said I could give him an alpha son.”

“What the fuck?”

“That’s what I said.” We looked at each other, and I saw my brother’s anger rising. “It was little things like that, that made me wary, and then other times, he was reminding me we had to play the game.” Checking the door to the room was closed, I turned back to my brother. “I don’t know if he’s alive.”

“Moonstar?”

“I don’t know who she killed and who she let live.” Biting my lip, I confessed my worst fear to Kris. “I don’t know how to tell Cass.”

“We don’t,” he said firmly. “She’s too delicate right now. This will tip her over the edge.”

“Delicate?”

“Her mom’s dead and her father’s trying to kill her mate,” Kris said with exasperation, and I took the reprimand, grateful that was all he meant and I hadn’t told him something I wasn’t supposed to know before him.

“Right, of course, I knew that.”

Kris’s fingers drummed on the arm of Cannon’s chair. “We have to treat him as an unknown,” he told me after a while.

“What?”

“Landon,” he confirmed. “He’s not a threat, but right now, he isn’t an ally.”

Shit. That was a very clear line in the sand. Even for an unknown, Landon was still…well, Landon. “You sure?”

---