TALIS
Two seconds after I spot Uncle Glynn disappearing into the trees and decide to follow him, I realize I'm doing exactly what I warned everyone else in the pack not to.
With everyone busy fighting their own battles, it's up to me to stop him because everything is screaming at me that if I let him leave, he'll only be back to target us-or rather me-another day.
I can't let that happen.
What if he targets mine and Dayne's baby next?
No. I have to stop him.
But before I take off after him, I try to catch Luka's eyes so at least someone knows where I've gone, since Savannah is right in that Dayne will blame the rest of the pack if something happens to me.
With him busy fighting off a double attack, I hesitate about going to help him, but then I shake my head. Uncle Glynn is the bigger threat, and Luka has the rest of the pack close by for help if he needs it.
I manage to catch Luka's eye and tilt my head in the direction I'm going, and although I can see he isn't happy about what I'm planning, he's tied up so there's nothing he can do to stop me.
So, I skirt the outer perimeters of the fight spilling all over the clearing and dart into the forest after Uncle Glynn.
Within moments, I've caught his scent, and a couple of minutes later I see him with a rucksack slung over his shoulder as he heads deeper into the forest.
I study him from behind a tree.
Why he's creeping through the forest when all he'd need to do to get away is get in his truck and drive off makes no sense to me.
It makes such little sense that I get the feeling I'm about to step into a steel trap that's going to prove painful, or downright impossible to escape.
Not a literal trap, though I take a second to study the ground. Just in case.
He's up to something. Why does it feel like he's up to something?
But what is it?
"I know you're there, Talis," Uncle Glynn says, with his back to me.
I don't move from my position, just continue to examine him as I figure out what to do.
Then, when he swings around and I look into his face, my spine stiffens, and I emerge from behind the tree.
Whatever he's up to doesn't matter. He isn't going anywhere.
We've overrun the Merrick pack. That much was clear from the fight spilling out over the clearing.
It's a matter of minutes until Dayne breaks himself out of wherever Uncle Glynn kept him, since I doubt anyone's watching him. Not with all the fighting going on.
Although Uncle Glynn may have him locked up in the attic or the basement, Dayne is… Dayne.
Neither of those places will keep him trapped for long, especially since he knows we're here and there's a fight going on.
He'll be out, and soon.
All of which means Uncle Glynn has lost, and he knows it.
Why else would he be sneaking away in the middle of the fight?
I make a decision, and even though my wolf is resistant to the idea of me changing back to human, I need answers and I need to be human to ask them.
So, I shift.
This time, when his gaze slides down my naked body with the dark, sly smile that makes me feel dirty, I don't move to cover myself because why the fuck should I feel unclean when he's the dirty one?
"I'd have thought you'd want to stay wolf," he says, sliding the rucksack off his back and tossing it to the ground.
Although I'm tempted to glance over at it since I'm curious about what's inside, I don't take my eyes off him. "I can change back when I'm ready to kill you," I tell him with a little shrug that says it doesn't matter either way. "We alphas can do things like that."
He doesn't bother denying it. He just nods with a faint smile on his face. "I'm guessing that mate of yours had something to do with it?"
"No," I say, wandering closer, though not too close. He is still a threat, after all. "I'd have got there on my own. I guess you could say he gave me a bit of a jumpstart, is all. I mean, it's not like I haven't been telling you I was an alpha since I was… what? Eight? Ten?"
I remember how he tried to convince me otherwise, all the times he tried to beat the knowledge out of me but being alpha is a part of me.
It's inside me-a part of my fabric-not something you can cut out like a finger.
"Younger, if you must know," Uncle says with another small smile, except this one lacks any humor. It's an expression as empty as his brown eyes.
I tilt my head as I wait for him to continue, trying to hide my surprise. Not only at his words but the fact he's telling me anything at all.
"Patrick brought you to me," he starts.
At first, the name confuses me since I don't know anyone called Patrick, and then it hits me who he's talking about. My father. His brother.
"Yes, your father. Daddy." The sneer on Uncle Glynn's face tells me exactly what he thinks of his brother, and what he thinks of me. Disgust. Hatred. It's written all over his face.
"And there you were, crawling all over me, pretending to growl. Trying to outstare me. Oh, I saw it. At four years old, the writing was on the wall. I knew what I had to do."
