Page 3 of Broken Mate

“Do you know from who?” he asked.

Her aunt looked at her, as if asking for permission, and Anais nodded.

“It was her sister.”

Payton gasped.

“Yoursister?” he asked, in complete disbelief. “Did she not know the repercussions?”

“She knew exactly what she was doing,” Ruby muttered. “Spoiled little cunt is what she is.”

“Aunt Ruby!” Anais admonished.

“We’re all thinking it, I just said it.” She shrugged. “I blame my brother for this. An absolutely horrible man and alpha, who thinks the only place for a female is to be seen and not heard.”

“What’s his name?” Jericho asked.

“Renfield Arnauld.”

His eyebrows rose. “I know of him. I’ve heard…” His voice faded, clearly not sure how to describe him.

“It’s okay,” Ruby supplied dryly. “You’ve heard he’s not honorable? A good man? A good alpha? Yeah, all that describes my brother. My other niece is following very well in his footsteps. A regular chip off the old asshole block.”

“Auntie,” Anais whispered. She looked at Jericho with mortification. “Alpha Jericho doesn’t need to know all our family drama.”

“He needs to know what happened,” Ruth argued. “You were betrayed in the most horrific of ways.” She turned back to Jericho. “As we’ve established, our ex-alpha wasn’t the greatest of men. After years of warring with a rival pack, he wanted to establish a peace treaty, and offered up Anais as the sacrificial lamb. She was to marry the other alpha’s son.”

“A barbaric practice,” Jericho muttered.

“But you weren’t mates, were you?” Payton asked.

“No,” Anais replied. “It was an arrangement and nothing more.”

“What none of us knew was that Gaia, Anais’s sister, was having an affair with the pseudo fiancé,” Ruby said.

Payton’s eyes widened. It was clear she was putting the pieces in place. “She poisoned Anais because of jealousy?”

Silence fell over the table, and Anais hated the pitying looks directed at her. “Stop. Please. It doesn’t matter what happened, or who did this to me. I just want to be fixed.”

Jericho slowly nodded. “Have you felt your wolf lately?”

She shook her head. “Not since the day I was poisoned.”

“I see,” he said, as if he really did understand. “The secret to getting your legs back, is to reconnect with your wolf. Right now, she feels betrayed. She’s licking her wounds, afraid to trust even you.”

“How could she think I’d do this to myself? To her?”

“She’s an animal,” he explained. “She’s running on instinct. I won’t sugarcoat this, Anais. The road to recovery is going to be a very long process. It took me years to even walk again.”

Her brow furrowed. “I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?”

Determination burned through her. “I may be weak. I may be packless. But that only makes me more focused.”

A slow grin appeared on his face. “We can work with that.”

Chapter Two

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