Adam Wick.
Silence engulfed the room. The revelation that my dad's beta was Nathan's father left us all speechless. Holy stag nuts! I didn't see that one coming. Neither did Nathaniel. He stared at Nathan's mother with a starched face. My dad, however, rose from his chair and began pacing around the room. Riley and Maisie stared at Nathan in utter disbelief.
"Honey, say something," Nathan's mother whispered, breaking the silence, but he didn't react to her.
Nathan sat on the couch with his left arm still attached to his injured shoulder. His coppery eyes flicked between his siblings and his father. For the first time since I met him, dread and fear washed over his beautiful face. Suddenly, his eyes started flashing between normal and shimmering light blue, the color of a beta.
"This isn't good," Bane whined inside my head. "Why's he having a meltdown?"
"Take a guess. He just found out that Nathaniel is his actual father and that he has two younger siblings."
"There's more to it than that. He's freaking out about something else."
It was impossible not to reach forward and wrap my arms around him. Seeing Nathan acting out like that broke my heart. His reaction to the news baffled us. Yes, it was a massive bomb his mother threw at him, but I wouldn't have guessed he'd react this badly to it.
Before I could move an inch off my seat, his mother walked up to him. She pushed a few strands of her sleek black hair behind her ear while she kneeled before her son. But the moment she tried to touch his shoulder, he vanished before our eyes. Several gasps filled the living room.
"Where the hell did he disappear to?" yelled Riley. Seconds later, a slap rang out accompanied by a cry, "What the hell, Maisie?" Riley glared at his sister while rubbing the back of his head.
"Stop yelling in my ear, you idiot," she hissed back.
Just as Riley wanted to retaliate, a loud roar bellowed out over our heads, causing the crystal chandelier to rattle. He must have teleported to his bedroom. Several powerful crashes reverberated throughout the house, followed up by the crash of a window. Out of the corner of my eye, through the living room window, a chair came hurtling down on an enforcer standing in the front garden. The enforcer, with luck on his side, jumped out of the way before the chair could hit them.
"Don't, Victoria," said the Supreme as she held Nathan's mother back from running up the stairs after her son. "Let him vent. You owe your son that much."
Tears streaked down Victoria's flawless face. "He needs me," she croaked out.
"Not yet." The Supreme dragged her friend into her embrace and allowed her to bawl her eyes out.
After a few minutes, silence fell upon us once again. Nathan's meltdown had run its course.
"This is a joke, right?" Riley asked. "How can he be our brother?"
"Not now, Riley." I scowled at him through the mind-link.
Riley scoffed as he folded his arms. "He's not my brother. I won't accept it. There has to be a fuckup somewhere. This witch is taking us for a ride." He threw a nasty glare at Nathan's mother.
I scratched an itch that crawled over my clenched fist, wanting to rush over to the dumb shit and punch his face in. How dared he disrespect my future mate's mother like that? Nathan's mother didn't deserve the shade Riley threw at her. She had no ulterior motives for announcing Nathan's true heritage.
I shook my anger off and said, "This is not about you, Riley. Stop acting like a prick for once and let's ask—"
"Why didn't you tell me I had a son?" asked Nathaniel. The Beta strained to keep his voice as calm as he could, but sadness seeped into every word he spoke.
Victoria stiffened at his words. She raised her head from the nook of the Supreme's neck and then took a few steps backward. "I couldn't."
The Beta shot up to his feet. "Don't you dare! I have the right to know why?"
Victoria's eye hardened and then she said, "I had my reasons."
"It's not going to fly, Vicky," said the Supreme in a stern tone of voice reserved only for a naughty child. "It's time to explain to him and the Alpha why you came here. You knew well enough that when we eventually got an audience with the Alpha, you had to come clean with them."
Victoria reached over to a red box of tissues on a reading table next to her and swiped two tissues from the box. She sat back down on the couch, wiping the tears from her eyes. "After our two-week trip to Cabo San Lucas, back when we were eighteen, I returned to my home only to discover a week later that I had fallen pregnant. The moment I found out, I panicked. If my father found out that you were the father of my unborn child, he would have killed me, along with your entire pack."
"Aren't you over-exaggerating, Victoria?" Nathaniel said. "Sure, he would have been mad, but to kill his own daughter and grandson... it sounds too drastic."
The Supreme threw her head back and laughed as Nathan's mother followed along.
"That's where you're wrong, Nathaniel," Victoria replied grimly. "After he found out about my pregnancy, he wanted me to abort it. But I refused. Then he started asking who the father of my spawn was. I lied to him and told him it was another warlock."
"You're still not telling me the why of the story," Nathaniel said. "Why lie to your father?"
"Because he's a Purist!" she hissed.
A choir of growls filled the room. Fuck, I hated them. Purists. Egotistical nut-jobs who believed that they were only supernatural beings who had the right to exist. We would sometimes come across a group of witches and warlocks who hunted down other supernaturals for sports or experiments. They were just as nasty as the Hunters who plagued our pack.
