Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,106

me to sit in, so they’d known then that the hyenas wouldn’t answer to just anyone. That was why I was here. Not because I could discern the difference between truth and lies when they were spoken, but because these bastards would only listen to a female.

I jerked back, my feet skipping away from the puddle of piss gathering on the floor as I turned away from my men, glaring at the door as I tried to figure out a way to comport myself without turning into a shrew.

Rubbing my face on my sleeve when I realized I was drenched with sweat, I glared at nothing, at the floor, at the fucking blood spatters on the wall, before I spun around and demanded, “Whose orders?”

“Jana’s,” the hyena whispered, his head bowed and his gaze unable to reach mine. “She’s our leader.”

“She was. She’s dead,” I told him coldly. “Why would you attack us?”

“To preserve our clan,” he replied miserably. “She was our future. Without her, we are nothing.”

My brow puckered at that, and for the first time, I cast glances at my mates. They all looked sheepish, and somehow, their minds were locked down tight or vice versa, I wasn’t sure which—if I was keeping them out, or they were keeping me out.

The idea actually pissed me off more than I could say, because if they were locking me out, then they sucked.

I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck, before I tried to broadcast my thoughts. It was harder than it should be, which made me wonder if it was because of the stress I was under.

I sucked down some air, tried to calm myself down, then carefully asked, “Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” Eli snapped.

Ethan roared, “Where the hell did you go?”

“How did you do that? Don’t do it again!” Austin ground out.

The answers bombarded me, and even though not a one of them had moved, even though they didn’t reveal the truth of their distress in their expression, I saw it and felt their anxiety at how I’d locked them out.

Ironic, really. Especially with Austin, who found it harder than the others to accept that I could pluck thoughts out of his mind like I was digging for the letter ‘G’ in a tin of alphabet soup.

Not willing to answer the question, not only because I didn’t actually know how I’d done it when I’d never managed before, I rumbled, “Is he lying? Is a leader the future of a clan?”

Ethan sighed, and in his eyes, I knew he saw that I was pissed, but because he was the most rational of my mates, he accepted it and gave me what I needed most at that moment. Not a kiss or a hug, but the truth.

“It depends on the clan. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. The fact that Jana couldn’t shift, yet had to be guarded in battle and was still the leader, tells me that she was very skilled at controlling them in other ways.”

“She could see the future. Small glimpses of it, at any rate. They probably thought she was the second coming,” I reasoned gruffly.

“Verbiage aside, you might be right,” Ethan agreed. “If she sprinkled doses of the future, offered them insights that helped them grow their wealth, their prestige and position, then why wouldn’t they think the clan’s destiny rested with her?”

Accepting that because it made sense, I demanded, “Why did she think hurting us would help you?”

“Because one of her sister’s mates was destined to kill her. The other one, the younger one, we had under investigation. She had no mate. Therefore, she was safe. You have three. Powerful alphas all of them. If you died, then she was safe.”

The logic wasn’t great. Especially as none of my mates had been the one to kill the bitch.

I reached up and scrubbed my eyes. “Well, considering my mates weren’t behind her death, that tells you how powerful Jana was, doesn’t it? How well she could see into the future.”

His eyes flared at that, as he registered the truth, and small cackles whispered from the cages, a weird chuffing sound that made me realize they were communicating.

“Your clan had no ill will against the pack aside from her so-called premonition?” I inquired. “Does it really make sense that, to get to my mates, you’d attack a large pack?”

“I’m only low on the pecking order, ma’am,” the hyena rasped, ducking his shoulders, which had to hurt with the cuffs he had on his arms. “I