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Zack nodded but then took a breath as if he needed to say something. “Nearly four years ago, I met a girl, and she was…accepting.”

“Accepting?” Mo blurted out, then could have cut out his own tongue for his own impatience. “Of wolf shifters?”

“No, we would never tell someone we weren’t a hundred percent committed to.” Mo tried not to inhale a sharp breath and wondered if Zack realized what he’d just said. “People tend to be scared of me,” Zack admitted. “Girls especially.” Mo reached over and linked their fingers. Couldn’t they see how gentle he was? “Mattie’s mom was in her final year of college. Clever. She wanted to be a doctor. She’d gotten into the best schools. Then it seemed like she changed almost overnight. She was doing her finals, and I didn’t know at the time, but a so-called friend introduced her to pills to keep her awake so she could study more. Jessica was driven. She’d come from a poor background and everything she did had to be with a full scholarship.”

Zack hesitated. “I knew she wasn’t my mate, but we’d been seeing each other for months and she told me she had an implant.” He flushed. “Condoms aren’t so much a barrier for us. I didn’t see her for about two weeks while she had exams, but I’d texted her a few times. Sometimes I got a reply, sometimes not, but I knew she was busy and, like I said, she wasn’t my mate. Then another few days went past, and I got a text from her roommate to say Jessica had missed an exam. Her roomie was furious because Jessica had told her she was spending just about every night with me. When that obviously wasn’t the case, the school called her parents and then the cops. It was like she’d disappeared off the face of the earth, and she eventually became an official missing person. Fourteen months later, a local sheriff found her dead body—and Mattie. He was six months old but luckily the sheriff was a shifter so he smelled shifter in Mattie, which means he would have come to us anyway, but they found a letter she must have written to her parents and never mailed, saying Mattie was mine.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mo said.

Zack squeezed his hand. “Unfortunately, her mom had a stroke and died seven months earlier, and her dad remarried and moved away. I wrote to her dad via the cops and told him about Mattie, but he wasn’t interested. He blamed Jessica for her mom’s death and didn’t want anything to do with him.”

“His loss,” Mo said.

“Simpler,” Victor commented, which Mo understood, but it still seemed a bit callous.

“But it means my life isn’t simple. I—”

Mo couldn’t help it. He laughed. But because it could be taken the wrong way, he curled his fingers around Zack’s.

“I’m probably being hunted by some sort of mafia drug gang. It’s likely said gang is responsible for some child murders, and they also seem to want to kill me. My sister is missing, oh, and I’ve just found out that some people can turn into animals. Does that about sum things up?”

Victor glanced over at Zack, a smirk on his face. “Just about.”

Mo turned his head to Victor and waited. Zack followed his gaze, and Victor groaned. “Something tells me you don’t share,” Mo said.

Victor glanced at both of them and squirmed internally. No, he didn’t. His private business was just that, but something told him his little human mate wouldn’t let him get away with it. “Not so much, but briefly, I was born just north of Sacramento.” He paused. “I’m fifty-one.” Mo gazed at him in shock, and Victor wanted to run. Just go.

“Damn, shifters age well.”

Victor kept his gaze on Mo. He hardly breathed. “Does that bother you?”

Mo smirked. “No,Daddy.” And Mo seemed to take great delight as the bronze of Victor’s skin reddened. At least he assumed it did. His face was hot enough. Mo waved a hand to encourage Victor to continue. He might as well get it over with.

"My dad was…someone who thought he should be an alpha but was only capable of dominating those smaller and weaker than him. There was me, my older sister, my mama, and Dad. It was okay growing up because Dad was out at work all day, and he liked to go drinking with his buddies most nights. I got used to seeing the bruises on Mama, but with a typical child’s ignorance I accepted her explanations of being clumsy until I was around seven and then they suddenly started appearing on Cecily’s skin as well. By this time I was ten I was showing alpha traits.” Not that he dared show them to his dad, although he had a feeling the bully knew. He’d never hit Victor, and Victor would never be able to say if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Bad because he took his frustration out on Mama and Cecily, who couldn’t hit back.

Mo reached over and brushed a kiss on Victor’s cheek, and Victor stilled. He didn’t know what to make of any of this. He was used to being in charge. The only person he would ever submit to was Raschid, but he felt like he was baring his neck for both his mates. Was that what it was supposed to feel like? He saw the look Zack sent him, and something told him Zack was acknowledging the same thing.

“The pack was huge, and a lot of us lived more on the outskirts. Dad wasn’t one of the inner circle even though he wished he was. Then Dad got in trouble with one of the betas, and they basically fired him. He used to be in charge of the stores, but he was lazy and selfish, so I can imagine him screwing up, even stealing. He would have ended up working the pack farm, but it was like he couldn’t care. He spent all day eating food we didn’t have, drinking liquor we couldn’t afford and, like we said, it takes a lot of alcohol to have an effect. He barely shifted as well, and he kept sending me out to hunt when unsanctioned hunting wasn’t allowed, but if I didn’t go, he’d take it out on Cecily and Mama.”

Victor heard the tiny, distressed sound from his mate and stroked a gentle finger down Mo’s cheek. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

“Because we’re your mates,” Zack said. But was it that simple? Victor doubted it, but cocooned in this room, it seemed to be.

“Anyway, I was caught trying to take down a deer, and we’d been told because of the drought to leave them alone so they could repopulate, but I’d been out all day and the couple of turkeys I’d gotten wouldn’t have satisfied him, so I was desperate. The betas weren’t interested in anything I had to say and they forced me into the brig. I had to stay in overnight as punishment, which meant I didn’t turn up with any food.” Victor paused but pushed himself to continue.

“I could hear Cecily’s screams as I ran up to the house, and I heard them cut off as well. He was shifted, which shocked me as I ran in, and there was blood everywhere. Mama couldn’t shift very well. I never knew why, but basically because Dad hated her doing it. He wouldn’t shift, so he didn’t want anyone to be in a stronger position than him, and Cecily was a non-shifting omega. I’ll never know what happened for sure, because they were both dead, but I guessed he’d killed Mama first, then Cecily had seen, so he’d killed her.” He’d never forget. Never forget the smell, the sight…the sound of Cecily’s screams.

“One of the neighbors ran in, but he wasn’t strong enough to stop me.” His father had shifted back to try to say Mama had threatened him with a knife. He hadn’t even finished the sentence before Victor had ripped his throat out. He’d been twelve.

“The gammas came and took care of the bodies. Mama and Cecily had a moon ceremony. Dad was just dumped for the coyotes. One of the betas moved into our house with me, but the morning after the moon ceremony, I just left. I didn’t want anything to do with a pack that would let that happen.”

“And you ended up with Raschid’s?” It was Zack that asked this time.

Victor smiled ruefully. No idea how he’d even managed that. “Yeah. Took me a year, but one of Roxanne’s dad’s betas found me on their pack lands, and instead of throwing me out, took me home to meet his mom, who basically adopted me.”

Zack chuckled. “And I’m guessing that beta was Raschid?”

Victor nodded. He’d sworn undying loyalty to Raschid from that point on and never regretted it. Over the years, Raschid and his family had become Victor’s. He would give his life for theirs every time.