Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,104

would be more than fine, their wolf selves welcomed—the rogues are violent. Rogues track, attack, and kill the people they once loved.”

Memory’s cheekbones pushed up against her skin, her expression stark. “As if they’re angry at what they’ve lost and want to destroy it?”

Alexei shrugged. “Maybe. No one knows. I’ve heard rumors of rogues who made a return to being changeling, but I think they’re fairy tales we tell ourselves to find hope in a hopeless situation.”

For the Vasiliev family, the pain rolled down the decades in an endless chain. “To be a rogue is to be under an automatic execution order.” The packs had no other choice. “Brodie attacked his mate when he went rogue. I found Etta’s mauled body when I went looking for my brother. She was still alive, died a minute later in my arms.” She’d been so light in his hold, a sweet, loving woman forever gone, her family devastated, their dreams for her buried in the earth with her body.

“You should’ve seen Brodie with her before. He loved her.” Alexei didn’t want Memory to know his brother only as the violent killer he’d become; he needed to show her the generous and devoted mate Brodie had been before it all went horribly wrong. “Idiot once dived out of a plane above the territory with a parachute that opened out to say, ‘Etta, I’m sorry,’ after they’d had a fight.”

Memory’s smile trembled. “I wish I could’ve known him. Known her.” She brushed back his hair, stroked his shoulder, his upper arm.

Accepting the way she touched him, comforted him, he told her the rest. “I tracked him, but when the time came, I couldn’t hurt him. I would’ve allowed him to shred me to pieces.” He’d collapsed onto his knees at seeing his adventurous, funny big brother’s bloody muzzle and mad eyes, his heart broken. “Hawke knew. He’d followed me. He did what needed to be done.”

“I’m so sorry, Alexei.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, Memory pressed her cheek to his. The salt of her tears was wet against him, the tremor in her voice potent with emotion.

Alexei let her hold him as he hadn’t allowed anyone to hold him for a long time. But he couldn’t cry, the tears locked up in concrete inside his heart, the hard substance formed of his anger and his pain.

“Just because this happened to members of your family, doesn’t mean it’ll happen to you.” Memory’s voice was fierce.

Alexei wished he could grab on to the hope, hold on. “There’s a stressor.” He spoke against her ear, the words coming out husky and rough. “My father never said much about his father, but as a child, I once overheard him telling my mother that, according to older packmates, my grandfather began to act strange prior to going rogue. Spending long hours in wolf form and becoming aggressive toward his mate when he’d always before been gentle.”

Sitting back so she could see his face, Memory frowned. “Did the same thing happen to your father and brother?”

“My father was always a little different from other changelings.” Not that Alexei had consciously known that as a child—to him his dad was just his dad. “We stayed out for weeks at a time in the wilderness, and I don’t think my father ever shifted back into human form except when my mother made him. I didn’t know that wasn’t normal.”

“So he was always predisposed to it? Then why are you worried it’ll happen to you?”

“After my father’s death,” Alexei said, “we had to know the truth. We asked our aunt.”

“Why not your mother?”

Alexei squeezed his eyes shut. “She couldn’t live with the horror of what he’d become. She took a massive overdose of sleeping pills right after he was executed.”

Memory felt a wave of fury roar over her, directed at a woman who’d permitted her own pain to overwhelm her duty to the two small souls who looked to her for hope, for answers, for love. Forcing the anger into a tight knot in her gut, she focused on Alexei.

“I was nine by the time we demanded the truth from Aunt Min, Brodie eleven.” Alexei’s voice was ragged, his muscles rigid. “She said our father’s DNA had been tested, but as with all rogues to date who’ve been examined, the scientists found no genetic red flags.”

Alexei’s claws slid out. “I knew there was more. I could tell. I asked and asked until she finally admitted that our father hadn’t begun acting the way