Page 228 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
“Bryn, look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but my hands were tied, alright? The council wanted a hunting party sent after Troy, and I couldn’t say no. They were right to request it.”
“They were right to request it, but I wasn’t right to forbid it?”
“It’s different, Bryn. I’m the Wargs’ alpha, and I need to do what’s right for my pack. This is what my pack wanted.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell me the truth? You had plenty of time to tell me, and you never did. I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other anymore!”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds before reopening them. “I didn’t mean to go behind your back, Bryn,” he said, speaking at a calmer, slower pace. You’re right—I should have told you—but there was no way I could do that without stressing you out or coming off like I was undermining your authority.”
“Youdecidedthat this would stress me out, so you also decided not to tell me. You kept this a secret so I wouldn’t get mad at you. You see how well that turned out, Night, because I’m fucking pissed off.”
He stared hard at me but seemed unable to come up with a good response.
“I can’t believe you would do this,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “I bet you’re happy the council asked you to send them, aren’t you?”
He paused, and I saw the debate raging in his forest-green eyes before he said, “To be honest, Bryn, yeah, I am. After I found out about the baby, I can say that I’m fucking glad the council forced me to send them. At least with him dead, we don’t have to worry about him trying to kill you or our baby.”
“I knew it,” I shot back. “But now that we know about the secret account, we need him alive more than ever, don’t we? We have no leads without him!”
“Bryn, you know as well as I do that he’s not going to tell us anything,” he retorted. “Even if we captured him, you know that all he’ll do is lie to us.”
“Troy’s crafty, but he’s not that smart. Night, I was stuck with him for a week in that damn cave, and he was more than willing to give away family secrets without much of a push from me. I could get him to talk.”
“You don’t seriously think I’d let you interrogate him alone?”
“I didn’t seriously think you would go behind my back, Night! Maybe you’re willing to do all kinds of things that I wouldn’t have imagined you capable of doing.”
He let out a tight breath. “Listen, Bryn, even with the account in play, Troy is still too dangerous to be allowed to live. He’s a fucking psychopath, and he’s crafty. If we captured him, he’d just escape again.”
I gritted my teeth. We were retreading the same argument. Night claimed he wanted to avoid stressing me out, but now my stress levels were through the roof because he hadn’t been honest with me…again. Why did he insist on making it so hard to believe when he was telling the truth? I loved him, but I needed to trust that he wouldn’t keep important things like this from me. It was true that I was in a more fragile state because of the baby, but I was pretty damned sure that Night still wouldn’t have told me if I wasn’t pregnant.
I stared at him, feeling pressure build behind my eyes. “I am your mate, Night, and because of that, you should have trustedme with the hard news,” I said finally. “If you didn’t tell me because you thought I was too weak to take it, you’re no better than Edward or Dana, who think I’m too stupid to understand a ledger.”
The anger on his face faded, and he looked like I’d thrown ice water on him. “Hold on, Bryn?—”
I held up my hand, and he stopped talking. “Is there anything else you’ve been keeping from me?”
It took him a few seconds to answer. “I wasn’t keeping this from you, Bryn,” he said gently. “I just hadn’t had the chance to tell you. Tavi told you about the missing pups, right?”
“Yes, she told me,” I said. The reminder of the missing boys cooled some of my anger, replacing it with sadness. “I was only a few years older than the boys who went missing. Mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight.”
During that time, I was hardly ever bullied because Mom was with me all the time. The pack’s mood had changed. Their paranoia, worry, and grief had put me even more on edge.
“Do you think the disappearances have something to do with the ferals?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Bryn. It could be nothing.”
But I recognized the determination in his eyes. “Your gut is telling you that it’s not nothing.”
“Yeah, something feels off about it all, but I can’t prove that they’re linked. I’m planning on talking to a witness, but I don’t know how well that will go. Apparently, the poor kid was traumatized by what he saw, and he might not be the most reliable source of information.”
“I want to be there when you talk to him.”
He was about to say something—maybe to argue against me going or maybe to agree that he wanted me there—but before he could, I noticed Jasper approaching cautiously from behind Night. Night sighed instead of speaking and turned to meet Jasper.
“I’m sorry, Alpha—I really am—but I need to catch you up on what’s happened. The others are waiting for me to get back to them.”
Night cursed under his breath and put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be back, Bryn. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
