Page 12 of The Alpha's Betrayed Mate

“Neither am I.” She scanned the rocky ground for a place to sit and settled with her back against one of the stones, surprised by how dry it was. “Good spot. Not too wet.”

“The high tide doesn’t reach it.” She could tell the boy was looking at her, knew that all she had to do was stay quiet until his curiosity won the fight. He held out for a minute or so, which impressed her. She hadn’t been nearly so patient at his age. “Who are you? How’d you know my… you said you knew Marroc.”

The sound of her brother’s name made her smile. “I’m Venna. I left the pack before you were born, but yeah. I knew both your parents.” She hesitated for a moment, reminded herself of what had come of trying to keep information from Syrra. “Marroc was my brother.”

She heard Rylan catch his breath, and he crept closer, close enough that she could see his silver eyes wide as saucers in the darkness. “Your brother? Dad never told me about any other family.”

She’d known that was the case, of course, but it still hurt. “He wasn’t allowed to tell you,” she said, wondering why she was defending him right now. “Nobody was allowed to talk about me, after I left. That’s the rules, when someone gets exiled.”

“Exiled,” the boy repeated, and the wondering tone of his voice told her he knew what that meant. Was Belmont already teaching him the ways of the pack, she wondered? Preparing him to take over someday, the way his father had prepared him? “What did you do?”

She took a deep breath. Kids really did have a way of cutting to the heart of things. “I let some people down,” she said simply, hoping it would be enough for him. “I made a promise that I’d keep everyone safe, and I broke that promise.”

“So my dad sent you away.” It wasn’t hard to tell when Rylan was talking about Belmont—the resentment that burned in his voice was unmistakable. “Just for one mistake? He’s so—he’s such a—”

“I know,” Venna agreed, hearing the boy’s voice shaking with anger, knowing it was about to tip over into tears. “Trust me, I know. I don’t blame you at all for hiding out here.”

“You’re my aunt,” Rylan said abruptly, shifting a little closer. She nodded slowly.

“I guess I am.”

“We’re family.” He seemed to be working his way to a point. “Does that mean you’ll keep a secret, if I ask you to?”

She considered the question for a moment. She was beginning to worry about where this was going. If she was honest, she’d been so focused on finding Rylan safe and sound that she hadn’t given any thought to what would happen afterwards. Was she going to stay here with him in the rocks until the search parties found them both? What kind of trouble would she get in if the pack drew the wrong conclusions? She stood accused of worse crimes than kidnapping, after all…

“Venna?”

“Depends on the secret,” she said finally. Rylan considered this for a moment, and it was clear he’d have preferred a more conclusive answer, but the pressure of the secret was clearly too much to bear.

“I’m building a boat,” he said in a rush, pointing to the far side of the little cave. She could make out an odd shape in the darkness there, throwing strange shadows, but with this piece of information she realized what she was looking at was a pile of sticks and driftwood. “Those are my materials,” he informed her wisely. “I started collecting them yesterday, when everyone told me to go and play on the beach. But I’m not playing. Not while there’s work to do.”

She bit back on the impulse to tell him how much he sounded like his father. “Why are you building a boat?”

“Everyone thinks the demons that attacked us were just random demons, but they’re wrong,” he said, his voice burning with feeling. “I saw the demon that killed my mom, and I know it followed us here. It’s not on this island anywhere, so it must be hiding on one of the others. I’m going to sail to them one by one, I’m going to find the demon, and I’m going to kill it. For what it did to Mom. For what it did to the pack.”

Venna let this whispered pronouncement hang in the air, torn between admiration of the boy’s pluck and absolute fear at the thought of what would happen to an eight-year-old child if he tried to take on a demon single-handed.

“If you tell my dad he’ll stop me,” Rylan said when the silence became too much to bear. “I told everyone about the demon, but they just keep telling me to wait until I feel less sad. But I’m not sad. I’m angry, and I’m going to fix it. And I’m not going to let anyone in the pack stop me.” The defiant look he was giving her told her that that included her. She knew she couldn’t agree with what the pack had been saying to him—they were right, of course, but right now Rylan needed an ally much more than he needed the truth.

“Tell you what,” she said after a pause. “Why don’t we make a deal? I won’t tell anyone about your boat or your plan. But in return, you have to go back to your dad’s place.”

“No,” Rylan said immediately.

“Oh, is the boat finished already?” She knew it wasn’t. A moody silence. “Are you going to live here instead? On the beach?”

“If I have to.” He sounded a little less sure of himself. Venna sighed.

“Rylan, before I left the pack, I was training to be a demon hunter.” His wide-eyed stare told her he knew exactly what that meant. “All these scars? These are from demons. Trust me when I tell you that I hate the demon that hurt the pack just as much as you do. Your dad was my brother, Rylan, and your mom was my best friend.” She almost managed to stop her voice from shaking on that last word. “But if you want to fight demons, you have to be patient. You have to make sure you’re strong enough. How strong do you think you’ll be, if you’re living out here on the beach with nothing to eat and nowhere warm to sleep?”

A long, resentful silence. Marroc had always been stubborn, but he saw reason when it was laid out for him. She waited, hoping like hell her brother had passed on his reason as well as his willpower.

“Fine,” Rylan said at last, the syllable tearing itself unwillingly from his throat. “I’ll go home. For now. But once the boat’s finished, I’m going to kill that demon.”

“I believe you.” She smiled at the boy, feeling an odd mixture of grief and joy as she thought of her brother’s face. It might have been a little reckless, promising to keep the boy’s dangerous scheme a secret, but at least he was on his way home now. He’d be safe there, at least until his boat was finished.

And by then, maybe she’d have tracked down that demon herself.

Chapter 7 - Belmont

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