Page 128 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“And Daniel. You loved Daniel!”

“I didn’t plan to touch Daniel. He was like a son to me.” There’s a flicker of regret in his eyes now. “I just wanted him sick enough that he would hand the position over to me, and he was willing to, but I guess he was just stringing me along. He’d gotten suspicious. Behind my back, he found the wolfsbane. Where I grew it, how long I’d grown it. He was going to bring it to you.” A small shrug. “So I sent men. Mine and the hunters’ both, dressed up as rogues.”

I think of the empty graves, my brother and my father gone from the ground for years, and the room tilts under me. “Where are they?” My voice shakes with rage now. “Their bodies. Where did you put them?!”

“Somewhere safe.” He almost smiles. “Family stays close, after all.”

“You armed the hunters,” I say, the words unsteady. “Our enemy.”

“They’re a tool.” He kicks Kylan’s body aside, careless. “I’ve grown wolfsbane since I was a boy, and I’ve sold it to every hunter faction worth the name.”

“They kill us. They killed children.”

“You’re thinking too small, Marcus.” He straightens his bloodied cuffs. “I keep the supply flowing, and every pack in three territories does as I say.” Pleasure settles into his eyes. “The shifters keep their numbers down, the hunters leave them alone. Good business.”

“You murdered your whole family for good business,” I spit out.

“I didn’t want to kill any of you,” my uncle hisses. “But you kept getting in my way over and over again. You found the graves of those brats. You started investigating. I knew you’d find your way to me at some point. Although I had hoped the wolfsbane I had been administering to you would have left you weak like your father and brother. But you were so stubborn.”

My jaw tightens. “You were giving me wolfsbane? How?!”

My uncle sneers. “Your fancy coffee beans that you get imported for your office. I bribed someone to crush some wolfsbane into it. It’s a special blend. You’ve been taking it for years. All I had to do was slightly increase the dosage to get you really sick. So the day you needed all your strength, you’d have none.”

I get one knee under me. “A man like you can’t be alpha of this pack. I won’t allow it.”

He laughs softly, and it’s worse than any snarl. “And what will you do? You can barely kneel.”

I test my body. He’s right about the weakness, but my strength is somewhat returning. I don’t understand why. Although there’s a good chance that when my father was given the wolfsbane he was older and I’m much younger. It’s not affecting me in the way it did him. I hide the fact. I’m going to need to take him by surprise. But first I have to get my family out of here.

“This is between you and me,” I say. “Let Jessa and my daughter go.”

“I can’t.” He looks down at Mia, small and drugged on the floorboards. “You still haven’t felt it. All this time, and you never once sensed it.” He turns back to me, delighted. “Your daughter is alpha-born, Marcus. The wolfsbane dulled you so far down you couldn’t feel the alpha rising in your own daughter. I can’t let her live.”

The world drops away. Everything left standing in me wants to tear his throat out bare-handed. I force myself to stay still.

“So you see the trouble.” He extends his claws with a wet click. “I can’t leave her breathing. Or her mother, who’ll only turn into a problem. I’ll take Bella in, I suppose, though she’s a loose thread as well.” He sighs, tired of the whole thing. “Cleaner if the line ends where it started. With me.”

Jessa works the rag out of her mouth and spits it to the floor. “You depraved piece of shit.” Her voice shakes with fury. “Don’t you dare touch my family.”

“You’re hardly in a position to bargain.” He crosses to her, one hand drawing back, claws bared for her throat.

I catch his wrist.

He turns, almost amused. “You can’t, boy. You’re fading.”

“I’m fading.” I force the words out through the poison. “But you forgot something critical when poisoning me all these years when you fed me wolfsbane.” My grip tightens, and I feel the bones begin to give. “It won’t work so quickly on me.”

The smugness goes out of him.

“Does it make sense now?” I crush down, and something in his wrist snaps. “Do you understand?”

He tears loose and comes at me with everything, desperate now. We go down swinging, human and clumsy, teeth and fists in the dark of the cottage. Then he breaks into fur and fang, and I let mine come with it. My wolf hauls itself up through the poison, slower than it should, and we meet in the middle of the room in a snarl of bodies.

He drives me back across the room. The wolfsbane still has its claws in me, and my strength answers a half-beat late every time, so his teeth find me before mine find him. Only the alpha in me keeps me upright at all, clawing the poison back inch by inch. He opens my shoulder to the bone. I tear a strip out of his flank in answer. We carve each other apart, the floorboards going slick under us, and every second I bleed a little more of the fight away. Decades of grievance drive every strike he lands, and he lands too many. I’m losing, and I feel exactly how fast.

Wood splinters behind me, sharp and close. I glance toward it, and he takes the opening. His weight slams me down, his claws punch into my belly, and he drags them sideways through muscle. The pain whites everything out. For a heartbeat I’m sure he’s opened me for good.

Then a chair comes down across his back, swung two-handed. Jessa, free of her ropes, her wrists raw and running red. He rears around at her, and that half-second is all I need. I lunge and close my jaws on his throat. Hot copper floods my mouth, and I don’t let go.