“Your dad called him. It’s easy to get to him, especially someone in your dad’s position. Hell, I could get him on the phone right now if I wanted to. He told him who he was, mentioned your mother’s name. Kendrick remembered her. Arranged the meeting. He wasn’t here two seconds before he would have scented you as a member of our pack. Kendrick must have felt as if he stumbled on gold. He’d finally get to experiment on a member of our pack, the one thing he’d never gotten to do.”
She nodded. Yes, that sounded right, familiar. Images flooded her mind. The meeting had gone well, Kendrick had been pleasant. She’d started to doubt her mother. At the thought, Leah closed her eyes. She could remember her mother now. Her sweet mother, never the typical politician’s wife. How could she have become so disloyal so fast?
As if he read her mind, Az stroked the back of her hair. “It would be normal to doubt her. If you’re not raised with it, it seems like the stuff of bad movies. If your mother never shifted in front of you or your dad, it’s ridiculous to think you’d just believe.”
Then the men had come. They’d grabbed her out of her bed at night, after having stormed the house like an army coming through the door. Before she’d known what was happening, she’d been gagged and in the back of the car. It had felt like a nightmare and that was only because she didn’t know what pain was yet.
She would.
Opening her eyes, she still stood next to Az but the scene had changed. Grabbing tightly onto his arm, she looked around. “Where are we?”
“Your memory, she-wolf, you tell me.”
Leah liked how he kept using the nickname he’d coined for her when they’d interacted in the lab. It made her feel more secure. He was still with her. She didn’t have to go through this alone. This was a man who had risked his life to get her out of the cage. No way would he fail her now. Not that she needed protection; she’d already lived this. Whatever happened had already happened.
She saw herself gagged and bound sitting in the center of a clearing. Instead of the grassy one on Westervelt this was a sandy desert during sunset. Men and women surrounded her with a man in the middle shouting.
“That’s Kendrick.” Leah was going to have to make a mental note about when Az did and did not call his father ‘dad’ versus calling him Kendrick. As she stared at her mate, she realized that his eyes looked dead. Seeing the man who had been responsible for his birth was killing him. She wished she could make this all go faster.
“You look like him.”
He nodded, his eyes still glassed over in that way that gave her the shivers. “But not as much as Tristan, Gabriel, or Rex.”
“You’re much better looking than he is.”
That earned her a half grin. “He’s trying to bring on your wolf like Tristan did.”
“Must not have worked as I never heard her until I came to Westervelt.”
After minutes of Kendrick screaming, he threw his hands in the air and pointed to a woman who stood next to him. Her hair was a golden shade of blonde and even from the distance where Leah stood she could see the violet of her eyes. “She’s a latent, this is pointless.”
“What’s a latent?” Leah asked Az.
“A half shifter who can’t shift.”
“But I’m not.”
“I know that.” Az kissed the top of her head. “Your wolf refused to answer his call. She did not want him as her Alpha. That’s huge. Most wolves do not want to be lone wolves. She must have really hated how he smelled.”
I did. It was awful.
“Kendrick probably wouldn’t believe he could be denied as your Alpha so he assumed you were latent.”
The man stalked to the edge of the circle, grabbing a petite woman with long black hair and striking blue eyes. “Carrie, I told you to get me witches who could make this happen.”
The woman shook in his arms. “I did. They’re the very best. Since the Westervelt group killed their leader, they’re still settling into this. If she’s latent, there isn’t anything to be done.”
Kendrick dropped the woman named Carrie—who for some reason Leah actually felt sorry for—on the ground, hard. Dust sputtered up into the sky where she landed. “Give her to the boys, change her over. If she can’t be one of the real deal we’ll make her one of them.”
His statement made, he stomped away, the circle dispersing as he passed except for Carrie and two men who still stood near the past Leah. Carrie stood and dragged herself more than walked in front of her. She knelt down.
“I’m sorry about this.”
Leah watched as her former self screamed and tried to speak through the gag.
“I wish I could make this stop. I know I can’t make you understand and even if I could why should you forgive me? Anyhow, if it means anything and maybe it doesn’t, I have no choice. I’m as trapped here as you are.” Carrie stood and looked at one of the men who remained. “Take her to the change chamber.”
Leah’s memory showed her that she had screamed, fought and that did give her present self some relief. As she watched the scene unfold before her, the memories seemed to pull out of what she watched and replant themselves into her mind. Now she could remember how hot it had been outside, how sand had gotten into her mouth around the sides of the gag and scratched her tongue. She could recall with perfect clarity that she’d been terrified and furious at the same time. Her mother had warned her this could happen.
Well, not this scenario exactly. She couldn’t imagine the woman who raised her ever envisioning a day when her only child would be hauled around the desert, forced to endure terror at the hands of her former Alpha. She couldn’t have imagined it because she’d made her husband swear to keep her, Leah, away from Kendrick Kane, something her father had immediately neglected to do. Maybe it was unfair, maybe it was petty, but Leah blamed the senator—her father—for this happening to her.
A thought struck Leah. She whirled around to look at Az who was watching with anger in his eyes as her previous self was dragged away. “Why is my father still alive? As her mate, shouldn’t he be dead? Shouldn’t he have made himself die?”
Az turned his regard to her. She shivered under his gaze, the intensity, the hotness that permeated through his eyes into her soul. God, she wanted him. “There are two scenarios for that not happening. The first is that there is a young, young child involved and the living parent remains alive until that child is old enough for he or she to leave. I don’t think that is the case with you.”
Neither did Leah. She was certainly an adult. “What’s the other one?”
“The remaining mate lives in utter agony every day of their life until they follow.”
Leah shrugged. “My dad looked a little upset earlier but not in agony.”
“My aunts denied themselves death to keep pack magic alive after their mates were killed in the curse. Ironically, my uncles were the only ones not to kill their mates. They killed themselves instead.”
“You Kane men are nothing if not loyal to your wives. I’ve only seen you a little while now but that was obvious from moment one.”
Az nodded. “Tristan fought tooth and nail, even burning down a building, to not hurt Ashlee.” He stopped speaking for a moment. “This still doesn’t explain the issue with your father. It bothered me earlier that he didn’t ‘get’ pack. Even non-shifter, she should have spoken to him in his mind. He should have believed. That’s what happened with Ashlee and Summer’s father.”
“Az, when she died it was so awful. She and my uncle were both killed on their way back from a charity event. It was instantaneous, which is something, I guess, but I thought I was going to just shrivel up and die.”
“Your uncle? Your mother’s brother?”