this confession was going. On one hand his story was aligning with the way police thought Holly had died. But my less naïve mind told me it was awfully convenient to blame the stepdad if the only other option was thinking Wilder had killed her himself.
“You’re saying the stepdad did it?”
“I’m saying not only did he kill her, but he terrorized her, chased her, hunted her through the woods like she was an animal, and made damn sure she felt every bit of it as she died.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because she was still alive when I found her.” He stared at his hands, and for the first time since he’d started talking, I turned away as well. The raw pain on his face was too much. Either he was telling the truth, or he was a damned good actor, and I didn’t think anyone could fake emotion like that.
I wanted to touch him, to comfort him like I had earlier, but I was afraid to move.
“It was during a pack run. He’d left her out there, half-buried, but he hadn’t bothered to make sure he finished the job. I was in wolf form when I came across her body. I’d gone after the blood thinking a trapper might have caught something I could steal. You know how it is when you’re in the fog. Blood is food. You’d follow that smell to the ends of the earth.”
I nodded tightly. The feel of the hunt was a familiar one. Not even a full twenty-four hours earlier I’d been hunting a rabbit myself. I couldn’t fault him for doing what came naturally.
“And what you found was the girl.”
“She was a mess. He’d…” Wilder balled his hands into fists. “He’d torn her apart. I could smell him all over her. I…” He looked up, his skin pale and his eyes shining. “You don’t need to hear about this.”
I didn’t argue. Having not known Holly or what had happened to her, I didn’t need to hear the gritty details of her death. It sounded like it had been awful, regardless of who had killed her. Bile tickled the back of my throat, and I suspected if I heard more, it would only get worse.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I recognized her scent, but she obviously didn’t know who I was. It was the height of the full moon. I couldn’t shift back to help her, and just me being there scared her worse. She was sobbing when Ben found us. Not long after he showed up, Holly died. And no matter how often I explain it to him, he won’t listen. He didn’t bother to smell her, didn’t look anywhere else for the truth. Ben wanted to believe I was capable of murder because he didn’t like my brother and because he was convinced he loved Holly. He thought I killed her so he couldn’t have her, like she was a chew toy we were fighting over.”
Now his anger was apparent, chasing away the former sadness in his voice. I urged the conversation forward. “So you left the pack?”
“Callum didn’t know what to believe, but he knew keeping me and Ben in the same place would be impossible. We got into some brutal fights, knock-down-drag-out, broken-bones-and-blood kind of fights. I think if we’d been forced to live together at the compound much longer, one of us would’ve killed the other.”
It wasn’t hyperbole, either. Two Alphas butting heads often led to one of them winding up dead. That was the way of the pack. You couldn’t keep alphas together for long before things came to bloodshed. I don’t know how the Eastern pack managed so long with a strong Alpha as the King’s second-in-command and never came to a coup.
“I only came back because I knew Hank was stirring up shit. He’s…difficult. I get that. I’ve lived with him most of my life. And I know you guys think he’s hateful and has no redeeming qualities, but you’re wrong. Yes, he has awful views on things, and no I don’t agree with him about any of it. He’s a racist, he’s an asshole, he’s vulgar and speaks his mind much too freely, especially when no one wants to hear what he thinks. I understand why people hate him. But I also know the Hank that raised me and made sure I was fed and clothed and wouldn’t let foster care take me away. He worked three jobs to earn enough to keep us together,