Her gray eyes looked huge in her pale face, startling in contrast to her dark, damp hair. Her hands twisted into knots in front of her, and I could feel all the negative emotions building up inside of her, like a powder keg about to go off.
I hated that this was how she had to find out. Hated that she feared this gorgeous other half of her soul, too long hidden and muted. But there was also a fierce pride. Excitement. My mate was about to learn everything. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the supernatural. The sooner she learned the truth, the sooner she’d realize that she belonged to me, and I belonged to her. That I’d move Heaven and Earth to keep her safe, and now that I had her at my side, she’d never go through what she’d been through ever again.
She took in a deep breath. “Call my father right now. Wake him up.”
I thought about persuading her not to. Her hands were shaking harder than her legs, and a mere feather floating down on her head could probably topple her over. She was about ten seconds away from vomiting in exhaustion. I thought about keeping her all to myself, telling her he wasn’t available for another day or so. That way I could control what she learned and when. Make it palatable, make it less overwhelming.
An image of an irate Nyria popped up out of nowhere in my head. Respect. Your. Mate.
Ah, fuck. “I’ll get the phone.” When I saw the sudden suspicion on her face, I compartmentalized the startling jolt of pain I felt at her intense wariness and shoved it aside to deal with it later. “You can get it. And if you feel safer, bring the gun with you, and you can make sure the front door is unlocked and sit closest to it. Code to disable or set up the alarm is eight-nine-eight-one.”
Her lashes swept down and she looked guilty for a moment, but then gave me a wide berth as she walked around me to go into the living room. I heard soft clicks as she opened the deadbolts and tested the code, ready to sprint out if she tried to leave. But a moment later she was back, gun in one hand and cellphone in the other. “Please don’t take it personally.”
“I can’t help it,” I told her, rawly honest as I stood up to take the seat she’d been sitting in before so I wouldn’t be between her and the front door. It would be easy enough to reverse positions again if danger arose. “But I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself.”
“I always do.” She glanced at the phone. “What’s your code?”
“One two two six.”
She didn’t seem to register anything about that as she keyed it in.
“Does that number mean anything to you?”
“No, should it?”
It was her fucking birthday. Would be in two days. I decided to let that go…for now.
“Your father’s with Nyria, one of my top pack members. Call her, put it on speakerphone.”
She did, and Nyria picked up quickly. “I was wondering when I would hear from you. There's been a lot of interesting stuff going down that I really need to update you about. William here has quite the story about how he got tangled up in all of this.”
I raised my eyebrows. Didn't sound good. “I'm currently on speakerphone with William's daughter. She just found out that she is a shifter, and has a bunch of questions for her father. She doesn't remember anything from before her father took her.”
“His name is William? And he kidnapped me?” Cara looking dazed.
“We can have this discussion after you get a couple hours of shuteye in. This isn't going to be fun, or easy. And we won’t be able to scratch the surface much.”
“I want to get this over with. Or at least started,” she said fiercely.
“William is sleeping right now, but I can wake him up. He's gotten quite a few hours of rest already.” Nyria’s voice sounded calm and peaceful, but I could hear the undercurrent of worry.
“Please do,” Cara said. Not a single one of us interpreted that as the anything other than a stern order. She’d make a good mate for an Alpha with that spine, a small voice whispered in my mind.
We could hear distant footsteps, and murmuring voices. Cara looked at me. “What happened to my mother?”
“What did your father tell you?
“Couldn't make up his mind whether she died or abandoned the family.”
I was saved from answering that horrific question—Well, Cara, neither of those stories are completely true—when a shaky, rough voice spoke. I hadn't heard it for two decades, but I was instantly brought back to that moment in my parents’ study, where Cara and I essentially became engaged before either of us even could begin to comprehend what that meant for us.
“Cara, are you okay? Is he treating you well?”
“So far, I don't think he's lied to me, or selfishly gotten me tied up in his drunken escapades. Shouldn’t you be calling me Isabel? And I apparently should call you William?” Her voice was cold. Sounded like her relationship with her father was even more messy and complicated than I had expected.
There was a long moment of silence. Then, “The only reason I ever lied to you was to protect you. I didn't want anything bad to happen to you.”
“I might’ve believed you if you didn't put me in so much danger of your own. All of the drinking, all of the gambling, all the running…how can you tell me that you did things for my own safety when it wasn't until I was a teenager that we stayed in the same apartment for more than a single damn year at a time because of your problems?”
“I know I haven't been the best father, and I'm sorry. I don't know how to prove to you how sorry I am. I wish it had never come to this, with these shifters. I wish that you were still on your own.”
I felt my face twist in fury. What a hypocrite.
Cara was watching my reaction, saw my anger at her father telling her he wished she wasn’t with me. “I’m still on my own. I've always been on my own.”
That must've hurt the old man. Good.
“I want to know why you hid that I was a shifter. I assume you are, too. I want to know what happened to Mom. I want to know who the hell came after us other than the sheriff, and I want to know who Wyatt is to me, and why he's been looking for me ever since I supposedly vanished.”
“Those men I got tangled up with, Cara, I'm so sorry. They were never supposed to find out about you. Or me, even. But they did, and now everything’s fallen apart. All the years I spent trying to protect you, undone because I was trying to help someone out.”
I resisted rolling my eyes. Barely. What a fake martyr.
“Who were you trying to help?”
Cara was literally swaying in her chair. I wanted her in bed, away from the gun, safe and asleep. Not having her life flipped upside down, especially by someone clearly intent on undermining me. “Your daughter is almost falling asleep where she sits after a night of being hunted across multiple towns. Let's focus on the big things first, and we can deal with the rest of it later.”
“Very well then,” William said stiffly. “Here is what happened. You must understand that back when you were a small child, shifter packs were constantly at war, especially in the territories we lived in. It was ugly. I lost my mate, your mother lost hers. We became married out of mutual respect and loneliness. I don’t regret it. You… you’re the best of both of us.”
However much the old wolf lied, this wasn’t one of them. There were tears in Cara’s eyes, but she held them back.
“Your mother and I came from a different pack than where Wyatt grew up, one that was ugly and dangerous in a way others weren’t. There was a power struggle when the Alpha died and his two sons, twins, both felt they had the right to take over. Everyone was taking sides, and we decided to leave and seek asylum with your mother’s cousin several states away. We fled to a neighboring pack in the middle of the night to start our journey–it was under Wyatt’s father's control at that time—and begged for shelter. At some point, Wyatt came into the room and you two accidently touched skin to skin. Some childish bickering over a toy.”