“I thought we made it clear you lot weren’t welcome back here,” the old female Alpha snapped as she limped into the sitting room using her cane heavily.
“You did,” I replied in a terse tone. Our last encounter had not endeared this old bitch to me in the least, but I would attempt to play nice for the sake of information. “We came to speak with Vic but understand he is no longer in town.”
“No, thanks to you lot,” she spat, then propped her cane against a chair before lowering herself into it with an elderly groan. “So what do you want with my boy, hmm? Maybe I can answer your questions and save him the pain of dealing with you.”
“Hopefully,” Caleb muttered, and I tapped his knee to shut him up.
Turning back to Granny Winter, I have her a tight smile. “We came to ask him more about his past with Bridget. Nothing specific, as such, just anything he knows about her that might be useful.”
“Why the sudden interest in that whore?” the old woman sneered. “Don’t tell me her little look-alike wants to get to know Mommy better?”
“Hardly,” I replied, before taking a deep breath to keep from throttling the old woman. “We just need to know a little more about her. Maybe you can tell us why you dislike her so much. Something big must have happened. After all, wasn’t your son in love with her at some point?”
She grunted a noise of disgust, and her lips twisted. “Fool boy. Sure, I’ll tell you what she did. It’s no great secret around these parts anyway.”
Conversation paused as a girl came in carrying a tea tray, which she placed down on the coffee table. I couldn’t help but notice the look of interest she gave me or the way she brushed a little too close as she passed me, and it made me tense with the memory of the last time we were in Harrow. That crazy bitch, Chesca, had said I was one of them.
She was wrong, though… I was something else.
“All right, I’ll make this short and sweet because I have bingo this afternoon at the town hall. Yes, my fool boy was once in love with that harlot, but it didn’t last long. He had hero worship for her. They’d met inside that lab, Blood Moon. Bridget had healed him from near death and brought out his fox—which was a surprise, let me tell you.” She huffed a short laugh, and I raised my brows in a question.
“How so?”
She narrowed her eyes at me like I was a moron. “Because I’m a wolf, dumbass. Our bloodline, or his daddy’s, must have had some fox in it somewhere though, and that was what appeared when Bridget healed him. Anyway, he and those other two fools—N and L—they were totally enamoured by her. None of them saw her for the vile witch she really was… not until she took things too far, that is.”
Granny Winter paused to pick up a teacup and stir in some sugar. Both Caleb and I left ours untouched.
“How did she take things too far?” Caleb prompted.
“She got greedy, didn’t she? Power hungry. Wanted stronger dianoch than lowly foxes like N and my boy Vic. But despite her best efforts, she couldn’t bind a fourth guardian to her. Rules said Ban Dia could only have three, and when she failed to bind a fourth over and over again, she decided to cheat the system. If she could only have three, then she wanted the strongest three.” Her wrinkled lips tightened with anger, even after all these years. “So she decided to get rid of her weakest guardian and create a space for the new one she’d found. A dragon. One of the last.”
“She tried to have Vic murdered?” I asked, just to clarify what I was hearing.
Granny Winter nodded sharply. “Nothing can heal from dragon fire, not even with shifter magic. She underestimated my Vic, though, and Lachlan. The two of them together fought back and won, killing the dragon, but not without great cost.”
“Vic’s scars,” Caleb murmured in understanding. “That’s what broke them all apart? What happened to Lachlan, and how come Nicholai stayed with her?”
“She quickly saw what was happening, that conniving bitch. She saw her loyal dianoch turning their backs on her in disgust, and she backpedaled, throwing geas at them to try and bind them to her. It worked the strongest on N, that poor boy. He does his best to control her now, but for the most part, he is powerless to leave her. On Vic, as he was already so injured, just the silencing stuck. He couldn’t ever share her secrets, but he sure as shit never needed to see her hateful face again.”
“And Lachlan?” I prompted, and she gave a sly smile.
“We’re not sure. He seemed to escape untouched, but he knew she’d be tracking him down. Ain’t no way she was letting him—out of all of them—leave her. Not her strongest. It’s no surprise he’s in hiding, really.” She sniffed and pursed her lips again. “But that is why I feel the way I do. She is a selfish, murderous, two-faced harlot who deserves to rot in hell for what she did to my boy.”
“Thank you for telling us,” I responded politely, seeing she was clearly done with us as she picked up her cane and levered herself from the seat. “We appreciate the insight.”
Granny Winter huffed a noise and scowled down at us both.
“See that you make her pay whenever you catch up to her.”
“We will,” Caleb confirmed, and we made our way out of the house.
We’d come to Harrow to find some answers, and although they weren’t exactly what we’d hoped for, I had no doubt the answers we’d received would come in useful sooner or later.
“Let’s get back,” I told Caleb as we walked back out into the street. “We’ve probably already missed Kit’s call, but just in case…”
“You got it, Alpha,” he replied and opened the portal to take us home.
Home.
I couldn’t wait to see what our girl thought of our new home…
12
KIT
Nurses came and went over the next day, checking my vitals and providing me with oxygen, but it was all a hazy blur. It was pretty clear to me that my healing was on the fritz, just the same as my magic, but I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit.
Wesley was dead. What else even mattered?
“Hon,” a young nurse said softly, laying a gentle hand on my arm. “How are you feeling? Your throat is probably going to be sore for a couple of days as the doctors needed to intubate your trachea when you came in, but your airways weren’t compromised. You’re okay to go home now. The doctors have given you the all clear.”
I blinked up at her, hearing her words but just not comprehending what they meant for me. What would I do now? Where would I go? I couldn’t just… go home. It felt wrong on so many levels.
I touched a hand to my throat. It didn’t feel sore, but who the hell cared? My whole damn body was so numb it wouldn’t make a difference.
“Is there someone we can call for you?” the nurse offered, and I nodded automatically.
“Yes,” I croaked, my voice husky from the smoke I’d inhaled. “My…” I trailed off. In this age of mobile phones, I just never really bothered memorizing numbers any more. I had no idea where my own phone had ended up, but without it I didn’t have contact details for any of the guys.
There were only two numbers I knew by heart.
“Can I use a phone?” I asked, hoping to make the calls myself, just in case the first one didn’t pan out.
The nurse chewed her lip, then nodded. She disappeared back out of my curtained cubicle, then returned moments later with a cordless landline.
“Just dial 0 to get out and don’t forget the country code,” she whispered to me, looking like she was doing something illegal. “I can give you a couple of minutes, okay?”
“Sure,” I murmured. “Thanks.”
Giving me a short nod, she left and pulled the curtain closed behind her, leaving me wondering why it was such a big deal for me to make my own calls. Weird.