Chapter Forty-Eight

Roan

Her voice when she noticed her father stabbed Roan in the heart.

It sounded like a little girl, one that felt abandoned, and was suddenly saved. The hope in her voice shattered Roan's body.

Because he didn’t trust the man sitting on his knees, trying to get to his mate. Roan used his better judgment and motioned for the wolves to let her father up from the ground.

His spine stiffened as she raced over toward him, and fell into his arms.

Roan hated how jealous his wolf was of the man that helped make his mate. It wasn’t the father-daughter relationship that made him on edge, it was that he was a part of this group of rogues that was out to get him and his pack-mates.

Jacob glanced over his shoulder at Roan and gave him a look. Roan cleared his throat at the same time that Sullen stood up and slapped her father across the face.

On instinct, Roan launched forward and hauled her away from her father, who looked shocked as hell to have gotten a slap to the face from his daughter.

“You bastard!” she shouted. “I can’t believe you’ve been alive this entire time. I’ve cried, I’ve hurt so deeply and you’ve been alive, hiding from me. From us. Your mate is marrying someone else! Do you even care?”

Her father stood up, keeping an eye on the wolves surrounding him. “Baby girl, it’s bigger than you think it is.”

Sullen turned her head away from her father and into Roan’s shoulder. “Does Mom know?”

He slowly shook his head. "No."

“That’s just great,” she said, wiping her nose with her hand. “Now she can be dragged around like a ragdoll between her mate and her new man.”

“We need to talk alone, Sullen.”

Roan laughed. “You think I’m going to let her speak to you alone? You’re a part of the group of rogues that is trying to take over my pack. Whatever you need to say to her, can be said in front of me.”

Her father’s gaze moved from Sullen to Roan and then skated down to the mark on his neck. “You’ve found your mate, Baby Girl? And we thought you didn’t have one.”

Sullen didn’t turn around to face him, she kept her quivering body tucked into Roan’s arm. “Take him to the cells—actually, no, don’t. I don’t want him with the other rogues. Take him to the conference room and keep him there until I get everything settled.”

Roan ushered Sullen along toward the pack house. She was silently crying the entire way. Roan’s wolf was stuck in a whirlwind of emotion. Feeling Sullen’s heartache felt like drowning in sorrow.

They made it to their room, and Roan swooped her up. She rested her head against his shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Is that a stupid question?”

“A little,” she laughed. “I’m just shocked and hurt. I can’t believe he’s been alive all this time. Why? Why fake a death? I don’t get it.”

Roan stroked his fingers into her hair. “I don’t know either. Do you think he will talk to you honestly with me around?”

“He has no choice,” she said, lifting up to look at him.

“Do you think he has something to do with the rogues?”

Sullen pressed her mouth into a thin line. “I don’t know what to think about him anymore Roan. To be honest, he is a stranger. A rogue that pretended with me. Did he even love me? I don’t know anymore.”

“I could see on his face that he loves you, Sullen.”

“We need to tell my mother.”

Roan cringed. “I’m not sure how soon to bring her into this. My dad loves your mom, they are planning a life together, and then her mate just comes back into the picture.”

“She’ll eventually find out that he is here. She’ll smell him. He said that she didn’t know he was alive. Wouldn’t she have felt if he died?”

Roan hadn’t thought about that. At all. “I’m not sure. I don’t know of anyone that lost their mate. Maybe his absence hurt her, and she just thought he was dead?”

Sullen shrugged. “It’s all suspicious to me.”

Roan stood up and offered her his hand. “Are you okay enough to speak with your father, or do you want to wait until tomorrow?”

She scoffed. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if I didn’t talk to him."

Roan and Sullen walked down toward the conference room where several wolves guarded her father. She had his hair and eyes. Oddly enough, she did look like him.

Though there was something in his eyes that didn’t match Sullen.

Experience? Wisdom? Something dark? Something … up to no good. Either way, it hadn’t been passed down to Sullen.

The wolves scattered outside of the room when Roan gestured them out. Sullen pulled a chair up several feet in front of her father and sat. Roan stood a respectable distance from them and glared at him.

“You mated with an Alpha,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad it’s someone that will take care of you.”

“Like you did?” she asked, and Roan could tell it was another slap to the face. “Roan would never pretend to die, and abandon me.”

He nodded. “No, he wouldn’t.”

Sullen pressed her lips together tightly. “I want to know what the hell is going on, Dad.”

He slid a palm down his face and sighed heavily. “I did pretend I died, Sullen. I was afraid. I was trying to get out of the pack of rogues I was affiliated with. But I couldn’t just leave. You don’t just leave, because you know too much. So, I pretended to die in the war. I was afraid if I tried to leave that they would hurt you or your mother."

His gaze lowered to Sullen’s neck. “You still wear the necklace.”

“Why did you come back?” she asked. “And here of all places?”

He cleared his throat. “Because I found out they were coming for this pack.”

“How did you know we were here?”

Her dad leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “Because I heard them talking about you. How many Sullen’s do you know? I had to make sure. I had to come and see for myself. I had to come and save you.”

Roan wanted to call him out on it. He wanted to reach over, grab his t-shirt, and pull him across the floor. Roan didn’t know the man from Adam, and apparently, neither did Sullen.

“How do I believe you when you’ve been lying to me all this time, Dad?”

“I’ll have to gain your trust,” he whispered. “We don’t have much time before they show up, but I will do whatever I need to gain your trust.”

Sullen became quiet, and Roan cleared his throat. “I’m having a room made for you. It will be guarded, from the outside and inside, but I won’t put you in the cells … yet.”

He nodded at Roan when the conference room doors swung open, and Mrs. Andrews stormed into the room.

“You bastard!” she shouted