Page 62 of Fenrir

“Why didn’t you come for me before? Why now?”

“Because to kill you, I would have first had to kill Fay, and she might have betrayed me and chosen you, but she was still my fated mate, and my wolf still loves her. He would never have let me. But she’s gone now. And it’s just you, me, and your mother.” He motioned for the other males to move her to the big rock in the center of the encampment. The one they had used when someone in the pack needed to be punished.

“Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. I had no idea, but that wasn’t me. I didn’t do those things. If you want to be the alpha of the pack, be the alpha. I’ll leave. I’ll leave, and you will never see me again.”

Two more males walked to the boulder and pulled down the silver shackles hammered into the rock face. She let them cuff her without complaint and waited even as the silver burned into her skin, making it sizzle continuously. She’d toyed with the cuffs once when she was young and found that they burned her but that she healed so quickly the burns did little more than irritate her skin, unlike normal shifters who, when in constant contact with silver long enough, would burn down to the bone.

Grace didn’t want to hurt them. She didn’t want to hurt any of them. Ironically, her brothers were being used just as her father and alpha had. Her father was hurt, betrayed, and victimized. She couldn’t imagine how that felt, but she had no intention of adding to his pain.

“Please,” Grace said again. “Don’t do this. If you get to know me, maybe you’ll see-”

He gave out a bark of mirthless laughter. “You think that after all this time, I’m just going to let you go? After all the waiting. The planning. The studying.”

“I… I really don’t want any of you to get hurt,” she pleaded.

“At the slightest snap of my fingers, every one of my sons would line up to defile you without so much as a second thought. And with all that silver running through your veins, there wouldn’t be a thing you could do about it.”

Grace’s throat dried, and her head whirled. All those nights she’d dreamt about her father, she’d never once thought he’d be like this. She’d imagined him as sad for his betrayal of Fay. Embarrassed. Maybe even repentant. That he would come back to them one day and apologize. He’d stick around while he and Fay tried to put things back together between them. That he’d step up and be an alpha again for the pack and take some of the load off Fay. But this man… the man that stood before her… he was nothing like the man she’d imagined. This man was bitter with hatred and fueled by the thought of revenge. She looked around the group of half-brothers. How many women had her father slept with to get them all? Had he cared for any of their mothers, or had he just used them to build himself an army?

Her father pulled a long knife from the back of his waistband and walked toward her. “I can promise you one thing. I will make this as painless as possible. Not that it will be painless, but I will try to make it quick. No underhanded cuts to parts of your body that will hurt but not be fatal. I want revenge, but I’m not a sadist. So rest easy knowing thatIwill not draw this out. How long you suffer will be up to your mother.” He stopped in front of her.

“You don’t want to do this. Believe me. You really don’t. I’m giving you a chance to walk away. I’m giving all of you a chance to live long, peaceful lives. Find mates. Have children. If you try to do this, I promise none of that will happen. You will all die here tonight.”

“My boys and I are ready to die for me to be able to exact revenge.”

He raised the knife to her throat, and she grabbed onto the silver chains at her wrists. He stared at her, and for the first time she saw it, he wasn’t just angry; he was insane. What Fay and her mother had done to him. The betrayal. It had broken him. She’d heard before how breaking the bond between fated mates could cause insanity, but she’d never seen it before. But standing there, looking into his eyes, she saw it. She wondered if something happened to Fenrir if she would go insane.

Fenrir. Grace reached through their bond again. This time she felt something more substantial. He was agitated. Upset. Something wasn’t right.

A trickle of fear raced through her, not for herself, but for Fenrir. She needed to get to him.

Her father moved the silver knife down her arm leaving a long blister in its wake, which healed almost as quickly. He traced it over her shoulder and then ripped the collar of her shirt open, exposing both her skin and her lacy bra.

His eyes widened, and he stopped moving.

“You’ve been marked,” he said. “You have a mate.”

“Yes.”

“It was recently. In the past month or less.” His words weren’t a question.

Conflict settled in his eyes momentarily, and then it was gone.

“He’ll be better off without you. It will hurt, but he will get over it and find someone else.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself more than anything.

Anger bubbled inside Grace, and she chuckled. “Believe me, he won’t find someone else, and if you kill me, he will find you, whether in this world or the next.”

Again her father looked conflicted, and Grace saw her chance. A way to get him to stop. A way to save him as well as all her half-brothers.

“And when he does find you,” she continued. “You will beg for him to end your existence permanently. Because he is not the kind of man who forgives or forgets.”

Her father licked his lips, his eyes never leaving her mating mark.

Minutes passed, and finally he said, “Then we will have something else in common.” Her father tipped the knife downward, pressed the point of the blade down behind her collarbone, and wedged it into the fleshy part of her shoulder.

She knew what he meant to do. He was going to sever her arm, rendering it useless.

He poised to press down the knife when her spirit side cried out for her to do something. Just as he brought down the knife, Grace yanked on the silver restraint and broke it from the rock before spinning out of his way.

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