Page 31 of Heartless

“So, let me get this straight. I’m a panther, whose mom was part of your claw club, but my dad wanted to keep me clueless until I turned eighteen. Oh, and I have to be initiated before I get the handbook.” If I sounded sour, it was because being kept in the dark sucked. “So, back to my original question. Why now?”

“You bit me,” Jasper said quietly at my back. “That’s the initiation, right?”

Trey winced. “Not how it should be, but yes. You claim another shifter, it’s important you know what you’re getting into.”

“And your dad died,” I added, another puzzle piece falling into place. The last time I’d seen Trey had been on Den Night, when he’d used Jasper’s brothers to lure me into the woods. He’d acted like he was drunk, but now I had to wonder if it was because of this deal he’d made with my dad. I should have been glad to be finally making sense of the last few weeks, except the picture was still a murky mess, and I had no idea what it meant for Jasper and me. “Tell me about this deal. How did your dad even know Parker West?”

Trey laughed, and plucking the wedding picture off the table, rocked back on his chair. “That pretty little wolf? He preferred sticking his nose in hairy asses, if you get my drift. He was just your mom’s cover story. They were friends from way back and when she wanted to escape her ivory tower, he was weak enough no one questioned it. Of course, he introduced your mom to your real dad, which was the beginning of the end for him.”

“Wait!” I pressed my hands to my cheeks. “You’re saying Michael Warren was my dad?”

“You ever look in a mirror, green eyes? You got your cat from your mom, but your wolf is all him.”

“My wolf?” I asked faintly.

“Of course. You’re a wolf-panther hybrid.” He frowned at my pale face. “Fuck, your old man really never told you any of this?”

“No,” Jasper said in a low, furious voice. “In fact, he denied it. And gave her a birth certificate with Parker West’s name on it.”

“Cold fucker,” Trey murmured. “Of course, he’s been running from your grandfather’s wrath for two decades, so you can’t really blame him for being paranoid.”

I sank into a chair, dropping my head into my hands. Jasper was immediately cupping my shoulders, his voice a growly whisper in my ear. “This could all be bullshit. We should talk to Driftwood, then track down your dad.”

“No,” I said quietly. Because even though there was a lot I didn’t understand, I knew in my gut Trey was telling the truth. Tugging on the sleeve of my hoodie, I lifted my wrist so the silver bracelet gleamed in the firelight. Jasper hadn’t even noticed I’d been wearing it, which given how we’d spent the night, wasn’t so surprising. But it was Trey’s fingers that latched onto the cat charm. “Where’d you get this, little V?”

Jasper stiffened at the wonder in his voice, his hands tightening on my shoulders before I could answer. “I gave it to her. And it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Trey gave him a mocking look. “Wolf, you might be able to hear bullshit, but we can taste it.” He was still playing with the little charm, but as his finger grazed the scar on my wrist, he shot back from the table. He moved so fast, his chair slammed into the wall. “What the fuck?”

In all the run-ins I’d had with the Devil of the Horn, I’d never really felt afraid of Trey. It made sense now, given the arrangement between our dads. And the fact he and I were both part of this panther claw club. But the growl that came out of his chest was like nothing I’d ever heard. Big cat, obviously, but way more menacing than a wolf’s rumble. Trey always had a certain amount of crazy in his amber eyes, but this time they were so black I couldn’t see his irises. It was enough to make Jasper jump in front of me, which seemed to trigger Trey’s claws. The sight of those curved, pale weapons – so like the ones Callum had forced out of me – made the breath seize in my chest. But Jasper immediately hit him with a blast of alpha power. It wasn’t as strong as it would have been with his wolf behind it, but it still knocked Trey back a step. “Get control of yourself, Barakat!”

“You think I waited all these years to let some other asshole put a claim on her? They can all fuck off!” He gave Jasper an ugly sneer. “Present company included.”

Jasper had been a lot more patient than I expected, but this seemed to be the last straw. He and Trey charged each other like raging bulls, and I only had a moment to decide how to stop them. “This isn’t a real claim!” I shouted, waving my arm in the air. “Callum found out I was a cat, and he blackmailed me into it!”

Instead of slamming into each other, they both stopped dead, and swung towards be with incredulous expressions. But it was the fury blooming on Jasper’s face that made me gulp. “He did what?”

***

Driftwood had always said confession was good for the soul, as long as no one ended up killing you for it. Which was why I was watching the tic in Jasper’s cheek as I gave the glaring shifters a quick rundown of the events during the Frost Moon. I kept to the basics, since Jasper already knew what happened before the Denner’s attack – and because it was none of Trey Barakat’s damn business. Sharing a bloodline with me didn’t make us friends. And he could act as pissy as he wanted about the blackmailed mark; Callum was clearly going to have to answer to Scary Jasper for his betrayal.

“He’s dead,” Jasper said as soon as I got to the part about the video of my forced shift. “And if he’s shown it to anyone, he’s going to lose his paws before I put him in the ground.”

I’d taken a seat on the arm of the couch, after carefully tucking the rifle out of reach of the pacing shifter. “Thanks, but I think that’s going a little overboard.” I watched as he pulled out his phone and began pounding out a text. “Can’t you just make him take it off? Maybe threaten him with the paw thing if he tells anyone about me?”

Trey had circled around until he was way too close to our blanket pile, but his angry gaze was still on my wrist. “You don’t get it, little V. Forced claims are about the worst thing you can do in the claw. There aren’t a lot of females, so every union is arranged through kin. You don’t just go out and claw up whoever the hell makes your dick hard.”

“Hold on a damn minute!” I was off the couch and backing up so fast, I nearly tripped over the gun. Something was playing in my head, a memory from the restroom at the Clan Caves. Trey had cornered me, his hand around my throat. You’re nearly eighteen, little V, and that means you’re mine. Don’t ever doubt you’re the Barakat prize, and I’ve been waiting a long time to claim my due.

At the time, I’d thought it was just Trey’s usual obscure threats. But now it all made a horrible kind of sense. “These arranged unions… That’s the deal our dads made, isn’t it?”

My panic finally seemed to get through to Jasper, who shoved his phone in his pocket and came over to stand between us. “Like hell,” he growled. “No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to.”

A nice sentiment, but I had plenty of recent history that said otherwise. And the knot in Trey’s jaw was enough to make me back up all the way to my bedroom door. “I want to leave,” I said to Jasper. “If he could get in here, we have to be able to get out.”

“Suits me,” he grunted, pushing past the silent panther shifter. I raced into my room, quickly pulling on warmer clothes before throwing my things back into my duffle. At the last moment, I grabbed the wolf sketch off my wall and put it in the side pocket with the silver bracelet. Heading back into the front room, I found Trey standing at the door, while Jasper gathered up my dad’s notebooks.

“Wait outside,” he ordered Trey, who stiffened at his tone, but snatched the snowmobile key off the hook and headed out. Once he was gone, I opened the trapdoor for Jasper and he carried the notebooks down the ladder. While he was returning them to the secret room, I saw he’d left the wedding album on the table. For a long moment I just stared at it, before picking it up and stroking the while silk cover. I hadn’t got around to looking through the other pictures, but I guessed it didn’t matter. Like Trey said, it wasn’t ancient history I needed to know. And if there were any more secrets to expose about my past, I was determined to hear them directly from my dad.

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