“Maybe you should leave my pack alone and take a closer look at your own breed.”
Knowing that statement echoed something that Johnson had told Nick, Roni exchanged a worried look with her brother. She didn’t want it to be true.
Nick took another step forward. “Are you saying a wolf shifter is involved in this?” She nodded, her smile taunting. “But just a few minutes ago, you said this was Lyle’s baby.”
“The idea is, yeah. But he needed someone to help him set up the website.”
“Why would a wolf help out a bunch of jackals with something like this?”
“Because he gets off on watching. Sometimes, he kidnaps young females and takes them to the site. Then he watches while my pack tortures, rapes, and kills them.”
Sick piece of shit.
“Who is he?” demanded Taryn.
“I don’t know his name.” When Nick’s claws sliced out, the jackal shouted, “I don’t, I swear! Lyle just called him ‘the tech guy,’ or ‘the wolf.’”
“What does he look like?” asked Shaya.
“Tall, gangly, dark eyes, and he has a tattoo on his arm. They’re Chinese symbols, but I don’t know what they mean.”
Marcus recalled seeing a tall male lurking in the background of the vids with such a tattoo on his arm, but none of the footage showed a clear image of him or the tattoo. They’d all assumed he was part of the jackal pack.
“That’s all I can tell you without betraying my pack and endangering my family.”
“Good enough.” Without warning, Taryn shoved her claws into the female’s stomach and twisted her hand sharply, slitting the jackal open. “That’s how it felt when I realized my son might have been taken from me. And that’s what every other parent will have felt when you took their child. You deserve exactly what you got.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
How did one go about calming a six-foot, brooding, pissed-the-fuck-off, dominant male wolf? Roni didn’t know.
She had soothed her brothers’ anger many times, but her techniques were having no effect whatsoever on Marcus at the moment. He was pacing outside the barn, refusing to go inside the lodge with the others while he was in that state. His protective instincts were going crazy, feeding his rage, feeding his desire to invade McGee’s territory and, as he’d so eloquently put it, “tear his fucking head off his shoulders and feed it to his bitch of a mate.”
Being the voice of reason was hard when she kind of liked that idea too. “Marcus, we don’t know that he had anything to do with Lola’s plan.”
He didn’t pause in his pacing. “She’s his mate. He had to have known.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“I think the bastard knew all about it. I think he played a part in it.” And Marcus would make him pay for it.
“No, you want him to have known and played a part in it, because then you would have someone to take out all this rage on—you can’t hurt Lola because you wouldn’t hurt a female; it’s not in you.”
He was aware that his smile wasn’t at all nice. “I’m tempted to make an exception after what she did.”
“It’s hardly surprising that she retaliated in some way. I humiliated her—I’m a mere enforcer, she’s an Alpha female, and I overpowered her. It would have made her pack question her strength and suitability as their leader.”
“So she should have challenged you, one on one. But oh, no, she plotted to have you killed—and then have the footage uploaded onto the net.”
“Are you really saying you would have been happier if she had challenged me instead of doing this?”
No, he wouldn’t have been happier. Roni was his. He didn’t want anyone or anything to hurt her in any way, shape, or form. “That’s not the point.”
“I hurt her pride, Marcus. An Alpha’s pride is a big thing.”
He slid his hands into her hair and pressed his forehead to hers. “That doesn’t matter to me. She doesn’t matter to me. You matter to me. And absolutely nobody gets to harm you. Not because I don’t think you can take care of yourself, but because the very idea of anyone targeting you offends me and pisses me the hell off. If anyone touches you, they die.”
His wolf was so close to the surface, it was worrying her. “Okay, but just . . . calm down.” Unfortunately, the soothing tone wasn’t working. Remembering how Shaya, Taryn, and Jaime calmed down their males, Roni slid her hands under his T-shirt and smoothed them up and down his chest—occasionally dragging her nails along his skin. Eventually, a contented growl rumbled out of him, and she sensed his wolf drawing back.
“I’m not letting this lie, Roni.”
“Neither am I, but I’m not going to march onto their territory and risk starting a war between the packs either.” If Lola hadn’t been Alpha female, Roni would have challenged her immediately. But to challenge an Alpha female was to challenge the entire pack. “Shaya’s pregnant—the last thing I want is for her to be in any form of danger, particularly in the middle of a pack war.”
Okay, he could concede that she had a point there.
“Besides, right now we’ve got bigger things to worry about than some spineless bitch.” Her wolf was certainly pissed about it, but as she already knew she could overpower the Alpha female, she wasn’t particularly excited about dealing with her. It could wait.
“So what are you suggesting we do? Because if I don’t do something, I’m going to fucking lose it.”
“Well . . . this is what I had in mind.”