Page 68 of Rejected By the Alpha King

“A vision,” Irene murmured. “And not the one I saw. A memory, am I right? But one I suspect we were meant to see. Anna, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Forcing a smile, I slowly pulled my hands back. “I’m fine. I remembered some of that already, The woman, but not the conversation.”

“It wasn’t important to you at the time, but I suspect it’s very important now. Your father was kidnapping women and children, yes?”

Numbly, I nodded. “He wanted his own pack. He wanted to breed the women, but apparently, I was the last child he could have. When that didn’t work, he decided to take children.”

“No.” Irene shook her head. “According to that vision, I think your father was looking for something in those women. They found what they were looking for, and he was ordered to stop.

Think back about the victims he took. Did anything strange happen to them? Did he want to keep any of them alive?”

I shook my head. “No. None that I can think of, and he didn’t have a particular type that he liked.”

“So why was he ordered to stop?” Irene got up and paced. “Maybe it’s tied in together. In the vision that I had, I was in the woods, but I was you. I was running, and someone was chasing me, and then I passed through this brilliant light show of purples and golds.”

“Well that’s a memory. It’s one of the spell traps in Wisteria Woods.”

“No, it wasn’t a trap.”

“But it is.” When Irene looked at me blankly, I tried to explain further. “That’s how I see them. Bright and beautiful colors. When I touch them, they sort of fill me. Like…” my voice trailed off.

“Like you’re a void,” Jax said flatly. “That’s why your father was taking women. He was looking for a fucking null, and he had one right under his nose the whole time.”

My skin chilled. “That conversation that we just saw happening? That was between my father and the red wolf. It was right after I ran to the Darkwyn coven. No more than a few weeks.”

“Can you give me an exact date?” Jax asked.

I shook my head. “No. I didn’t have a phone or anything, so it was hard to track dates. It was the first woman he’d taken after I returned. It was cold, so winter. We had another winter, and then he took Cora the next fall. So almost two years before you came. That’s five years ago. Does that help?”

Jax’s face hardened. “Five years ago, Emerson became an alpha.”

“In place,” I echoed.

“The alphas aren’t meeting by chance,” Irene said in a low voice. “He needed a way to get to you, and now he’s about to waltz right onto your property.”

“He’ll never touch her,” Jax growled.

Irene got a strange look in her eyes and glanced down at the water. “I was channeling the water and I was connected to her. So tell me, alpha, how is it that you saw the vision?”

30

Jax

“You haven’t said a word since we left Irene’s,” Anna said finally as we pulled up to the house. When I didn’t turn to look at her, she let out a frustrated sigh. “Look, I don’t know what you saw. Was it through your eyes? Did you feel yourself kill that woman? I can’t change what happened, but at least tell me what’s going through your head.”

Climbing out of the vehicle, I closed the door and finally made eye contact as she did the same. “I already knew that you were a killer.”

“Knowing what I did and feeling what I did are two different things.”

Taking out my keys, I headed to unlock the door. When I stepped through and Anna didn’t immediately follow me, I turned around to glare at her. She wasn’t even looking at me though. She was staring at her hands, and I saw the mistake that I was making.

At her most vulnerable, Anna lashed out. She built walls and isolated herself. Now, here she was trying to reach out, and I was shutting her down.

But what the hell was I supposed to say? It wasn’t the vision itself that had me on edge. It was the fact that I’d seen the vision in the first place. Irene was shocked that our mating bond could affect me so profoundly that I’d been able to see the vision.

Just one more reminder of how the bond affected me, and I’d have to live with the knowledge that it didn’t touch her. Null. Impervious to even wolf magic.

“You’re right,” I lied. “It’s different, but it’s not new information. Come on. It’s late, and we should get to bed.”

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