Chapter 21

21

SKYE

I t was pretty freaking cool to watch Tate’s face shift from skepticism to amazement to shock as we traveled through the house and back into the mountain.

“This place is insane,” she whispered to me as we crossed into the prison section I had been in earlier.

I nodded, my eyes catching on the man leaning casually against the wall ahead without a care in the world. He casually typed out a message on his cell phone before pushing it into his pocket and straightening as we approached.

Amazing how my father could be completely calm one minute and a bloodthirsty psychopath the next.

Nikolai smiled warmly at Tate. “And you must be the lovely Tate.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Hi, I guess.”

Nikolai didn’t seem deterred by her uneasy demeanor at all. “Welcome to my home, although I am sorry it is due to such unfortunate circumstances. My condolences on the loss of your father.”

Tate winced, pain flashing across her face and pulling her features taut for a second.

“Tate knows Elias, too,” I said, needing to change the focus. “She wanted to be here when we questioned him.”

“Unfortunately there isn’t a viewing gallery in this room,” Nikolai replied, still smiling. “But there is a small one-way window she is free to observe from.”

My eyes narrowed. “Or she could come with us into the room.”

His lips thinned slightly. “I’m afraid it wasn’t a suggestion, little wolf. Your friend may watch from the other side of the glass or she may return to her room.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Tate laid a hand on my arm.

“It’s fine,” she murmured. “I’ll watch from the other side.”

“Wonderful,” Nikolai remarked, all smiles and cheerful again. “Dimitri, if you would please escort Tate to the side room?”

“Sure,” Dimitri agreed. He jerked his chin. “This way.” He led Tate around the corner.

Nikolai inched closer to me. “I’m very aware that you’re protective of your friend, Skye, but you would do well not to contradict me in front of others, especially when we step inside this room.”

I glared at him. “You’re not my Alpha.”

“No, I’m not,” he agreed, almost coldly. “But I am the Alpha of this pack, and you are my guest. You’re here because you’re my daughter, and I wish for you to have the answers you need. But if you cannot conduct yourself appropriately then I’ll have you and your friend taken back to your rooms until the plane is ready to depart.”

“Fine,” I agreed reluctantly. He did have a point—he had a lot more going on here than I did, and he was the Alpha. I had made it abundantly clear that I was only here until the next plane rolled out.

His lips turned up into a soft smile as he watched me for a second.

“What?” I asked, frowning.

“I wonder where you get your passion from,” he said. “I saw the same fire in your mother before, but apparently I’m also known to have a temper.”

I could still see him standing over Linden, blood dripping from his fist. Yeah, he had a temper, too.

“Maybe both,” I suggested with a shrug, unable to hide my own smile. As terrifying as Nikolai Dashkov could be, there was something in him that called to me. Some primal instinct that made me want to trust him.

His grin widened. “Indeed. Shall we?”

He pushed open the door and I followed him into the small room.

There was a long metal table. On the other side of it, Elias was cuffed to an eyebolt in the floor, his shoulders hunched. He looked up as we entered, looking every bit his old age. His white hair was disheveled and his beard unkempt. Exhaustion had settled into the crevasses of every wrinkle on his face. I almost felt bad.

Until I remembered he knew where Maren was. He had lied to me, and even kept a file on me.

Three chairs were on the other side of the table. Nikolai took the one in the middle and nudged the one to his left with his foot.

I sat down in it as the door next to the one-way-mirror opened and Dimitri walked in. He dropped into the chair to Nikolai’s right with a grin, leaning back in the chair.

Elias glanced around the room, tugging at his restraints. “Your hospitality isn’t as I recall, Alpha.”

“And your loyalty isn’t as I recall.” Nikolai smiled, his teeth flashing. “I suppose we both must carry the burden of our disappointments.”

Elias looked at Nikolai. “I see you found your heir.”

“Yes, no thanks to you.” Nikolai crossed his ankle over his knee.

“You figured it out?” Elias asked Dimitri. He still hadn’t looked at me. “How?”

“I found the file the morning of the bombing,” Dimitri confirmed. “You got sloppy, old man. But even without it, did you really think we wouldn’t figure it out?”

I was over being ignored.

