Chapter 124

Chapter 124
Lucian's POV

As though it was not enough that Alpha Quintus had approached me to basically sell off his granddaughter, he had come to see me again just as I prepared to leave Alpha George’s pack.

“I believe I owe you an explanation,” he said, practically blocking my path and making it impossible for me to leave.

“You owe me nothing,” the reality was that I did not wish to know more about his ‘plight’ as he framed it. He had been marketing himself as the victim for having a granddaughter he believed to be an anomaly. And by trying to sell her off for a lot of gold coins, he was only compensating himself for the stain her birth had brought to his family.

I had refused him an audience since he last tried to speak to me but that had been the prevailing gist or so Edgar had narrated to me.

“If you will only listen to me,” he said, raising his voice, “then you might understand.”

I tried not to allow my repulsion for the old man to show on my face. At the very least, I had to give the old man credit for making it to this Alpha convention in spite of the dangers on the road. And he was leaving me no option either way by blocking my path.

“You have not left me with an option,” I pointed out.

“Samara’s birth was never meant to happen,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

“So? That justifies your ill treatment of her?” I demanded from him, hurt on her behalf, “it makes it okay for you to turn her into a slave?”

“Her father was not a man to be reckoned with at all,” he spat with bitterness, “her mother… she got herself pregnant by great filth.”

“And by great filth you mean?” I asked because he was not really revealing anything besides the fact that he hated Samara’s father.

“A monster,” he replied with a bitter expression, “one that was not of our kind and as a werewolf who had lived with parents that saw the cold war happen… it was disgraceful.”

“So that justified your treatment of her?” it still made no sense why a princess would have been forced to flee her pack.

“I never sent her away,” he replied gravely, “I was trying to arrange her marriage to Alpha Dinero.”

I recoiled physically when he mentioned the name of the Alpha. The man he had mentioned was just about the same age as he was and looked visibly irritating to look upon.

“She ran away before I even told her about the marriage,” the Alpha said, “and we have been looking for her ever since.”

“Because of the money you lost?” I asked him, “or because you care about her?”

He looked insulted.

“I care about my granddaughter,” he said the words sharply, almost like a rebuke, “it was just really hard…”

“I have met all your grandchildren in formal balls and I have never been introduced to a princess Samara,” I said, “no one even knew she existed as your daughter. You do not care one bit about her and now you’re just worried about how all of this is making you look.”

Alpha Quintus face turned a bright red but I did not give a damn. He needed to be called out on his bullshit the way it was.

“Who is Samara’s father?” The voice that asked did not belong to me but my arch-nemesis—George.

He always found convenient ways to piss me off.

Alpha Quintus looked terrified to even speak.
“Who is her father?” Alpha George asked again.

“I do not know,” he looked terrified, which struck me as odd. Had he been warned that he could never reveal that information to anyone else? I suspected that Samara’s father was the real secret about her birth and why he had practically abandoned her.

“I can find ways to keep you here,” George threatened the old man in a low voice.

But Alpha Quintus was not one to be threatened lightly.

“You wouldn’t dare!” he spat angrily, “I have told you what I can and…”

He most certainly had not and unfortunately for him, he stood between myself and Alpha George and it appeared our minds worked in sync to make sure he could not slip away. We closed the space around him so he was caught between the two of us.

“You’re not leaving until you give us a name and tell us the type of monster that birthed your granddaughter.”

I knew that right now, Alpha Quintus was currently regretting attempting to extort me for money using his granddaughter. In all of this, the old man had not even bothered to ask where his granddaughter was or if she was doing alright.

“I have nothing to say to the both of you,” he hissed, “and if you threaten me, I can pull out of the alliance…”

“It is unfortunate that you and your entire pack would be obliterated by the rogues then,” Alpha George said, “I do not of course pity you at all.”

“I only know that he is a monster, okay?” he was beginning to cave in.

“And?” I asked because I could tell he knew a lot more than he was willing to share.

“A monster?” George rolled the word on his tongue like he had just discovered it, “describe monster.”

“Just… I really don’t know,” he looked distressed.

Had he taken a vow of silence?

“What was his name?” I asked him.

“He called himself Zarion.”

Zarion was not a name that I had ever heard until now. George and I exchanged a look and we both seemed to believe he was telling the truth about that.

“But that is all I know about him.”

“The name…” George muttered, “it sounds like it comes from dragon territory.”

If it did, I would not know because I was not familiar with dragon lore.

George stared intently at Alpha Quintus, “was he a dragon?”

Then something peculiar dawned on me. Edgar had told me about sightings of the dragon wolf in Alpha George’s pack and if Samara had been living here all this time… I refused to believe it though. It simply could not happen. Even if a wolf and dragon were to mate, the likelihood of the offspring becoming a dragon wolf was next to none. It was an anomaly and such a being would be killed before it had the chance to grow except it was groomed into becoming an instrument for destruction only.

But I could not reconcile that with the almost powerless Samara that I knew. If she had such powers, she would never have allowed Freya to bully her. Hell, she may even have killed me for the way I had treated her when she stepped foot into my pack.

I was staring at Alpha Quintus, waiting for him to deny it instead his face froze.

“Samara is the offspring of a dragon and a wolf?” George asked to confirm our suspicions but Alpha Quintus could not answer.

“I have told you,” his breath was shaky as he spoke, “I do not know what her father is.”

“Do you have any idea the type of danger you’ve put the world into by hiding this?” George hissed.

“She is wolfless,” the Alpha of the Silverfang pack defended himself, “she never became anything out of the ordinary.”

My hand instinctively moved to the pocket where I had kept her necklace. I had a feeling that had something to do with the reason he thought she had no wolf and the reason Samara was able to hide her real self.

“Are you sure?” George asked, clearly not buying what Alpha Quintus had just said.

“I am sure,” came his firm response, “she never turned out to become a freak or even a wolf. She remained worthless.”

I had to ball up my fist beside me to fight the urge to beat Alpha Quintus up for the way he described Samara.

“You can leave, Alpha Quintus” George’s voice was low and threatening, “and I better not see you again or else I will fucking kill you.”

The old man scurried off and George and I faced each other almost speechless at what we had just uncovered.

“Do you believe she is the dragon wolf that was spotted in your pack?” I asked him.

He shrugged, “perhaps.”

“This is not the time to withhold information.”

“Samara has been bullied the way an ordinary human girl would…” George said, “it seems unlikely but then…”

“What are you not telling me George?” I asked him.

“She stole a book that is forbidden for anyone else to read,” he replied, “the book was the diary of the last dragon wolf.”

“You think she was trying to understand what she was?” I was worried for us and worried for Samara. A dragon wolf did not belong in our world. It was a killer that had been created solely for the purpose of annihilating the werewolves and now there was a chance that the mate I had spent weeks searching for could be that killer?

I was willing to accept any other explanation but that. But Samara’s necklace in my pocket was telling of the secret she strove so hard to protect.

“I believe she knew exactly what she was,” I sensed a note of betrayal in Alpha George’s tone, “and she was trying to decide if we were worth living.”

But I could not vilify Samara.

“Or maybe she was just confused.”

“Either way,” said George, “we have to find her before the dragons or vampires do.”