Page 73 of Rogue Games

I have a brother. A half-brother, but blood, nonetheless.

Closing my eyes, the betrayal cuts deep.

Finding my family is all I've cared about for so long, and he’s keeping them from me. I can’t let it go.

My wolf whimpers, still wanting to cling to the version of him we were falling for. But Dean knows me and Wyatt did nothing to deserve becoming outcasts, that we’re good people, and still, he kept his mouth shut.

The pain in my chest is crushing. I curse myself for letting him get under my skin. I’m nothing but a filthy rogue to these people, what else did I expect? He probably doesn’t want his brother’s name to be tainted by being related to us.

Reformed pack, my ass. He’s just as bad as his father.

In a rage-filled frenzy, I keep searching while I have the chance. Dean could be back at any minute, and I need to know if he’s hiding any more dark secrets.

Alpha Steel is going to know just who he’s left in charge here. I’m going to prove that it’s all an act.

Or that was the plan when I started tearing through his house.

Laughing bitterly, I step into Dean’s lair. His scent is so strong, that my wolf immediately sits up and starts to pay attention. It’s ingrained in every surface. He clearly spends a lot of time hidden away down here. I remember back to my time in his official packhouse office and how faint his scent was.

That one’s for show. This is where he really works.

There are photos on the walls of him and Maya, some serious and tense looking ones from when they were younger, with a woman behind them who must be his birth mother. Her arms stretch around them protectively, and I see spirit in her eyes. She died not too long before Alpha Reynolds met my mother. The questions hanging over her death were the reason my mother left us behind, or so we think.

Graham Reynolds insisted she was a troubled woman who took her own life. Seeing how things turned out, I sincerely doubt that was the case.

Pausing at Dean’s desk, I smile at a photo of him at a BBQ, surrounded by friends, a genuine smile on his face, as he laughs at something a younger man beside him is saying. It’s an unguarded moment, captured by someone who cares for him. It’s a picture of him and my younger brother.

Taken while I was probably sleeping rough or in some shitty motel.

With shaky hands, I open the back of the frame and pull the picture free, holding it like it's the most precious thing I have. Does he know he doesn’t have the same mother? Maybe he’s a victim in all of this too.

But as I stare at it, tears swimming in my eyes, my gaze moves to Dean. For a moment, I feel a deep longing to see him like that, happy and carefree, but then I remind myself that I hate him. He had the chance to put my family back together again and hasn’t taken it.

My anger is fuelled by all the years of being left out and looked down on.

What I need is a smoking gun, proof that my mother’s here, kept locked away by Dean. Then I’ll go to Alpha Steel.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Doubt is getting the better of me, but if I go back upstairs now, it's all been for nothing. He’ll know what I’ve done the second he gets home. I’ll be off Reynolds’s territory, and I'll never know what happened to my mother.

“Just do it, Jamie,” I mutter to myself, my fingers resting on the top drawer of his desk. He doesn't deserve your sympathy or consideration. In fact, he deserves anything but.

And yet, something inside my brain resists despite his gruff demeanour and blatant lying. Nothing since we've arrived here has shown him to be cruel or uncaring.

His pack has had every opportunity to leave since he reopened the borders, but none of them have. Blake is walking around chatting freely to everyone he meets. Nobody has begged for him to save them and take them away from this place.

Okay, so maybe Dean's villainous reputation is unfounded, but that doesn't mean he never does the wrong thing.

I wipe my sweaty hands on the front of my leggings and lift up the contents of the drawer, checking for anything hidden among the usual mess of stationary, pens, and keys. A photo of her. Her jewellery. The password for his computer. Anything.

Growing more and more frantic that I find whatever is here before I get caught, I cross to his filing cabinet, not sure what kind of paperwork would be kept about the whereabouts of the pack's former Luna.

Pulling out files listing the contact details of the pack, I scan down the list. Accommodations are assigned to each member, and I find a few first names beginning with M, but no Margaret or Maggie. Sliding the list back into the folder I pulled it from, I curse. Employment records similarly turn up nothing, and I’m starting to get angry. This can’t all be for nothing. I’m going to get discovered, there’s no way he won’t know I’ve been in here. If I have no evidence, I can’t force him to tell me.

I kick the cabinet as I slam the drawer shut, and turn toward the shelves, pulling out book after book.

I leaf through the pages, lift trinkets, pressing anything that could be a button to some kind of secret hidden lair beneath this secret basement. Increasingly desperate, I tear through the space, needing to find something that will give me some answers.

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