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“They weren’t drugs,” he said. “I wasn’t using. He did that.”
“What?”
Jarred turned his head, looking out toward the barn.
“What are you telling me?” I asked. Part of me didn’t want to hear it.
“I didn’t go out there to challenge Turk Sutton,” Jarred said. “I went out there because I heard X was running a fucking brothel. Some girls went missing. I was told X had turned them. Sold them to Turk and men worse than him.”
“It wasn’t a brothel,” I said. “But you know that now. You were there. I met one of the bartenders. Rikki. She said she knew you. That you were strung out. A spellhead.”
Jarred shook his head. “No. I just asked questions of the wrong people, Tem. I ran into a woman…she was…she needed help. She was the one who was strung out. She’d been abused. Raped. She told me X had done it to her. Said he was coming back to mark her. I…she mattered to me. Okay? I took her under my protection. I would have mated with her if that’s what she wanted. But she was so broken. So scared.”
“You think X did that to her?” I said. It didn’t make sense. He was a lot of things, but I’d never once seen X go after any other women.
“She showed me his mark,” Jarred said. “I could smell him all over her, Tem. And it was brutal. An ugly, scarred thing. She didn’t offer herself to him willingly. I made her take me to him. So she did. At the Club. Only, it wasn’t X. It was…Anson. We waited. He never saw me. She went up to him while I hid in the shadows. I was going to kill him. I saw him change, Tem. I saw him show Lissa his true face.”
“You knew Lissa,” I said, my blood boiling. “Lissa. What are you saying?”
Jarred looked at me, confused. “You say that like you knew her.”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s fae. She’s the one who took me to you at the Scrap Yard. She’s…she’s dead Jarred.”
His jaw dropped. What little color he’d gained back, drained again. “Tem,” he said. “You don’t get it. The girl. The one who X marked against her will. It was Lissa.”
“What?”
“She tricked me. Set me up. X helped her, I think. I saw them together. He knew her. Tempest, they were working together. It’s her magic that changes his face. Something she did to him. A glamor. But she was using one too. I found that out way too late. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I wasn’t a spellhead. It was Lissa’s magic that made me sick. Lissa was the one who lured you to Chicago to find me. I heard it all. While I was lying there on that fucking cot in the Scrap Yard. She told me X belonged to her. That all the Alphas were going to belong to her. She used X or Anson, or whoever the fuck he is, as bait to trap you. Then she was going to use you as bait to control as many Alpha wolves as she could. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
I tasted ash in my mouth. Lissa. Lissa turned Anson into X.
“She’s dead,” I whispered. “Jarred, I killed her.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “How do you ever really know if a fae is dead? Did you see her body?”
“Yes!”
“Her magic is still alive,” he said. “God, I can feel it. It’s in his blood. You say that asshole saved me? How do you know he isn’t the one making us all sick?”
X. Anson. Lissa. The world felt as if it had once again shifted off its axis.
“Tem!” Jarred shouted. I was already out the door.
I let my wolf come out as I ran back toward the barn.
Chapter Nine
He was gone. Only the horses stared back at me as I threw the barn door open. I sensed him still, but X…Anson…wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere.
The horses whinnied and kicked the sides of their stalls, agitated by my wolf. I raced back out, sniffing the ground, desperate to catch a scent of Anson. In his collar, I knew he hadn’t gotten very far. But the very thing that kept him from shifting made it harder to pick up his scent.
Still, I knew there was likely only one place he would go.
The lake.
It drew us all. Tucked into the valley, surrounded by woods, it had provided solace and respite to generations of wolf shifters. During the war years, it had sustained us. Men and women, my family, had fought and died to keep it. Now, I knew we would face a new fight. One I may have to face alone.
I found him at the water’s edge. His toes sank into the sand as he took the first tentative steps into the water. He knew I was here. He didn’t turn to face me.