“Why the hell did you have a file on me in the first place?” I demanded, leaning forward and bracing my forearms on the table.

Elias looked at me and sighed heavily. “You must believe I only had your best intentions at heart, Skye.”

“Are you from Norwood?” I asked, my voice clipped and callous.

“Yes.”

“You’re helping Norwood?”

“Yes.”

“Norwood is allied with Long Mesa?”

He looked down. “Yes.”

“Then you’re helping the very people I ran from,” I hissed, slapping an open palm on the table. “You know what they did. You know what happened to me, to my mother.”

Elias looked affronted. “Skye, I would never condone what happened to either of you.”

“That’s exactly what you did!” I screamed, almost forgetting Nikolai was sitting next to me. “You were there , Elias! You were in the same goddamn room with me! You heard what they did to Bella, to Zara, to Mom. I told you what they had done to me.”

He looked up, the guilt on his features undeniable. “What I’ve done is nothing like the crimes your pack committed.”

“Bullshit!” I snapped. “You’re just as guilty as they are. Maybe you’re even more twisted because you acted like you were my friend. At least I knew where I stood with everyone else.”

He jerked back. “You cannot imply that I am the same type of man from your former pack, Skye. I’ve never assaulted or abused any female, and I am certainly not a rapist.”

“No,” I hissed, bitterness dripping from my words, “you’re worse . You’re like my uncle who stood by and just let it happen. You could have stopped it and you didn’t. You’re a damn coward.”

My entire body shook with rage as I tried to form a coherent sentence. “I told you what happened to my mother. I told you how she was brutalized every single fucking day. You saw the scars on the doctors’ documents; they carved her to pieces when they weren’t assaulting her.”

Someone sucked in a sharp breath, but I was too far into my rage and hurt to pay much attention.

I slammed my fist onto the table, the pain ricocheting up to my elbow. “I told you what Cassian and his friends did to me . What Linden was going to do if we didn’t escape that night. You pretended to be on my side, and the whole time you were spying on me?”

He had the decency to look ashamed. “I was doing what was in the best interest of my pack.”

“Explain to me how spying on a teenage girl is in the best interest of your pack?” Nikolai asked coldly. He had gone impossible, terrifyingly still beside me. “Did you know Skye was my daughter even then?”

“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “I didn’t piece that together until later.”

“But you realized long enough ago that you had a paternity test run on her by the start of the Summit,” Nikolai pointed out. “Which means you had your suspicions when you were visiting my pack in the winter.”

Elias’s shoulders hunched as his body seemed to grow smaller. “I did, yes. It was why I decided to perform the paternity test.”

“And you never thought to tell me?” Nikolai’s brows lifted. “You, who knew what her very existence meant to my pack, decided on deception?”

Elias swallowed, his breaths becoming shallow and panicked. “You don’t understand.”

“Then enlighten us,” Nikolai said with a chuckle, spreading his arms wide. “Tell us the reasons you have for betraying us all.”

Elias turned to me, his expression pleading. “Skye, I never wanted to hurt you. But you don’t understand how special you are.”

“Save it.” I folded my arms under my chest defiantly. “I’m sick of you telling me how different I am, how special I am. All more ways so you can study me like a damn lab rat.”

He frowned, shaking his head. “It’s not just you, Skye. You and Remy—”

“Don’t you fucking say his name,” I spat vehemently. “You betrayed him as much as you did me.”

“It was never my intention—”

“Screw you and your intentions!” I interrupted furiously, my hands balling into fists. “Remy could have died, asshole.”

Nikolai rested a hand on my trembling arm. “He’s a fool, Skye. An old, useless fool who didn’t even realize the answers he sought were right in front of him.”

Elias looked at him curiously.

“You and I have had many a conversation about how shifters in your part of the world, Americans in particular, have been bastardizing what we are for generations.” Nikolai threw him a smug look. “Skye and Remy’s bond might be a unique curiosity to you, but had you told me about them, I could have told you how it’s not as unique as you think. And they certainly are not the youngest bonded pair.”

“What?” I gasped as I looked at him.

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I will explain it all to you, daughter.” He turned his attention coolly to Elias. “But not to this man. He doesn’t deserve answers.”