"I had to keep Nathan's parentage a secret from him and prayed to the gods above that he'd inherit my magic." Nathaniel scoffed at her words. Ouch, that must have hurt his wolf's ego. "When Nathan reached the age of six, the gods, it seemed, had answered my prayers and he started showing signs he had magic, stronger than most of his age.
"My father soon forgot about his anger and took my son under his wings. At nine, my father announced Nathan as his successor, but only three years later my father wanted to exterminate him."
"Why?" I chipped in. "What changed?"
She turned to me and said, "Nathan shifted into his werewolf form."
Before I could ask her another question, my father beat me to it. "That's not possible. If your son's a warlock, he can't be a werewolf as well."
"Don't be foolish, dear," the Supreme sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically. "It has happened before, but it's very rare. Nathan's a hybrid."
That would have explained how he knocked the wind out of my father's lungs with one blow. If Nathan grew up in a pack, he'd never stand a chance against my father, but being a Grayback gave him a power boost. Still, they were on equal footing, power-wise. But mixing in his warlock blood gave Nathan the power to overshadow my father. If the fight had continued, I doubted that my father would have won.
"We should think twice when we pick a fight with him." Bane's words echoed in my mind. "He could tenderize our ass while barbequing it at the same time."
I had to choke down a snort at Bane's joke.
"Who said I was joking?"
His words rang true. I shuddered at the thought of what he could do to us if we pissed him off. My eyes shot toward the stairs. Nathan's been quiet for a while now, and I was getting worried. If he was a hybrid, then why was he scared? He had the power to defend himself and his family.
"Why is he afraid?" I blurted out. "Is he afraid of Nathaniel rejecting him or something?" It was more than likely. No child wanted to be rejected by their parents.
His mother sighed and shook her head. "No, it's not that... maybe a little. Ever since Nathan's stepfather died, he's been blaming himself for his death, isolating and cutting off ties to anyone who was close to him."
"He's afraid that his grandfather will get to him through them?"
Victoria nodded. "He's also afraid of losing the people he cares for." She turned to her young daughter on the couch, who was still asleep. How was that even possible? She must be a heavy sleeper. Her mother started stroking her rosy cheek. "Nathan loved his stepfather. Jacob taught Nathan how to shift, hunt, fight, and how to tame his wolf—"
Nathaniel shot up from his couch and whisper-yelled, trying not to wake the child; however, I suspected that not even the shriek of a banshee could wake her. "I should have been the one to teach him! He's my son!"
Victoria's eyes narrowed on him as he paced around the living room. "I had no choice! I couldn't risk involving the pack. At first, I kept my distance, but when my resolve wavered, I nearly led them straight toward you. But I was lucky. I caught wind of a few of my father's lackeys who tailed me." She wiped a few tears off her cheek. "I learned my lesson and stayed away from all of my friends and family. Leading them into an ambush, I killed them and then fled into hiding again. I couldn't risk my son's life any further."
"We could have protected you three," Nathaniel countered angrily.
"Or got your pack utterly destroyed. Look at what happened to the Highlands pack. We tried to take shelter in Jacob's previous pack, but my father used them against us. Jacob ended up dead, betrayed by those who were once his brothers."
My father huffed and said, "We're not cowards. We would never betray one of our own."
"Not intentionally, but my father threatened to kill off the pack if they didn't comply with his wishes." She snickered, shaking her head. "And he did... after they played their part."
Her words stabbed into my spine. After their betrayal, they still died. Served them right. It would have been more appropriate for them to die standing defiantly before their oppressor than to bark at his heels like a common pet.
"That's why he hates packs." Bane paced inside my head. "The dirty mutts betrayed them and killed his stepfather."
"Fuck!" I rubbed my stinging eyes. The night was getting way too long. "I would also be fearful of packs if they killed someone I loved. Bane, how do we make him see that we're not like them?"
"Don't know... but let's take it one paw at a time."
"What do you mean?" I wondered what Bane was getting at.
"Let's be the person he can depend on."
His idea was as shitty as I thought it would be. "Good thinking."
Bane scoffed and said sarcastically, "Thanks for the support."
I rose from my chair and headed toward the stairs. Before I could reach the railing, a hand stopped me.
"Where are you going?" asked Nathan's mother.
"I'm heading up to check on Nathan," I replied.
Nobody was going to stop me. I needed to be there for him, even though he didn't want to get too close to anyone. I needed him to understand that he couldn't continue living like this, being afraid for the rest of his life — alone and lost. It was no longer his battle alone. If his grandfather wanted to kill him, he had to come through me.
Her eyes softened on me, and then she wrapped me in a hug. "Thank you, Adam, for caring about him."
She let go of me and then returned to her daughter. I grabbed onto the wooden railing and ascended the staircase.