Page 101 of Found Objects

I moved forward and put my hand gently on Cole’s back. I could feel the fear and rage leaping off him and knew that staying calm was his best option. He knew it as well, but in the moment, the emotions were choking him. What was good was that the second I touched him, he took a breath.

“I need you to know that this all started because your father said no to me.”

Cole shook his head. “I have no idea what you––”

“I offered your father land in New York worth millions. I promised him a mansion, and money, so much money, if he would only give me what I needed.”

“And what was that?”

“I required then, as I do now, an infusion of pure lupine blood.”

No one said a word.

“I need a stallion to put with my broodmares,” Matthias explained. “I have the women. I just need them impregnated with seed to produce the wolves I require.”

It sounded so clinical, not at all the horror that it would be.

“And if that’s not what they want?”

“They belong to me. I don’t care what they want.”

“You have your son.” Cole barely got the words out, the disgust clear in his voice.

“No. My son can’t shift, and neither can I. That’s why they all carry knives and machetes—we have so few shifters in our ranks. My mother was half human, as was Tuss’s, a truth I found out only after she was sold to me by her father.”

When I glanced at Tuss, I saw the rage simmering in his eyes. As much as he may have hated us, he hated his father as well.

“By the time I went looking for a pure-blood female, the only one I knew had already mated with Abel and given him Justin. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t breed with Narah, even if we took her, because I’m not pure.”

“And my mother?”

“The same issue. And then she died giving birth to your brother, and I thought here, finally, was the answer.”

“What was that?” Cole rasped.

“You,” Matthias said simply.

“I don’t––”

“Anson could give you to me. I could have you impregnate all the females and give me the shifters I need to make our pack the most powerful.”

“But my father said no,” Cole whispered.

“Which was idiotic,” Matthias retorted angrily. “He was so short-sighted. He could have been rich, as well as his family and his pack. But he kept ranting about how he wouldn’t take away your choices any more than he would the females in my pack.”

Cole nodded. “That sounds like him.”

“He had Evan, he didn’t need you too. He had an embarrassment of riches and refused to share. It was insane.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to Abel, of course.”

It made sense.

That was what Justin had meant when he said that Anson had only cared about Cole and Evan. Why couldn’t Anson just barter away his firstborn son for the prosperity of the pack? Wasn’t that what a true alpha did? Think of the pack first?

“Abel always wanted to be alpha, and I could make his dreams come true and take away the only person who could ever challenge him at the same time.”