Page 2 of Half Wolf Mate

My jaw hung on its hinges as I gazed up at him, wondering what he was going on for.

“They’ll come back looking for you soon, I’m sure.”

Finally, able to speak, I asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Your werewolf kind. They did this. I want you out of this house before they come back. The further you are away from me, the better. You’ve always been nothing but trouble. If Lydia had listened to me, she’d still be alive now. I knew she’d eventually pay for getting involved in shifter business.”

As I stared at Uncle Sam, my mind raced. Shifter business?Werewolves? He’d completely lost his mind.

Slowly, I got to my feet, palms opened. “Okay, Uncle Sam, maybe you should—”

“I’m not your uncle.”

Granted, he really wasn’t. He was just an in-law, but he didn’t have to be so nasty about it. Despite being a callous monster to me my entire life, sympathy for him flooded me. The pain of losing his wife must have sent him into temporary insanity or something. But he needed to get it together. I couldn’t stay here another minute arguing about nonsense over my aunt’s dead body.

“Okay, but we need to call the cop. Now. We have to find out who did this to Aunt Lydia—”

“She isn’t your aunt you half-human abomination. She was nothing to you. Lydia had pity on your werewolf mother and took you away before they killed you, too. She should have left you in Louisiana to rot.”

Stunned into silence and still stuck on “half-human,” my eyes remained glued to my uncle’s flushed face. Clearly, he was just as shocked as I was from finding Aunt Lydia dead. The man was spouting nonsense.

Chapter 2 Sydney

I hadn’t recovered from Uncle Sam’s revelation…insane rant, rather when my back hit the wall. I gasped against the shock and pain. My uncle had moved so fast I didn’t realize he’d attacked until he had my collar in his fists and was snarling at me.

Maybe it was because I was accustomed to his bouts of temper that I recovered from my shock so quickly and was able to think. He said Louisiana. Aunt Lydia mentioned New Orleans in our strange conversation when she’d called earlier. She told me to go there if something happened to her. Then she was dead. She hadn’t just been senselessly ranting after all. I was really afraid now. What was going on?

“I don’t understand,” was all I could get out.

Uncle Sam shoved me a little harder. “Lydia is dead because your mother got her involved in her shifter nonsense.”

“What the hell is a shifter?” I asked.

He grunted. “I told Lydia to tell you what you were when you were old enough and send you on your way, but she insisted on keeping you shielded from that world. Look what it got her. They found out where you were, and that’s why she’s dead.”

“Who found me? The shifters?” I couldn’t believe I was playing into this nonsense, but Uncle Sam seemed to believe the madness he was spewing. Maybe if I played along, he’d calm down.

He huffed, released me, and slammed his palm against the wall beside my head. I flinched, thinking it was me he hit for a second. He shoved his fingers through his hair, glanced at Aunt Lydia again, and turned back to me. There was unadulterated hatred gleaming in his eyes. “You’re a half-werewolf shifter, which is why I’ve always despised you. Your kind killed my parents when I was just a boy.”

Uncle Sam got this faraway look on his face as if he was reliving the memory. “We’d gone on a camping trip, and our tent was attacked in the night. The police passed it off as a random wild animal attack. But I know what I saw that night. A wolf turning into a man after he tore my parents to shreds. I was only spared because the freak got distracted by something.”

My mouth hung open, listening to his tale.

“No one believed me when I told them what I saw. They all thought I was a traumatized little boy. But I vowed that I’d uncover the truth about the supernatural. That’s how Lydia and I got involved. We met in a paranormal chat group. But our views on the supernatural differed. I thought all inhuman creatures should burn.”

Disdain resonated in his tone.

“But Lydia thought shifters and all other freaks of nature were miraculous. That’s how she ended up in New Orleans. She befriended a wolf shifter, your mother. Eager to learn all she could about that world, she followed her new friend to Louisiana. When your mother was murdered, Lydia took you and hid you here.”

My heart thumped against my rib cage. It was hard to process everything I heard.

“I’d been indulgent with Lydia’s chase of the paranormal until she showed up here with you,” Sam said. “A creature I hated with every fiber of my being.”

He took a step closer to me, and I thought he’d attack again, but he only pointed a threatening finger. “Lydia isn’t here to stop me from killing you. I’ve always wanted to squeeze that scrawny neck of yours until the light vanishes from your eyes.”

I gulped but held his gaze.

“You’d better leave now and never let me see you again.”

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