enough to not want to hear the rest.
But I had to.
“What happened?”
“She went missing. They found her a few days after the full moon, dead. Her stepfather was arrested and convicted, but…”
I knew the rest of his sentence, even though he drifted off quietly. The kill hadn’t been right, not quite human. And a dead girl in the woods after a full moon? We were all lucky no one knew about werewolves then, because all fingers would have pointed at Callum and the pack faster than someone could say howl.
A cold sensation crept up my spine. “Does she still have people here, Ben? Now that we’re out, are they going to start thinking the cops made a mistake?”
He shook his head. “Her mom moved away years ago. Last I heard she died. The stepdad was killed in prison. No one likes a guy who kills kids, right?”
I wanted his words to make me feel better, but instead I felt bad for the girl. No matter who or what had killed her, she’d never gotten her chance to grow up and get the hell out of this town.
“You’re missing the point,” he said.
I wasn’t. I was thinking like a pack ruler, and he was thinking like someone who was too emotionally attached to the girl’s death to see anything else. I felt for my brother and was heartbroken he’d been so hurt, but if he was going to be king, he couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of looking for the truth.
For the first time it struck me that maybe I should be gunning to take over Callum’s throne. I hadn’t seriously considered it because Ben had been grooming himself for the job his entire life. He was literally born to be king. But wasn’t I just as good? We were the same age, the same rank, and all the claims he had to the throne applied to me as well.
I’d never wanted to fight him for it, and I’d long convinced myself I didn’t want it. But things felt different. I felt different. And I was starting to wonder if I was more cut out for the role than I—or anyone else—had given me credit for.
“What’s your point, then?” I asked.
“My point is Wilder killed her.”
Chapter Ten
I stared out my bedroom window, watching the sun fade from yellow to orange and the sky darken around the light like a closing fist. When all the light had vanished, I opened my windows and the double doors onto the veranda and let the night air waft in.
The heat of the day was still heavy, but with the ceiling fan going and the cool evening breeze sweeping across the floor, soon my skin was prickled with goose bumps. I wasn’t cold. Werewolves rarely got cold. But I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy either.
Thanks for nothing, Ben.
My brother had managed to derail my plans before I’d gotten a chance to fully act on them. I’d been hell-bent on running off to Wilder and helping him find Hank. Then Ben had said those three magic words.
Wilder killed her.
If—and it was a big if—Wilder had killed Holly, it explained a lot about why he’d left town and why he wasn’t popular with the pack. He’d put everyone at risk, and he’d murdered a girl. Maybe murder was too strong a word. As a young wolf he might have lost control. There were legitimate, albeit awful, reasons that sort of thing happened. If he’d been out on his own without a pack member to guide him, if he hadn’t yet learned to control the wolf instead of letting it control him… Things went disastrously wrong from time to time.
I didn’t know this man well enough to be making excuses for him, yet they kept popping into my head unbidden. I wanted reasons to think well of him while still believing my brother. Ben wouldn’t lie to me about something this big. He might willfully mislead me on smaller points, but not this. He wouldn’t ruin a man’s reputation for kicks.
Doubt nagged at me, but I ignored it because I wasn’t sure which of them I was doubting.
“Dammit.” I kicked my bag, knocking it on its side and sending my textbooks sprawling onto the floor.
School seemed foreign to me right now, like something people on another planet did. Studying and writing papers felt wildly unimportant in the face of everything else going on in my life. People were threatening my pack. How could I be