Chapter 34

Zander

Waking to find Piper not in the bed with me sucked enough, but I wasn't shocked. The girl was quiet and light on her feet. When I followed her scent through the house, and I grew closer to my bedroom, my stomach began to twist.

Then came the heavy smoky smell of magic in the air.

I'd never forget that smell because it suffocated me the night it happened. I thought I would die on the smell alone. Nothing mimicked that godawful taste it left in your mouth.

Then to see Priscilla with Piper.

I knew when I rounded the corner that today would be the day I lost Piper Sloane's trust.

I hated myself for not telling her sooner, but I was a selfish man that wanted to keep my past in the past, and my sins buried in the ground.

But look where that got me.

Piper sat at the dining room table, her hands wringing together against the table, her eyes nervous.

She expected it to be bad.

Which was good. Maybe it wouldn't sting as bad when I said it aloud.

"Please talk before I erupt," she said, sliding her hand into her hair. "Tell me what happened."

I sat across from her, my mind fighting me, knowing the outcome would threaten everything that mattered.

"It started with a treaty," I whispered, giving up the guard I'd built around myself, and letting it all out. "My grandfather made a treaty with their people, the clan or whatever they called themselves. They weren't to travel onto our land, and we wouldn't travel onto theirs." I sighed and glanced over at Piper. "Supposedly, one of our wolves mated with a witch, and it made ... a beast. The magic in their veins twisted and shaped the wolf into something unimaginable. So, it was killed, and the treaty was made."

"What kind of beast?" she asked, trailing her fingertip against the table between us.

I shrugged. "They didn't speak of it often. It happened before I was born. My father mentioned nothing of it to me. He only told me about the treaty, and that if they traveled onto our land, we were to kill them."

Piper's eyes rounded, but she didn't commit. She waited on me to continue.

Closing my eyes, I inhaled and tried to keep myself from cracking. I wanted to walk over and cup her face, reassure her that everything I was about to tell her was so far in the past that I would never reach it again.

"When I was alpha, maybe my fifth or sixth year, my Beta told me there was a witch on our land." I swallowed the acid forming in my throat. I could still remember the dominance that ran through me, I wanted my dad—who had died—to be proud. I wanted to take revenge on these people because it'd been in my blood to do so.

Or so I thought.

"I was eager to make my dead father proud. He'd—that's a story for another time—," I whispered. "I gathered the pack and went out into the woods to find the witch. What we found was something much worse. One of our wolves had been screwing around with her. We found them up against the tree, in the middle of making what I assumed would be a monster."

Piper lowered her gaze to the table and kept it there. I wanted to pull all the thoughts from her head and lay them out for me to read. For me to see what she truly thought about me.

I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips. "They ran, in an attempt to hide, she used her magic to cover their scent. It took a long time but we found them in an abandoned farmhouse on the edge of our land. That's where we found Priscilla. She told us that her son was hiding in the house," I said, my voice cracking. "And ... I didn't believe her. I had the wolves tie them up, and we used salt to stop their magic," I stood up abruptly, placing my palms against the counter. "I had them set the house on fire, but our wolf and the witch got out. Her son—Xavier—he didn't."

Vomit climbed my throat, and I rushed to the trash can, hurling my lunch into the depths. Walking to the sink, I cupped my hands and tossed water onto my face. I didn't dare look at her. I could feel her glares, and each second twisted a knife into my heart. "When we found his little body—Priscilla exploded. We don't know how, but she broke the salt circle, and she turned into something I look into the mirror and see each day."

Gathering enough courage, I glanced back at her ashen face.

"She was the baby made of wolf and magic. They told my grandfather that they'd killed her, but they didn't. Priscilla was the abomination. No amount of apologies would bring Xavier back. They overtook us quickly and swiftly once their magic was back. And the rest ... you saw in your dream. My pack ran for their lives, to a neighboring pack, while I was banished here—to be alone as the beast that resides inside of her—forever."

Piper's mouth opened for a brief moment, but then it closed. I felt the agony, the anger, and disgrace inside of her from the mate bond. She reached up and touched her mark, a single tear traveled along her pore less face. The silence weighed heavily between us. It deafened me.

The thought to say something lingered but I had no idea what to say. I'd ignored her plea to save her son, and he died. His blood was on me. What kind of monster did that make me?

Even before that, I was ruthless and merciless to any pack that crossed us. I'd killed many wolves in cold blood and never thought twice. My father had told me not to show mercy because no one would ever give me any.

I believed him.

I thought about how his advice landed me in the worse situation of my life. And where was he now? Dead. While I suffered with my sins out in the open, for my fated mate to see me at my worst.

Piper stood, and I noticed her legs begin to shake. "I am going to go to my room," she whispered. Every step she took away from me tightened a viselike grip on our bond.

As if I didn't already have fingers clutching the only living part of me.

I felt numb from the inside out.

At least she hadn't run—yet.

She knew better than to run at night. She couldn't protect herself. What if she called her father? What if she did run?

What if she left, and my heart broke without Priscilla squeezing it within her palm? This had been her plan. Make me tell the truth. Make me admit my wrongs.

Though, I'd been doing that for years.

I would scream in my closet, begging for the mercy my father forced me not to believe in. Oh, the irony.

Grabbing a bottle of wine from the top of the refrigerator, I walked toward William's office and shut the door behind me. I felt Piper's tears from her room. My wolf nudged me to go check on her, but I thought she needed to breathe.

The liquor scorched my throat.

I knew it would take more than a shot to get me there, so I downed the bottle, sitting in front of a library shelf.

I let it all flow out of me.

The truth felt good.

But the truth brought back the memories I tried to block out. It brought back the things my father forced me to do. It brought back the times he slapped my mother, dragged her across the floor, and then turned his aggression onto me when I tried to protect her.

It took me back to the night he hit her too hard. The night he killed her in front of William and I. The night he forced us to bury her in the garden. The night any ounce of sympathy that I had left seeped out of my bones and soaked into the soil.

Closing my eyes, I downed another mouthful of liquor and pressed the bottle to my forehead. There was one time in my life that I thought my tears had run dry, but I was wrong.

It just took me to admit what happened. To let myself feel, for it to come out of hiding. My vision became cloudy, and my wolf began to panic. His fear of losing Piper suffocated me.

I stumbled to my feet, making a zigzagged path toward the stairs. Piper's door was closed and locked, but I pounded on it. Cries of fear. Cries of pain. They flowed out of my mouth like an unattainable river.

The door opened, and I fell forward, taking Piper down with me. I twisted before I landed and she fell to my chest with an oomph. Her hazel eyes softened, but the corners of her face were still hard. "Don't leave," I whispered.

Piper stroked my cheeks, wiping the tears away from my skin. I felt a chill enter the room.

Piper shivered.

Sitting back on her knees, she glanced around the room. "She's not going to stop," she whispered, looking down at me. "She's here to tear us apart, Zander. She's here to keep you the beast forever."

Her eyes lowered to my forearm as another petal disappeared from my skin. How would I make Piper love me now that she knew the true monster that lived in this castle with her?

The things I did to other packs. The things I took. My lack of empathy, my lack of mercy was coming back full force to drag me to Hell where I belonged.

Piper brushed the tattoo with her fingers, and I watched her with a dizzy gaze.

Priscilla's laughter drowned out my wolf's cries.

It was the last thing I heard before heartache took over, and everything went black.