Ravensong (Green Creek 2)

It obviously pained her to say, “Of course,” but I couldn’t find a fuck left to give. “That being said, I stand by my inquiry.”

“Which is?”

“Robert Livingstone.”

Mark squeezed my hand. I thought my bones would break.

“We know he was working with Richard,” she said, “though the question still remains in what capacity. If he was working for Richard, or if—”

“He wouldn’t have.”

Everyone turned to stare at me.

I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

Michelle was smiling again. “What’s that now, witch?”

I cleared my throat. “He wouldn’t have been working for Richard. He would have loathed the wolves.”

“How do you know that?” Ox asked. “You told me he—”

“My mother. She… hated. This life. Pack and wolves and magic.” They lied, she said, they used, they didn’t love. “She wanted to take me away from it. My father wouldn’t let her. I think, in the end, he was altering her memories somehow.” I shrugged. “And then she found out about… his tether. How it was another woman. My mother killed her. My father killed my mother, and more. It was my mother’s last act. The only way she could get revenge against him for all that he’d done. He couldn’t handle the loss, so he…. And then to have you all take his magic from him. To have his own brethren strip him of his magic under orders from wolves, well. He would have hated them. You. So, no. He wasn’t working for Richard. If anything, Richard was working for him, though he wouldn’t have known it. I wouldn’t be surprised if my father let Richard think he was in charge. But Richard was nothing but a puppet. A weapon my father would have used in order to take out as many of us as he could. He wouldn’t have cared about Richard wanting to become an Alpha. My father used Richard.”

“And how do you know all this?” Michelle asked, leaning forward on her desk. She had a glint in her eyes that I didn’t understand.

I said, “I’m my father’s son. And had it been me in his place, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.”

MARK SAID, “You’re wrong.”

I blew smoke out my nose. The porch light was off, and I could barely make him out in the dark. The air was cool, and the leaves swayed in the trees. It was cloudy now, and it smelled like rain. He hadn’t come from inside the house. After the meeting with Michelle had ended, he’d been one of the first out of the room, not looking back. I didn’t blame him. There wasn’t much to look back to.

I grunted at him, ashing the butt into my hand. Sparks burned against my palm, the pain like little pinpricks of light that reminded me I was alive.

“You’re wrong.”

“About?”

“That you would have done the same.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“What do you want, Mark?”

“I don’t know how you can’t see it.”

“See what?”

He said, “That you’re nothing like him. You never have been. You came from him, but he didn’t shape who you are. We did that. Your pack.”

“The pack.” I snorted in derision. “Which pack, Mark? The one I have now? Or the one that abandoned me here?”

“I never wanted—”

I was suddenly very tired. “Go away, Mark. I don’t want to do this right now.”

The bitterness was sharp and pungent. “Like that’s a surprise.”