Page 8 of The Sacred Wolf

My jaw clenched. “I thought you believed me. I’m the true—”

“I know. I do.” He patted the bed again. “I’m only trying to explain why it escaped my notice, with or without Damian’s interference. Please, sit with me.”

I sank onto the edge of the bed and tried not to recoil when he took my hand with the one he’d just been coughing all over. I’d only seen illness like this in long, slow movies that ended badly and won lots of awards. But in person, his clammy skin and fragile bones felt like something from a grisly horror film.

“Dinah always loved the forbidden fruits too. Books. Plays. Movies.” He glanced at my shirt with a tiny wry smile. “Oh, yes. Your mother was a fool for fiction too.”

My mouth fell open. I must have looked like Molly Ringwald in every movie she’d ever been in. I mean, seriously, did that girl ever close her mouth? And would my mother have gotten that joke? I covered my gaping maw just before I belched out an unseemly sob because suddenly all I could think about was the night I literally ran away, ran all the way into Manhattan and didn’t stop until my superhuman lungs finally ran out of breath on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 123rd and I stumbled into that grubby old theater and found a home.

“Everyone told me she was the wrong choice.” Father’s gaze sharpened. “Damian told me she was the wrong choice. But she wasn’t a choice. She was… the crux of my whole life. Everything that had happened… everything that would happen… she was the point where the universe came together. I knew it the moment we locked eyes.”

I gripped my face to keep my jaw from coming unhinged. That was almost exactly how Sebastian had described me. And maybe they were both just paraphrasing some old shifter poet, but… we didn’t really have poets, so it was actually easier to believe my father and Sebastian had both experienced this phenomenon for themselves. My hand slid from my jaw to my chest because now it was my heart that needed to be held.

“But she knew it too,” I whispered. “Right? She knew it too?”

“Of course,” Father said, a hint of Alpha arrogance returning. “Immediately.”

“Then why don’t I?”

I cringed as soon as the words left my mouth. My father was the second-to-last person I wanted thinking that I actually wanted to be fated mates with Sebastian. Or anyone else for that matter. I was pretty much over the whole cosmic romance concept now. I wanted a relationship that felt personal. Like the one I might have had with Sebastian if he’d led with, “Hey, I saw you at the movies. Do you want to get a burger and talk about whether or not Westley and Buttercup are actually couple goals?”

“Ah.” Father nodded slowly. “Then you’re not here to tell an old male he’s going to be a grandfather?”

“What? No!” I recoiled so hard I almost slid off the bed. Was that all these people… these animals ever thought about? I yanked my hand from his moist grasp and fought the urge to wipe it on my shirt. “I’m only here to see that you’re alive! Sebastian and I are not… He released his claim.”

Father sat up, anger flaring his nostrils. “That fickle whelp! How dare he—”

“Reject both your daughters?” My smirk bordered on a sneer. “It was what I wanted, Father. I barely know him, and I feel no fate bond, so how can I look past what he did to my sister?”

“I see.” Father stroked his unkempt beard. “So you’ve come home for good.”

“Home?” I looked across the bed toward the curtains covering the window that faced Manhattan. “Is that where I am, Father? Because you didn’t seem to feel that way when you were abandoning me to another pack while I was crying and begging you not to?” I held up one hand. “And don’t you dare blame it on Damian! If he’d been pulling your strings, you’d have dragged me out by the hair to keep me away from his precious Sebastian! As powerful as he is, I’m surprised he didn’t just make Sebastian, ‘Oops! My bad! Nevermind!’ and continue with the ceremony!”

Wait. Why didn’t he?

I stopped, mouthing hanging open once more. Father tilted his head and the deep furrows that appeared on his forehead let me know I wasn’t alone at the bottom of this plot hole. Had Sebastian’s choice caught Damian so off guard that he couldn’t think on his feet fast enough to fix the situation? Or was Damian so good at thinking on his feet that he’d seen an opportunity to create even more havoc by taking our pack home and turning everyone against me? But what had that accomplished? Sebastian had still rejected Kiana, and Damian had still done nothing to force his hand.

“Father, we know that Damian is strong enough to influence an Alpha, so why isn’t he dealing directly with Sebastian? Why start a war rather than make one male change his mind?”

“We don’t know that he didn’t try.” Father released a weary sigh that filled the air with fish breath. “As much as it pains me to admit this, I believe your Sebastian must be made of stronger mental stuff than your foolish old father.”

“He’s not my…” I trailed off because the notion of Sebastian’s mind being too strong for Damian to handle had me feeling some kind of way. Even more than seeing him shirtless and freshly risen from the bed we were supposed to be sharing. But it wasn’t quite true. “He’s not immune. During the interrogation, Damian tried to make Sebastian strangle him so he wouldn’t have to confess his crimes.”

“But he failed.”

“Yes.” I doubled over and buried my face in my hands. “And now he’s out there doing Gods know what to poor Yara. If he didn’t just kill her.”

Father coughed once onto his fist. “He hasn’t made any offer to return her in exchange for Sebastian’s mateship with Kiana?”

I shook my head. That was what we’d all been expecting, but—I winced with the sudden realization that I had possibly grossly misunderstood Sebastian’s distance. He wasn’t pushing me away; he was pushing himself away. Because if the call ever came, if accepting Kiana would save his mother’s life… he would become my brother-in-law.

Father touched the top of my head, hopefully not with the blood-speckled cough hand. “Then perhaps he’s gotten wind that your sister has already gotten what she wanted from the arrangement and is no longer so eager to comply with his plans for her pack.”

“My pack.” I sat up straight, slicking the hair back from my eyes. I still didn’t know if I wanted to come back here or not, but I couldn’t stand to hear my father say it like that. “If it’s not yours, then it’s mine. I’m your firstborn daughter. I’m the Heir.”

A small smile curved my father’s lips. “Then why in Leto’s name are you sitting here talking to an Elder Wolf when you ought to be on Roosevelt Island?”

Chapter Five

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