Page 5 of Wolf Found

Joey gaped. “I...” He looked up at them, panicked, and then leaned down to whisper furiously, “Sir, I’m not sure your son even knew Graham existe—”

“I. Don’t. Have. A. Son,” Amos said coldly. “How old was the omega?”

It was too late though. The damage was done.

Dez stood, Sawyer still in his arms. Sawyer, who was staring open-mouthed between Ash and his father, like he expected one of them to jump at him and yell, “Tricked you!”

As Dez set Sawyer on the ground, he turned to share a look with Gavin, who nodded.

“Well then,” Gavin said, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together. “I think we can all agree that this has been awful in every way, and we should never, ever do it again. You and your marionette can leave our territory, and do please depart with this anti-invitation, which is open ended. The Martingale pack isn’t welcome in Kismet. Ever. Any of you.”

Amos stood so fast he smacked Joey in the chin with his shoulder. Even a decade later, Ash had to quell the urge to reach for the man, ask him if he was okay.

Offer to kiss it better.

Joey held his jaw and didn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

“Good,” Amos announced. “Then when you find our omega, you’ll send him home. He’s a member of the Martingale pack, and he belongs to us.”

“People aren’t something you can own,” Dez answered. “And Gavin told you to leave. Did you need help out? Because I’d be happy to kick your ass to the curb.”

Amos Martingale swept past them, chin high, without once having glanced at his own son. Joey ducked his head apologetically at all of them, following swiftly in his footsteps.

It seemed that little had changed in the Martingale pack in the near decade since Ash had left.

But dammit, Ash was no pedophile, and he wanted to know what the hell his father had meant about an inappropriate relationship with a little kid. Ash would never, could never, and he didn’t take that kind of accusation lightly, even from such an unreliable source.

He turned to his packmates as soon as his father was out of earshot. “I have no idea what he was talking about you guys. I don’t—I would never—”

“Ash,” Sawyer said, rushing over to hug him tight. “Ash, sweetie, we know that. We would never believe a thing like that. Never. We’re just all sorry that piece of shit is apparently your father.”

Ash cringed and nodded, staring at the floor, because what could he say?

That piece of shit was his father. That beta enforcer who cared more about the pack’s archaic rules than about his own son’s happiness. That man whose wife had died in an accident while he was away on pack business, and he hadn’t even come home early. Who had caught fourteen-year-old Ash crying over a picture of that dead wife and torn it up, because “future alphas don’t cry.”

“How the hell did you come from that?” Dez asked, confused and clearly annoyed by it.

Ash shrugged at them all. “I don’t know.”

3

What Doesn’t Kill You

The alpha had lied.

That was what Graham had spent the last five days thinking about, over and over. As he’d packed a bag of his favorite clothes and those few things he couldn’t live without. As he and Hannah had snuck off of enclave property. As they had spent the little money Hannah had left on bus tickets to Denver.

He’d opened with the suggestion that Hannah should go find Asher, but it had been immediately obvious that wasn’t going to work. She’d sobbed and shaken her head, and frankly, acted out of character for Hannah. Graham had seen it before. Sometimes new mothers took a long time to come back from the emotional upheaval of having a baby.

That meant it was up to Graham to take care of them all.

And the alpha had lied.

Hannah had never gotten along with other members of the enclave because of her blunt honesty. People thought it was unbecoming, especially on an omega. Omegas were supposed to be obsequious and tell their superiors just what they wanted to hear. Hannah was honest and completely unapologetic about it.

But the alpha told everyone Hannah had been sent away from the enclave for consorting with humans. Hannah told Graham that she had run away to be with her human boyfriend. There was no way to pretend those things were the same, or that Hannah had misunderstood, so the only possible answer was that the alpha had lied.

That had turned Graham’s world on its axis a little. If the alpha had lied about one thing, what else had he lied about? Could anything he’d ever said be trusted?

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