Page 102 of Found Objects

Anson and Cole both gone in an instant. Hearing it out loud was worse than I could have ever imagined. It had to be excruciating for Cole.

“Abel set the time and place so my men and I would ambush your father when you would be with him. It was so simple. We would kill him and take his son, and no one would ever know what happened to you.”

I shuddered, thinking of what they would have forced the loving, caring man I was crazy about to do.

“But Abel jumped the gun, grew a spine, and attacked his brother, the alpha.”

Cole remained silent, listening.

“When we reached the warehouse Abel had led your father to, he was hurt, yes, bleeding a bit, but Anson had disarmed his beta, and the blows weren’t fatal.”

“But the ones you gave him were.”

“That’s right.”

“Abel attacked my father, stabbed him in the back, but you and your men, you were the ones who killed him.”

“And staged a beauty of a car accident, yes.”

The truth revealed made sense of Abel saying the other night that he hadn’t killed his brother. Truthfully, he hadn’t, but it was semantics more than anything else. By his actions, Abel had placed Anson in harm’s way, weakened him, led him to slaughter.

Cole took a deep breath. “And what then?”

“Well, then you weren’t there. In his haste, Abel had forgotten all about you. He’d forgotten what he promised. And later, when I came to collect you, he grew a conscience, or more likely, he realized that the Swann Pack needed pure lupine blood just as much as we did. But then, as the years went by, I didn’t see either you or Justin fucking the pure-blood wolves in your pack, and all I did was grow more and more angry.”

“Why make him pay tribute?”

“You know why.”

Cole nodded. “Because he owed you.”

“That’s right,” Matthias confirmed, then smiled, and right then, I saw the madness in his narrowed eyes. “I made him alpha and he gave me nothing. So for the rest of his life, I would receive money, every month, without fail.”

“And what else?”

“Blood. Innocent blood. Abel told us which of his young to take. He picked them and we murdered them, taking them away from your pack forever.”

Abel had sacrificed his wolves. Members of his pack that he had sworn to protect, and in some cases, the smallest, the youngest, the most vulnerable. The man was a horror, and the idea that I could let him or Matthias live was not to be borne. Already I could feel my power rising.

“What the hell do you expect to gain by making that confession?” Cole asked, his voice hard and cold.

“I want what was promised all those years ago,” Matthias said slowly, staring at Cole like he was a piece of meat. “I want the firstborn son of an alpha.”

“Why would I ever go anywhere with you?”

It hurt to hear the pain in Cole’s voice, all the revelations of the day absolutely gutting him. He had prepared for an honorable contest, but he wouldn’t be given that at all.

“Because we have your little brother. He’s already seen the woman disemboweled, and he knows he’s next.”

Cole’s breath hitched, and he turned to look at me, absolutely broken.

“No,” was all I said.

But he was scared. I understood that, and I’d answered too fast for him.

“Mere,” he pleaded, needing more.

“No,” I answered again, slower, letting him hear the certainty in my voice.