I still at his words.
I don't remember what he's talking about.
I have no memory of my dad taking me to see Uncle Glynn. I rarely have any memories of Uncle Glynn at all. I don't know if my dad saw the hatred in his eyes and figured it would be best to keep me away from him.
But I remember being surprised Uncle Glynn would be the one looking after me after my parent's death.
"What did you do?" I ask. Because it's clear he did something.
"Well-" He breaks off at the sound of someone running, and I half turn as well, making sure I keep him in my sights even as I prepare for the arrival of a familiar presence.
Loren bursts through the trees and skids to a stop.
For a second, she looks confused, then after glaring at me, turns as if to run off again.
"Loren, where are you going? Now you're here we can-"
"Oh, fuck off, Glynn. Can't you tell we've lost already? I'm not sticking around to meet the same fate as you." Without a second glance at Uncle Glynn, Loren takes off, leaving him trembling with rage.
"That fucking bitch," he snarls, his eyes flashing to wolf and back again.
"To be fair, she's always been that way," I say. "Which you never had a problem with as long as she was toeing the line, but now she's not, she's a bitch?"
He narrows his eyes at me, a nasty grin twisting his lips.
I brace for the toxic bitterness to come spewing out since the expression I'm reading is as familiar to me as my own face.
"Oh, so you think because you have someplace to go, they'll always want you? You think they're family? That one day they won't kick you out?"
I blink in surprise at something I should have seen long before now, but never did.
"You are fucking terrified of being kicked out, of having nowhere to go, of being worthless. And you know what? That's on you. I have a mate, and friends, a home, I'm going to have a baby. I belong. You don't belong anywhere. You didn't even belong with the Merrick pack, which is why you twisted it into something else. It's why you kicked out all the people who would never have accepted you as alpha, and it's why you've ruled with nothing but fear and cruelty. It's always been about fear. Your fear."
His face goes white with rage as I continue to speak, never taking my eyes from his the entire time.
"Fear? You think I'm afraid? I made the Merrick mine. I took it. No one motivated with fear could have done that."
I shake my head because I don't understand. "What do you mean, you took it? Hunters killed my parents. You didn't-" I stop at the sound of his laughter.
"Oh, do you still believe that? Is that what you think?"
I stare at him because I can't think of what else to say or do.
I want to ask the question, but I can't. I'm too afraid to because I know what the answer will be.
In fact, I don't need to ask at all. I think I've always known.
I swallow. "You killed them. It wasn't hunters at all. It was you."
The story was always that my parents were so distracted with their run, with wanting to hurry back to get back to me, their only child on her birthday that they led hunters almost right to the doors of our house.
For a long time, people said that if it hadn't been for Glynn Merrick, the hunters would have killed many more than just my parents.
People called him a hero.
And then suddenly they didn't anymore, and I never understood why none of the alphas wanted him at any of the shifter events.
They probably guessed what he'd done because anyone who met Glynn Merrick even once would know he was no hero.
Everyone except me, that is.
How could I have been so fucking stupid?
The truth was right in front of my face all along.
Glynn Merrick, always living a little apart from the pack, but desperate for a higher position. Desperate to belong. Desperate to be alpha.
Then when I start showing signs of being alpha, he knew he never would because at four, I was already showing signs of being a more dominant alpha than he was, even before my first shift.
So, he had to make me believe I wasn't an alpha.
I remember the way Uncle Glynn smelled of hunters, of how he hid his and Abel's scent when they came and took me from Dawley.
It was him.
My eyes fill with tears, and I reach up to brush them away, which is how I miss Uncle Glynn tugging a small pistol from the waistband of his pants.
When I see the weapon, I realize I was right about the steel trap closing around me.
This is no tranq gun he's getting ready to point at me.
I'm staring at my death.
There's nothing I can do but run back for the trees because no matter how fast I shift, there's no way I'll be able to get to him before he lets off a shot.
He'll be aiming to kill me.
I see the knowledge of what he intends on his face.
But before I can act, something moving too fast for me to see what it is bursts through a gap in the trees, giving Uncle Glynn no chance to lift the gun, much less shoot it before it takes him down with a bone-breaking impact.
Then I realize what it is, or rather, who.
It's Dayne.
And that's when Uncle Glynn starts screaming.