Page 24 of Beyond the Grasslands

My mother had been sick for nearly a year, maybe longer. It was in the last six months before my father died that she couldn’t handle the pain anymore and we all started to notice the way she seemed to waste away before our eyes. How could my father do that to her? How could he do it for this evil woman? Nothing made sense.

“Did someone drug Nika the day she was attacked?”

Miriam narrowed her eyes and we could both see that she attempted to fight the Alpha command. “Yes.” The one word was a rough snarl as Miriam attempted to clench her teeth together to hold it back.

“Who was responsible for drugging Nika?” I added a little oomph of Alpha command to the question. It wasn’t necessary,but I didn’t want Miriam to feel as though she had any chance to fight the command.

“Alicia.” I could feel Warren’s eyes on me. Hope for my cousin not being involved dwindled as Miriam accused his mother of being the one to poison my mate.

“Was Alicia involved in the death of Bethany Winslow?”

Miriam’s smile grew and her confidence hit a peak as well. “Clever boy. You finally decided to listen and learn. Yes, Alicia was involved in the death of Bethany.” There it was. Confirmation that my first moon-blessed mate had indeed been killed by my own pack members, my family at that.

“Were you involved with the murder of my father, Johann Greywolf?” I asked.

“Yes!” She yelled hysterically. “He was going to leave me for that whore again. He planned to excommunicate us from the pack. The hindrance to his plan was your love for my daughter.” Miriam laughed then. “Catalina wanted no parts of my plans. She didn’t know about the worst of them, but she was well aware that our Alpha crawled into my bed at night. Your father commanded both my mate and daughter to keep our secret.”

If my mother withered away under the affair my father had, then that explained a lot about the constant state of ill-health that always befell Catalina’s father. I wondered how it was possible to miss so much that went on right before my eyes.

“Is Viktor a part of this?” Miriam glared at me and nodded her head, but there was something wrong about the feeling that left in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t believe her. “Is Viktor knowingly a part of this plot to overthrow the pack?”

“He’s too stupid to know what’s going on around him. A lot like his cousin, I think.” Miriam cackled again then and threw her head back to project her voice out further. If the walls weren’t soundproofed to prevent other prisoners from communicating with Miriam, then her laughter would haveechoed along the walls of the room and the cave-like chamber beyond.

I turned to leave and Warren watched my back as I did so. “You will never bring us down. There are too many of us. She is too powerful for you.”

“We’ll see about that.” The minute I walked out of the cell with Warren behind me, we slammed the door shut and our eyes met.

“How much do you want to bet that Nika’s instincts were dead on and the woman Vik is so enraptured with is part of this whole thing?” Warren asked.

“I’m beginning to think the woman he is ditching us for is at the heart of this thing. Something about the way that woman squirmed when Vik was mentioned directly made me uneasy. I’m not so sure my cousin is a willing participant in anything at this point.”

“She said he didn’t know.”

“If a so-called Goddess is behind this, then that would explain why Vik is so enthralled with her that he would forsake the one relationship he coveted having.”

“He rejected Janella?”

“I believe he may have. We need to speak to her before we do anything else. Whether she’s ready to talk or not, we need to get the truth of what happened between them.”

As soon as we made our way up the stairs, Alex mind-linked with me. ‘Nika and Janella, rogue attack, north border.’

Warren and I took off out of the pack house and the minute we my feet hit the grass outside, I shifted mid-run into my wolf and headed north toward my mate.

Chapter 11

Rogue Revenge

NIKA

Runningon four paws felt like freedom. The wind whipped through my fur as Janella’s wolf swept up beside me. She was a leaner, smaller wolf and therefore she ran a tad faster than I did. Who was I kidding? Janella’s wolf could run circles around mine. Her energy seemed to know no bounds. At first, I thought it was just because she had so much energy, but I forgot that she had only ever known Mirage Island as her running ground.

If the run felt like freedom to me, then it must have truly felt like it to Janella who had never known the luxury of truly stretching her paws and running with abandon. For a moment, I settled in and took the time to watch her frolic through the woods at the edge of the pack’s lands. We hadn’t meant to get so close to the boundaries, but I also hadn’t wanted to ruin Janella’s moment.

A scent in the air caught my attention before I could signal to Janella to stop. She got a life far ahead in her run before I managed to give a warning howl. I made it loud, so any patrols Thorin had would come to our aid in case we couldn’t handle the problem.

‘What is it?’Janella asked via our mind link.

‘Rogue.’I shot back to her while I scanned the area for the shifter in question. He smelled familiar to me, but not so familiar that I knew who it was right off hand.

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