Page 76 of Vicious Wolf Mate

He smirks. “Don’t sound too disappointed, dear. You’ve always known how I felt about those vermin. Never once did I try to hide it.”

Never once, he says. Then that means he’s always been this way. His true nature of spewing venomous words like spreading a typical greeting.

“What about mom? Did she know as much as I did that you hated shifters?”

He pauses. “Obviously. We were married. We shared a life together, it’s only natural for her to know my deepest desires.”

I swallow hard. “Why did she leave all those years ago?”

My gut tells me that I already know the answer to that. But it’s unclear. Like I’ve always known but I was too terrified to know the whole truth.

“Because she fell out of love with me,” he says nonchalantly.

“Bullshit! Tell me the truth!”

“Your mother was too passive and a pushover. She was against killing all the shifters. She wanted peace and I couldn’t have that. She’d only get in my way.”

I gasp. “Youkilledmy mother?”

He finally breaks eye contact. He doesn’t answer me but as they say, silence is an answer too. My heart stops as the realization hits me like a bulldozer. I finally knew the truth about her “leaving” me.

I look at Mace, for some sort of comfort. Despite having a gun to his head, his gaze turns soft and sympathetic. Even Gnash and Dario look at me the same way. They know better than anyone else what loss feels like.

I just want to scream. I wish I was a shifter too so I can just end everyone in here. I want to make my father suffer so much that he’ll beg for death.

My voice shakes. “Tell me how you did it.”

He jerks his head back. “What?”

The pent up tears finally fall.

“TELL ME how you did it!”

He hesitates to answer. For a moment I thought I saw a flash of regret in his eyes. But I was wrong and stupid to believe so. He sighs deeply, as if he’s tired of this conversation.

“I took her to an abandoned mineshaft and knocked her out. I hired hitmen to burn the body so she could never be identified.”

No. No. No. No!

The boys gasp along with me. My eyes widen while I furrow my brows. I’m sure from another perspective, I look manic.

“I HATE YOU!” I shriek.

Without even thinking, I fire a shot. The bullet hits my father on the leg. He goes down. I somehow expect for his body to fall limply to the ground.

Yet he remains alive.

53

MACE

Oh, my, my sweet McKenna. As gorgeous as McKenna is physically, and she is as lovely as the morning, I am more smitten with her grit, her backbone.

I watch McKenna shoot her own father through the leg. She doesn’t flinch. First she corners him into admitting his involvement in her mother’s demise, and then she puts a bullet through his leg. I know this sounds morbid, but this makes me want her more. I want to give her the love that’s inside of me.

Not just part of that love. All of that love.

Oh, this whole scene of Rovas getting nailed through the leg is mesmerizing, but as soon as his gun is out of his hand, I grab it. Wolf-speed, although I am not in a shifted state.

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