Page 127 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

He ends the call instead. “Doesn’t change a thing.” His jaw goes hard. “I can’t leave you breathing.”

He comes for me again. I plant a boot in his gut and drive him back into the wall.

“I never touched your brother.” I’m on my feet now, swaying, the room tilting under me. “Go find the man who lied to you. It wasn’t me.”

Kylan hauls in a breath, glaring at me from where he stands. “Your whole rotten family’s built of liars.”

The word snags and won’t let go. Family.

Behind Kylan, someone fills the doorway. A clawed hand sweeps around, and one stroke takes his head off his shoulders. It hits the boards and rolls.

A man steps over the body without a glance down at it.

“Uncle Nathaniel?”

He looks down to where I’m kneeling, and not a trace of the grieving old man from the sickbed is left in his face. His claws are still out, red to the knuckle, and he wipes them clean down the front of his coat, taking his time.

“You really do know how to ruin everything, don’t you, Marcus?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Marcus

“What?” I stare at my uncle, shaken.

He lets out a long breath. “Every alpha-born thinks he’s the only one fit to lead.” He steps over Kylan’s body, his claws still dripping with blood. “And yet here I am. I’ve held the seat that was meant for you, and held it well, for years.”

I can’t make the pieces fit. My eyes stay on the man who used to tuck me in as a boy.

His gaze slides to Jessa, and whatever I ever saw in his face is gone. “I don’t enjoy dragging humans into our business.” His mouth thins. “But you’ve been a splinter since the day you walked back in with that child of yours.”

Jessa glares at him over the gag.

“You ruined it the first time too.” He says it almost tiredly. “All Sloane had to do was keep him dosed, and she never even managed the second dose.” He tips his head at me. “One more, and his wolf would have gone quiet for good.”

The dart’s poison crawls through my arm, but the cold spreading in my chest has nothing to do with wolfsbane. “You gave Sloane the wolfsbane,” I say hoarsely, the betrayal twisting my gut. “Ten years ago. That was you.”

“Yes.” He looks unrepentant. “She wasn’t clever. A poor spy, in the end. But she’d have made a fine leash around your neck.”

“Why?” It’s all I can get out.

“Why?” My uncle’s expression tightens in anger. “Do you really have to ask me that? But then what would you, a bloodborn alpha, know? We are the ones overlooked. Your brother, for example, was so clever, he had the brains to figure out he was being poisoned. He just had to go looking for answers.”

Daniel knew?

My uncle—?

“For years I watched my brother groomed for a seat I wanted more than air.” He wipes a claw down his sleeve. “I was better than him at everything. Our father chose him anyway, on the strength of his blood.”

I feel bile rise in my throat. No. No, it can’t be.

“Your father swore he’d step aside when he was ready. Let me have it at last.” His calm flickers. “He handed it to you instead. And you could have handed it to me. I was built for it.” He looks at me. “You gave it to that useless boy.”

Daniel. My knees want to buckle, and the wolfsbane isn’t the reason.

“You poisoned my father,” I finally utter, a part of me desperately hoping he will deny it.

“I did.” He doesn’t blink. Whatever hope I’d still been holding on to dies.