Chapter 8 The Alpha's Confession

Odessa

We went in through the front door like adults.

Well, almost. I had a Sorrel by betrothal on one side, a Sorrel by blood on the other, and a forged scroll burning a hole in my pocket. My father met us in the hallway in his pajama pants, took one look at Mia, and said, "I'm not even going to ask."

"Good," I said. "Because I need the car keys."

"Odessa."

"Dad, I love you. But you let me believe a lie for six years, so tonight, I'm driving."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at the parchment in my hand, and the color left his face.

He went and got his keys.

We reached the Sorrel estate a little after three in the morning. The gates were open, which told me everything. Alpha Grayson had been expecting this. He was sitting alone in the great hall, in the same chair where I'd watched him laugh and raise a glass two nights ago. There was an untouched whiskey on the table beside him, and he looked up when we walked in like a man who had been waiting for a firing squad.

"Odessa," he said.

I didn't answer. I just walked up and dropped the parchment into his lap.

He didn't pick it up.

"Mia found it," I said. "Her grandmother kept the real scrolls. You want to explain why the part about the moon taking my life is in a different hand than everything else on this page?"

"Dad," Evan said behind me. His voice was rough. "Please. Tell me she's wrong."

I watched Grayson's jaw tighten. I watched him look at his son, standing there with Mia at his shoulder and me in front of him, and I watched something old and heavy settle across his face.

"I can't," he said.

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I have ever heard.

"I forged it," he said quietly. "Six years ago. The night Evan came to me, shaking, telling me he felt the bond with Odessa Kade, a seventeen-year-old girl, I did the worst thing I have ever done in my life. I rewrote a Priestess's blessing and I took it to my best friend and I told him his daughter would die."

"Why?" My voice cracked in the middle. "Why would you do that?"

"Because of what you are."

I frowned. "What does that mean?"

Grayson finally reached down and picked up the parchment. His hands were shaking. He turned it over, and on the back, in faded ink I hadn't noticed, there was a drawing. A crescent moon with a wolf's head curled inside it.

I knew that symbol. Everyone did. It was on the oldest stones in the territory.

"Moon-blooded," Evan whispered.

"Not just moon-blooded." Grayson looked at me. "There hasn't been one born in four hundred years. The old texts call her Lunara. A wolf who carries the Goddess's own thread. The Alpha who mates her doesn't just gain a Luna. He gains the right to call every pack in the territory to heel."

The room tilted.

"That's a fairy tale," Mia said sharply. "Grandmother told me that story. Lunara was a myth."

"My father killed one," Grayson said.

Nobody breathed.

"I was a boy. I watched him do it." His eyes were wet, but his voice stayed steady. "She was a young woman, no older than Odessa. Her mate was an Alpha from the north, and together they were going to unite the packs. My father didn't want a world without Sorrel at the top of it. So he had her killed, and her mate died of the broken bond a week later, and the packs went back to fighting each other for another four centuries."

"And you thought," I said slowly, "that if you sealed the bond with Evan, someone else would come for me."

"I thought I would."

I stared at him.

"God forgive me, Odessa." He pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes. "I stood in that study six years ago and I knew exactly what you were, and for one terrible minute, I wanted it. I wanted my son's mate to be the most powerful wolf in the territory. I wanted the Sorrel name to finally mean what my father couldn't make it mean. And then I looked at my own boy crying in front of me, and I realized I was becoming my father."

"So you forged a lie," Evan said, very quietly.

"So I broke you apart. I told John she'd die. I let you think the Goddess had made a mistake. And I told myself it was mercy."

I didn't realize I was crying until Evan's hand found mine.

"Then why now?" I asked. "Why kidnap me? Why bring me here?"

"Because he was dying." Grayson's voice finally broke. "Because the bond doesn't care about my pride. And because, when I watched him cough up blood in my study, I understood that I would rather lose every pack in the territory than lose my son. I don't deserve your forgiveness. But I am asking for your help anyway."

Behind me, I heard a sharp breath.

I turned. Joshua stood in the doorway.

He was still in yesterday's clothes. His eyes were red and his jaw was dark with stubble, and from the look on his face, he had been standing there for a long time.

"Josh," I said.

"The moon-blooded thing." His voice was hollow. "Did you hear him?"

"Yes."

"Did you know?"

"No."

My brother looked at me. Then at Evan's hand, still wrapped around mine. Then at Grayson, who had gone completely gray.

"Mom knew," Joshua said quietly.

My blood froze.

"What?"

"I went home to yell at her. I found her in the kitchen at midnight, crying over a box of old letters." He swallowed. "She told me everything. About the Priestess. About you." He took one step into the room. "Odessa, there's one more thing nobody has told you. And it's the worst part."

I couldn't speak.

"Mom isn't just a Kade by marriage," Josh said. "Her grandmother was the Priestess. The real one. She was there the night you were born, and she didn't just read your thread."

His voice cracked.

"She gave you hers."

Evan

I felt it the second he said it.

A pulse, deep in my chest, like a second heartbeat. Not mine. Her wolf, waking up all the way for the first time, and my own rising to meet it. The air in the great hall went electric. Every candle flickered. The windows rattled in their frames.

Odessa was staring at her brother with her mouth open, and her eyes, those eyes I'd have crossed any border for, were glowing silver.

"Evan," she whispered.

"I know."

"I can feel everyone." Her hand tightened on mine. "Your father's heartbeat. Mia's. Josh's. It's so loud. Why is it so loud?"

"Breathe, little wolf."

For once, she didn't tell me not to call her that.

She breathed. The glow dimmed, and the candles steadied, and Alpha Grayson sank back into his chair like a man who'd just watched the sea part. Mia was pressed against the wall with her hand over her mouth. Joshua hadn't moved.

And then Odessa looked at me, really looked at me, and I saw the fear underneath.

"If I'm what he says I am," she whispered, "then I'm not just your mate."

"No."

"I'm the one thing every Alpha in the territory is going to want."

I pulled her against my chest. I didn't ask. She didn't resist. I put my chin on top of her head and held her like the whole world was trying to take her out of my arms, because it was.

"Then they'll have to come through me," I said.

"You're dying, Evan."

"Then I'll make it slow."

She laughed, a wet, shaking sound against my shirt.

Over her shoulder, I met Joshua's eyes. For one long moment, my best friend and my worst enemy stared at me across the hall. He didn't nod. He didn't smile. But he didn't look away.

Then the front doors of the Sorrel estate slammed open, and a voice I hadn't heard in six years rolled through the hall like thunder.

"Grayson Sorrel. You have something that belongs to the North."

Every wolf in the room turned.

The man in the doorway was tall and silver-haired, with a scar running down one side of his face and twelve Alphas standing behind him.