Page 51 of Betrayed By the Alpha Wolf

I pulled up in front of the cell, and my stomach clenched. Leon was chained down to a wooden chair that had been secured to the floor with ropes and pins that were hammered into the cement floor. Jet stood a few paces away from him in the cell, and the door was closed.

“At last, the master of the house joins us!”

A growl ripped through me as Leon called out, and I stared daggers at him. Jet turned, seeing Kaiden and me there, and walked over to the door. He unlocked it and stepped out. As I moved to go in, he stopped me with a hand on my arm.

“He’s off, Gray. Something’s wrong about him. I’m not sure how much you’re going to be able to get out of him.”

Not looking at my previous Alpha, the man who’d helped to raise me when my own father had died, I didn’t bother answering. Anger was swirling too high in my blood, and there was little more that I could see around me that wasn’t the object of my fury.

Leon was right fucking there, and I was going to get answers—or kill him.

“Hey.” Jet pulled on my arm, forcing me to look at him. “I know how upset you are. Hell, I’m just as pissed myself, but we get nothing if you just kill him. Don’t lose your head.”

I shrugged his hold off me. “I’m fine.”

Jet met my eyes hard. “And if you’re not, I’ll haul your ass out of there myself.”

That was about all I needed from the peanut gallery. I pushed forward, taking the keys from Jet and locking the cell closed behind me. I tossed the key back through the bars to Kaiden, and he narrowed his eyes at me as they landed solidly in his palm.

When I turned back to Leon, he was watching the conversation play out between all of us with a rapt, crazed smile plastered all over his face.

“And what are you smiling at, jackass?”

He chuckled, the sound like a fork in a garbage disposal. “Old family squabbles. Nice to see that some things never change, eh, Gray?”

I rushed up to him, gripping the front of his shirt and slamming him back against the chair.

“Don’t fucking play with me, Leon. I never liked your dumb ass, so there’s no concern on my part about ending a former pack mate.”

“Tsk, tsk. So testy.”

Shoving him back again, I made sure that his spine landed hard against the back of his chair, and Leon let out a whine of discomfort. This close-up, he wreaked—swampy and muddled with remnants of that drug. I couldn’t smell it that strongly, however, and that meant that he wasn’t on it.

Just proximity to it, most likely.

He also looked ragged. Leon’s pupils were dilated, and his face had hollowed out like he hadn’t been eating well these past few months. Memory hit of the vision Senna had warned us of, and I wondered if his rough state had anything to do with the hunters.

“What was your plan, Leon? Just rile up the Alphas and see if you could take a few out? Why come all this way for such a long shot?”

His head wobbled as he circled it around to face me, and when Leon met my eyes, his were somewhat unfocused, a dullness to what should be a shiny sclera.

“You have to admit that it was pretty funny. Seeing them floundering around and then turning all feral. Your loyal subjects are reduced to animals. Ha!”

Using my hold on the front of his shirt to shake him again, I found the hollow of his shoulder with my thumb and dug it into the tendons. Leon hissed, groaning before he tried to squirm away. But I held him easily enough, what with the guy being a fraction of his usual size and strength.

“Why?!” I rattled him again, Leon’s head flopping around like a damned ragdoll. “Did Reginald put you up to it? Another rogue wolf?”

“Hahaha! Rogue wolves. You’ll be up to your ass in them soon enough, Edwards.”

The threat was obvious, but worse, it coincided a bit with what I’d found in Eli’s notes. Plus, it also looked like Leon had missed out on the good news.

“I’m not an Edwards anymore, Leon. Not only did Kaiden pass you up for Beta,” I turned over my shoulder and smiled at him, looking back to Leon to see his expression go dark, “but he went off and became an Alpha. So, who should step in as Beta but yours truly.”

He thrashed in my hold. “What?!”

“Oh, and that’s just the start, fuckface. I’m not Beta anymore, either.” I leaned in close to his face, gripping his torn, greasy shirt hard enough to make my knuckles go white while I sent out that Alpha power lingering in my blood, “I’m Alpha of the Williams Pack that your buddy Eli died trying to take down with those fucking drugs.”

“No! No!”

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