Page 29 of The Sacred Wolf

“Well, since you gave me the photo, you assumed right. I think I deserve a full explanation, don’t you?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you know about these people, and what did my mother have to do with them?”

My tone was angrier than I’d planned. I knew that people say you lure more flies with honey than vinegar, but honey wasn’t on the menu in my family very often. Vinegar was the only way I’d ever gotten anything done.

“Alright, Elyse, fine. I suppose you have a right to know more.” He leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m a Manhattanite, born and bred,” he began. “And by bred, I do mean that. My entire life plan was for me to be a Beta one day to the ranking Alpha of Manhattan, as my father and grandfather had been before me.”

“Well, that appears to have gone to plan,” I interjected, annoyed that he’d started this far at the beginning. “You can skip through your puppyhood for me on this journey through time.”

Mateo’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t protest. I was an Alpha, after all. “I met your mother when she came to the city from Boston, where she’d grown up.”

Boston?

Hush! I’m listening. But yeah, that’s news to me.

“I was in school at NYU,” he continued. “And I met her at a gathering of shifters. It looked like the average college kegger from the outside, but it was geared toward shifters interested in our history.”

I was at a loss trying to imagine my mother, the picture of composed perfection in every image I’d ever seen, attending a kegger. Or going to college, for that matter. It wasn’t unusual for high-ranking males like Mateo to study something very serious and lucrative to increase pack wealth, but a female? Unheard of as far as I’d been told. Then again, the image of her leaning into Mateo with his hand casually draped against her waist hadn’t fit into my worldview either. And then there was yesterday’s revelation from my father that she, too, had been addicted to human fiction.

“What was she studying?” I blurted out. “And how? That’s not…”

“Film Production,” Mateo said simply. “She had a human scholarship.”

My mouth dropped open, and I gripped the edge of the table. Father had certainly left out that.

“At the time, I knew nothing about the Children,” Mateo explained. “I’d only come because a friend from our pack had suggested it. The speaker was a much older Beta from a distant pack near Chicago. Honestly, everything he was saying about prophecy and the importance of returning the strength of our kind to its roots didn’t have much impact on me. I was mostly annoyed that I missed the chance to study for finals.”

“So why did you stay?” I rasped, not half as interested in his side of the story as my mother’s, but knowing I had to let him do this his way. “And why did you join?”

He ducked his head, his long, dark hair falling in front of his eyes. It was so uncharacteristic for him that I shifted in my chair from embarrassment as it dawned on me why he must have joined if the Children’s message hadn’t resonated.

“My mother.”

“I saw Dinah from across the room. She was… well, she was radiant. Her face seemed to glow, and she watched the speaker with such rapt attention. To be honest, I was drawn to her immediately, and her enthusiasm for the cause was catching.” He paused, steepling his long fingers and leveling his gaze at me. “Despite what Ayla and the other’s antics must seem like to you, and despite my initial disinterest, I became a dedicated member of the Children of Leto. I believe that the dilution of our strength is a problem, and that one day, the powers of Chann and Marrak will be returned to us so that we may rise again.”

His eyes lit up with a fervor I’d never seen in him, even when deep in his Beta duties of persuasion and control. It sent a shiver down my spine, thinking of how he would react if he ever found out about Evan. Would he start following me around singing and lighting incense?

“Uh, fair enough, I guess. So you joined the Children because of my mother. But based on that picture, there’s more to the story—her story with you, I mean.”

He stood abruptly, striding over to the windows behind him and peering out on his magnificent view of Central Park. A few moments passed in silence.

“Mateo?”

“There’s nothing else I can tell you about the Children. You’ve met them. You know what they’re about. The rest is personal.”

“Personal?” I stood so fast I nearly knocked over my chair, hustling to where he stood and forcing myself into his view. “You know what’s personal? Thinking that you’re the one who killed your mother your whole life, only to find out it was your pack’s Beta who ripped her open and left her to bleed out. And growing up not with a mother, but with a shadow that hung over your whole family, your father so distraught that he never mated again—”

At that, Mateo flinched.

“Why did you give me the damn picture if you weren’t willing to tell me anything about her?” I whined, and then stopped, annoyed at myself for needing this information so badly after a lifetime of not knowing anything.

“I don’t know!” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I think I was just so astounded by the resemblance. You and Kiana both look so much like Dinah… although you have more of her temperament. Her unusual interests.”

When he said my mother’s name, his face unmistakably softened. My breath caught. I guess I’d been thinking they had a casual college fling before she met my father, which was a weird thing to add to my scant collection of facts, but this… this was earth-shaking. My parents were fated… but were they really in love?

“You loved her,” I murmured. “That’s why you don’t want to talk about it. And that’s why you were so close to her in the picture. Did she—?”

“Yes, I loved her.” He cut me off. “But I don’t know if she ever loved me, not truly. I brought her back from the meeting when I learned her scholarship didn’t cover room and board. She didn’t have a pack anymore since she’d left hers. It was all rather unusual behavior for a female, and I was concerned that no one would take her in, so we made up a story of mistreatment, and my Alpha allowed her to join our pack.”

My mind raced. My mother was from a Boston pack, but she’d run away to go to film school and wound up joining these crazy Children and then leaving it all behind to mate with my stuffy old dad instead. I loved him, but seriously… how had she?

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