Page 103 of Scapegoat

I didn’t want to accept that. I been fucking pissed when I’d found out about Greg’s betrayal of Mum, but she’d pulled herself together pretty quickly. Greg seemed broken by the severing of the bond, but Mum just clung to Jackson and moved on with her life.

“If Abigail can do that, she’s an alpha all right,” I said, and that made me swallow hard. In the pack, she’d be someone the alphas would need to work with, make sure they didn’t alienate, lest she come at them and destabilise their power base, but outside of it? With no pack to moderate her worst impulses, what she could get up to frankly terrified me.

I strode forward, glancing around the house, looking at the shit that was lying about, and then walking into the kitchen. There were piles of paperwork on the benches. Some was just junk mail and advertising from months ago, some were unpaid bills. I pulled out a phone bill, scanning the numbers that were called most. I pulled out my own phone, looking through my contacts to try to match them up.

None to Mum, a few to Jackson and a smattering of other numbers, but one came up over and over. I tapped the number into my phone.

“What’s that?” Xavier asked as the two of them got closer. “Whose number is that?”

“Let’s find out.”

I hit video call, making sure the audio was coming through the speakers. We all stared at the screen as we heard the buzzing sound of the phone ringing. My muscles locked down when the call went through and then I heard her voice.

“Hello?” Abigail was always unfailingly polite to us, bordering on obsequiousness, so hearing her feline purr right now was a shock. She was in some kind of restaurant or cafe, because we caught sight of a booth, heard people around her. Her eyelids dropped to half-mast and fluttered when she saw who it was.

“Abigail.”

“Jayden! How lovely to hear from you.” The phone moved, panning too fast around the restaurant before the screen showed us Kai’s sister. “Anna, it’s Jayden on the phone.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” she said, glaring at us.

“But darling, you must! I’ll put it on speakerphone—”

“You might not want to do that,” I growled.

“Oh?” She was now staring at the screen again and I caught the moment her smile faltered. “And why is that?”

“Anna isn’t our mate, as we’ve fucking told you more times than I can count,” I snapped. “If you want that blaring through the speakers at whatever cafe you’re at…” I looked at the others and they nodded, scanning the screen for details, any details of where they were. “That’s fine, but you might want to spare your daughter that.”

“Like you spared Anna that embarrassment in the town square?”

Yep, Abigail was getting pissed. The muscles around her mouth tightened until they did a fair approximation of a cat’s bum.

“What embarrassment?” Atlas said, leaning forward. “We just did the day over, made sure everyone knows the truth.”

“Truth?” Abigail drew herself up, some of the imperious bitch she’d been with Kai finally showing itself. “And what truth would that be? This ridiculous farce you’ve all been indulging in?”

“We chose Kai,” Atlas said.

“Well, you chose wrong.” Her eyes blazed bright silver as she stared at the screen. “You’ll choose Anna before this is over.”

And if I needed any proof of my theory, I had it now. Alphas had many different means to influence, manipulate or outright coerce people. Their voice was only one way, but we all heard an alpha’s command in hers.

But she couldn’t pull that shit on us, otherwise she would’ve done it years ago.

“No, we won’t.” Xavier pushed all of the certainty, all of the need we felt for Kai into his tone. “There is only Kai—”

“And what will you do if there’s no Kaia?” She was talking faster, taking less time to formulate her responses. Her brows twitched and her mouth had flattened to become a thin line. Abigail was getting heated and that made her reckless. “Alphas need a mate. You’ll want to grieve for… her, but at some point, those urges will rise and you’ll turn—”

“Not to Anna,” I said with all certainty. She might be able to dictate shit to other people, but not us. “Never to Anna.” I was pushing her hard, wanting to force her to crack, to spill all of her evil plans, but Atlas burst in.

“Are you fucking talking about killing Kai?”

Atlas stared at the phone screen so hard it was amazing it didn’t crack and that’s when his and Abigail’s eyes locked. He’d just given her what she needed, because she smiled then.

“I’ll do whatever I have to ensure my daughter gets the future she deserves.”

And that’s when the call ended. I stared at the blank screen, my eyes flicking, as if I could summon Abigail back.

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