I’d gotten my wish. He was alive.
But this is wrong.
Because he stands there, imposing, a statue carved of ice and control. His eyes, my eyes, fix on me at our approach and for some reason this feels like a fucking trap.
A familiar urge to cower and stand down under his will fills me, seeps through my pores. The voices from the curse whisper a torrent of insults inside my head and come from every direction at once.
The pure torment of the symptoms would drive any sane person mad before the curse takes their sanity away from them.
I keep going, and stop with inches to spare between me and my dad.
He stands alone just inside the gate with the locks snapped shut and the guard houses dark and quiet.
My dad, and my alpha.
His gaze darts over my head toward the hunter, toward Grayson, once.
Through my periphery I study the fence and the stretch of boundary, all the bars between us.
Dad assesses me but finds no sign of the hunter’s wound. Is he upset I hadn’t been shot? Or that Grayson is still here?
I expect smugness and get nothing.
“Jrue told us everything,” Dad says, speaking first. “He knows about your secret. He knows you’re moonlocked.”
I lift my chin. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I rejected him. Did he tell you that part?”
A flash of fury lights Dad’s eyes. His expression darkens but he doesn’t storm forward. He doesn’t flinch.
“There’s no going back from this. Do you understand what you’ve done, Mandi? What I’ll have to dobecauseof this?”
Impatience edges his voice.
Once again, I’m a disappointment. Any spark of hope I might have harbored of this conversation going well, disappears.
Everything detonates at once.
Small bombs go off in my chest and I uncurl my fingers from the contract I’d grabbed, throwing it between the bars. It lands at his feet, a black-and-white grenade.
“Like there was any chance to go back after you sent a hunter after us. You want us dead.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“You sent a killer after us and it must be pretty embarrassing to see me alive and your hunter collared,” I say.
Tears don’t come. They threaten, sure, but they stay inside where they belong and allow me this moment.
The authority of my father’s posture has worked miracles for him in the past. He needs only turn to a member of the pack, no words necessary, and they rush to do his bidding.
I’ve done the same.
I’ve danced to his tune to hide my truth as long as I’ve been alive, and look where it’s gotten me?
“Moon-mad wolves are a threat,” he snaps. “They’re a disease spreading across the world and after what happened to our pack, you of all people should know how hard we have to fight to stay safe from them.”
“Grayson saved me.”
“He’s infected.”