this fool for a while now. My granddaughter brought him home, and though they’re mated, he never felt right to me. Always shady, never settling down, getting into trouble left and right, but she pleaded with me to transform him, and like a fool, I did.
“She called and told me about him coming back to her boasting about taking out some woman.” He blew out a breath. “I managed to track down his whereabouts, but the bastard must have overheard me talking with my granddaughter. He ran off.”
Instinct had me asking, “And he hurt her?”
Frank, for the first time, lost his joviality. “Yes. He did.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
His nostrils flared for just a second. “She was a fool for letting him into her life. We have a choice to reject the mate bond when the mate is a bad egg.” He cleared his throat. “His punishment will be hers when it comes time for it.”
My mouth worked a little as I processed how he was trying to hide from his pain before a memory whispered inside my mind.
Two wolves had been there that night.
Two.
Not just one.
Her? The female? His mate?
My she-wolf howled like she knew I was right, and with that sound ringing in my ears, I decided it was a kindness not to mention the granddaughter’s involvement in my attack. Instead, I spoke to my brother, “Well, seems like even in all these years, you’ve yet to change, Cyrilo. Not even getting transformed could shine up the pile of shit you are. Not even the blessing of a mate bond.” A mate bond that would see both of my attackers die.
Maybe there was justice in the world, after all.
A surprised breath billowed from Eli’s lungs. “You know him?”
I gritted my teeth, tipped my chin up, and confirmed, “He’s my brother.”
A snarl escaped Ethan, and when he flew across the room to attack Cyrilo, I moved toward him to try to stop him, but I wasn’t surprised when Austin shifted and dove into the fray. The two of them got caught up in a tussle, snarling and snapping at each other, but even their fighting, which was anything other than playful, didn’t snatch my attention totally away from Cyrilo.
He hadn’t shifted in response to the attack.
Hadn’t responded in any way aggressively, other than to rear up and fall back as his cuffs controlled his movements.
“The silver,” Eli explained as he stood up and moved from behind his desk and strode over to me.
I wanted to melt into him when he put his arm around my waist and tugged me close, but I couldn’t.
Not when the enemy was in our midst.
I sucked in a breath, trying not to feel like I had the last time I’d seen Cyrilo.
Trying to forget what he’d done to me, to my baby, to Kian, but it was impossible.
He’d always been working on Daddy’s orders. His minion.
“Last time I saw you, you were smiling at me when you forced us off the road,” I rasped.
Cyrilo didn’t even duck his head in shame, he just stared stonily ahead.
I heard Ethan snarl some more, and Austin growled at him, focused on controlling his brother, but it was Eli who murmured, “What did he do?”
“Drove into my little car. He was behind the wheel of a pickup truck with massive bull bars on the front. We didn’t stand a chance. None of us did.”
“Thought I’d fucking killed you until I saw you on goddamn TV one day at some carnival dressed up like a gypsy,” Cyrilo snapped, peering over at me long enough to slam me with his hatred. “Proudest day of my life was telling father I’d cut out the scum from our line. You shamed me, bitch.”
“I shamed you?” I squeaked, my eyes widening, and then I felt the way Ethan and Austin were tearing into each other, their blood actually spilling over this conversation, and I did what I was slowly learning to do.
It was, as always, a learning curve, but I breathed in, sucked in calm with some oxygen, and blew it out in a measured flow as I closed my eyes and focused on their bright energy balls which, as always, were there the second my eyelids shut.
I worked on soothing them, calming them, and as I did, the strangest thing happened.
I saw more balls of energy.
About twenty-five more.
When I focused on them, I recognized that one was Daniel, and there were a few people in the house who were linked to those energy