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“Forty males, give or take. A few found their true mates and stopped.” He let out a strange noise. “My Alpha commanded me not to interfere. I did anyway, once, and spent two months in the cell he’s in now. He starved me for two weeks, then let the Hunt males in, five at a time, to practice their sparring techniques on me, with pipes and chains.”
Luke pulled away from me and tore his shirt off, revealing a back that was covered with thin silver scars. “The next time I tried, Callaway whipped me with silver. He said if I helped her again, he’d whip her. If I even looked at her, he’d let his men have her without a Hunt. I was afraid he’d kill us both, if I dared to claim her.” I grabbed his shirt and gently draped it back over him.
“Luke, why didn’t you tell me?” Finnick pulled Luke into a hug. It was the only time I’d ever seen Finnick be affectionate with anyone.
Luke held onto him like they were best friends, murmuring something into Finn’s ear before pulling away. “I knew,” he said to us all, his voice raw. “I knew she was special. I realized she was my true mate when I was ten.”
“You couldn’t know that. She would have been a baby!”
Luke nodded. “She was two. Trevor’s father, Van, was beating her with a belt for some reason, and I felt like it was me under the belt. I was overwhelmed with the urge to protect her. So I threw myself over her and took the whipping for her.” He hesitated, remembering. “It hurt less to be under that belt than to watch her suffer.”
“What happened to her?” I swallowed hard. “What happened to you?”
“I heard Del took care of her. I almost died. The Alpha healed me—and punished me—by forcing my shift.”
“At ten?” Finnick whistled low.
“He started my Enforcer training then. I did what I could, when I could. I snuck rations to Flor’s mom, Lily. I got a friend to hire Lily at the QwikMart, hoping she would find a way to escape with Flor. But she wouldn’t leave. She couldn’t.”
“Why couldn’t she?” I asked.
“She was insane.”
Brand grunted. “What about Flor’s father?”
“She said he died,” Finnick said, but he sounded uncertain. Luke stayed strangely quiet.
“No,” I murmured. “She said it was complicated. That she couldn’t talk about it.” Maybe she literally couldn’t. Callaway had given a lot of Alpha commands to hide his crimes.
“No one ever spoke of him. I assumed Lily was taken against her will by one of his Enforcers, and that it broke her mind.” We all reacted in horror, and when Luke shrugged and said, “It happens at Southern more often than you’d think,” I thought I might throw up.
Brand snarled, “We’ll kill every last tainted one on our way out.” I almost agreed, but the handwritten words on the paper Luke had given me earlier that week suddenly flashed into my mind.
I spoke my thoughts aloud. “Mate bond severance. Twenty years ago, Callaway paid a coven to sever a mate bond. What if it was his own?”
31
Secrets and Sneak Attacks
LUKE
Every secret that festered in the heart of my pack was coming to light, and I wondered if the others even understood how close to the truth they were stepping.
I would not be the one to uncover my mate’s secret. Not when I knew the truth might pin her to Southern as surely as it had her mother. Trap her here.
Glen had gone strangely pale. Finnick rubbed his brow, like he was trying to solve a complicated problem. Brand’s voice trembled with rage when he finally spoke. “Callaway had a true mate? And broke the bond?”
They all turned to me. “Yes,” I answered simply.
“When?” The unspoken question hung in the air.
“Over twenty years ago,” I said truthfully. It was only a few days over that.
“Before Flor was born?” Brand muttered.
“Yes.” Our eyes met, and I saw disappointment in his gaze. Did he know what I was hiding from them?
Did he know why I had to keep it secret?
