That Coconut

That Coconut
MAX

Yvette snorts, “Love?” She frowns, throwing me a contemptuous look. “Love had nothing to do with the curse that girl placed over him. But he wanted her. This I know.”

“How?” Finn’s voice bellows. ”How do you know?”

Yvette smiles, a slow stretch of a grin, then she cackles giddily making me wonder, yet again, how I did not know she was this…disturbed. Maybe, I simply didn’t notice because I didn’t have any reason to, but now…with Blanca…I do…and it’s pretty goddessdamned clear that she’s mental. 

Definitely going to look into a few sanitariums for her permanent placement.

“I was there, you know-” Yvette chortles “-awake all those times he snuck that bitch and that other friend of his into your mother’s house!”

Jerking upright, I frown. “Friend? What friend?” I cast a glance at Finn and he shrugs, shaking his head just barely. Yvette goes on, ignoring my question, “They’d used the servant’s entrance, which is right by my bedroom and I was there, already waiting for my Commander to come and pay me a visit.” She wags her eyebrows and I almost barf. “I heard him begging her for a kiss, begging her to let him have her first.”

“First?” I chirp. As opposed to what..? 

Yvette nods, continuing, “She denied him. Over and over again, that bitch denied him. He was weak! She was Shiftless! Why ask at all when he could just take what he wanted like a real man? Instead he chose to beg at her skirts. Pathetic.”

Like a real man? Seriously?

Suddenly, Blanca’s words come back to me and my stomach turns…

”My sister was not a whore! Your brother raped her!"

Shit…what if?

No, no, no, it can’t be…please Drake…tell me it isn’t so…you didn’t…you wouldn’t...

Good Goddess…

“There’s still time for you, Max,” Yvette says softly, ripping me from my thoughts.

“Excuse me?” I reply.

She smiles, granting me that unending maternal look that I always used to think was so genuine. “Kill them. Kill them all, the Shiftless, before another comes along and tries her luck at bedding you. This one weakened you in the same way that other one weakened your brother, but luckily I was here to save you from that fate. I won’t be once I’m in jail, so, be rid of them. Before it’s too late.”

“Is that what you told my brother?” I growl. “To be rid of her? To kill her? Is that what really happened on the day he died?”

Yvette cackled again. “No. Like I said, your brother was weak. So weak, in fact, that it was a ten year old that ultimately ended him.” She shook her head. “And that little bitch should have been executed that day! But no, Alpha Robert, weak man that he was, didn’t have the stomach to do what needed to be done. Mores the pity.”

Anger for Blanca rises in my chest, a serpent tipping its head in my direction and flashing its fangs as I observe this mad witch and wonder how in the hell my mother could have been so wrong about this woman.

Then again, Yvette may not have been like this at first. Corlys may have been the one that changed her.

I shake my head. “You do realize that you’ve just committed another crime, don’t you? By telling me to murder countless members of this pack—you may have just signed your death warrant. By rights I should have you executed. Genocide is not legal in any territory, Yvette. Not anywhere.”

I really should have her executed.

And it should be done publicly, as a statement for the Shiftless.

I now know that Blanca may never be safe in a world where people like Yvette draw breath and are able to spill that kind of poison from their lips.

She blinks at me and I throw up a hand to signal that Jared should step on it which he does.

The rev of the engine causes Yvette to frown. “I don’t get it. What members of this pack?” She spits through clenched teeth, “Shiftless are not pack!”

I yell, “They are! Not only because they were born to Shifters within the borders of my territory, but because I fucking say they are! And I am your Alpha, Yvette. My word is law. Not your word, mine!”

She hisses, “You. Are. WEAK!”

I smile. “The weak man you are referring to lay dead near the Rim, wasting in an unmarked grave.” She scowls and I smile. “But you’re right about one thing, he definitely thought with his bad brain too much of the time and it was a real pain in the ass removing it from his neck when I killed him. That coconut was a lot bigger than I bargained for.”