Now Nikolai leaned onto the table. “But I will have my own answers. Starting with how you managed to copy what we’ve been doing here.”

Sucking in a shaky breath, Elias bowed his head. “That was not my doing. I simply reported your process back to my Alpha.”

Everything in me wanted to ask about this ‘process,’ but I had a feeling now wasn’t the time. Dimitri had alluded to it on the plane, something about making shifters stay shifted into wolf form for an extended period of time with the help of magic.

“I’m fairly certain I never mentioned kidnapping unwilling subjects,” Nikolai countered. “Everyone involved in our trial is here voluntarily. The same cannot be said for you.”

My head snapped up.

Elias sighed. “Also, not my decision.”

“Do you make any decisions?” Nikolai sneered with a laugh. “Or are you only simply capable of thinking thoughts that your Alpha puts into your addled mind?”

“They kidnapped girls,” I added. “Three girls went missing from GPA, Elias. They’re... kids.”

The old man frowned. “I had heard that, yes. But it was not—”

I groaned, throwing up my hands as I rolled my eyes so hard I might’ve sprained a socket. “We get it. It was all Damien’s fault. You’re completely blameless in all of this. Poor, poor Elias.”

Dimitri chuckled, hiding a grin behind his hand as he rubbed his jaw. Even Nikolai smiled.

“I would have thought if anyone understood this, it would be you, Skye,” Elias told me quietly.

“Me?” My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.

“I’m doing this so our people can have a future. So that shifters can have hope.” He lifted his weathered hands to rest them on the edge of the table, his chains jingling. “It may seem dark now, but this was to protect people like you and your mother.”

My eyes narrowed into slits. Was he actually serious?

God, he was .

He actually believed the shit coming out of his mouth.

“What you did was enable men to do exactly what they had been doing for years,” I ground out. “Whatever they fucking wanted in the name of saving us all.”

“No!” Elias cried, his eyes suddenly more alive than they had been the entire time I had known him. “Damien knew what was happening in Long Mesa and assured me that he was planning on stopping it. You and your mother would have been freed of that wretched place. What he has planned is a new order that will help us.”

My jaw dropped as I stared at him.

He was actually out of his damn mind.

“My heart broke listening to those testimonies,” Elias added softly. “Even Damien was disturbed by what I told him. Skye, what you suffered is not lost on us. Our pack does not support the idea of an omega house where people like your mother are raped multiple times a day for years just for the sick, perverse pleasure of a few vile men. You won’t have faced the same fate as her.”

It was like all the air was sucked out of the room in a giant vacuum that left me breathless. The sudden stillness froze everything in the air.

I turned my head to see Dimitri’s hand land futilely on Nikolai’s shoulder as the older man shoved up from the table with a roar that made me jump and shove backwards.

Nikolai’s hand lashed out, catching Dimitri in the chest and hurling him into the wall with a grunt. The table was shoved forward, pinning a gasping Elias to the wall as his chest was crushed under the pressure from the metal.

I scrambled back as the side door opened again and Alexei and another man rushed in. With the help of Dimitri, they wrestled Nikolai from the room. I jumped out of the way as Nikolai’s foot caught a chair and sent it careening in my direction. It smashed against the wall hard enough to shatter the chair and crack the wall.

Without Nikolai holding the table, Elias managed to push it off of himself with a rattling gasp. His chest heaved, wheezing as he struggled to catch his breath.

Shaking, I turned and looked at him once more. “I don’t give a shit what you or Damien think. You kidnapped women and children . Maybe they aren’t being raped or abused on a daily basis, but you’re not the hero here, Elias.”

I started for the door as Tate stepped into the doorway with wide eyes. She looked as shocked as I felt.

“Skye,” he called softly. “Wait.”

Damn I didn’t want to, but I did. Some sick, hopeful part of me was praying there was any other explanation. Or maybe an apology that would take the sting out of his betrayal.

“There was one last test I wanted to run,” he confessed. “Your mother… When she bonded to your father, she was young. But it triggered her estrous cycle. It’s why she became pregnant. It frequently happens to mates when they bond.”

Everything in me went cold. All I could do was blink.

He smiled softly at me. “I would say, due to your age and the rapid acceleration of your bond with Remy, there’s a decent chance you may also be pregnant.”