Page 39 of Snag (Conduit #2)

“Please tell me,” I finally ask in a whisper, my throat still clogged, my chest tight. “I understand it might be difficult, but —”

“It’s not,” the Outcast says gently. “Though I take it your aunt passed almost four weeks ago?”

“Yes. How did you …”

I glance at the cane and think about the diminished feeling hovering about the Outcast despite his robust ties to his pack.

I think about discovering my aunt’s chosen. All dead. I even vaguely remember Rath grilling me about why I assumed Ingrid had a heart attack .

“Have you found Devlin?” The Outcast glances at Rath and Rought, both still rooted in their chairs, food forgotten.

“No,” I say. “But it appears that all of my aunt’s chosen died with her. As best we can assess the timeline.”

He hums, a quiet knowing mixed with a hint of grief. “I only survived due to the pack ties.”

Something about that hum, about the shift in his energy, or maybe even the shift in our dynamic, puts me on edge. “Your bond wasn’t as severed as you thought.”

“Perhaps the universe intervened,” he says coolly.

“In which event?” I ask mockingly, not quite understanding my own mounting ire. But it cuts through all the overwhelming disconcertion, so I cling to it. “My aunt’s death or saving you from following her into the After?”

The Outcast’s fingers curl into a fist. His hand is still resting over the photograph on the table. His previous reverence was a ploy, maybe. To make me feel welcome? Or a hollow attempt to renew our association — the motorcycle club and the Conduit, living in such close proximity.

But I am not my aunt. I’m not the Outcast’s rejected mate.

Beside me, Rought shifts in his chair, firmly planting his feet and leaving space between him and the table.

Rath narrows his eyes at his uncle, shoulders angling toward him.

I don’t drop the Outcast’s gaze. I refuse to cede any ground, any energy to this male with all his fucking secrets. All his lies to his nephews, by omission or otherwise.

Or at least I won’t cede any more ground than I already have.

The Outcast huffs out a breath that’s not quite a laugh. Then he relaxes, just a little. “I forget,” he murmurs as if speaking to himself, his gaze once again on the photo partially hidden under his now-splayed fingers. “What it is like to sit across the table from …”

He catches himself before completing the thought.

I don’t let it go, though.

“I’m not my aunt,” I say. All the mysteries that aren’t my purview, all the places I should be focusing my attention, and I can’t let this go. There’s some connection in all of this, something to do with my aunt’s untimely demise and my still … disjointed … acceptance of the Conduit powers.

“You’ve got your mother’s charisma and the general shape of her face. But otherwise, you are so very much of your father’s bloodline,” the Outcast says.

Every word is a challenge, pressing me into, containing me within, the role he’s granting me and allowing nothing more. Especially the deliberate mention of my father’s bloodline. The suggestion that he knew, that he knows, either of my parents well enough to see them in me.

I lean slightly forward. “I’m not some child in pigtails playing on the beach anymore. I don’t even remember that girl. I’m the fucking Conduit. You will treat me accordingly.”

“Or what?” he asks almost gently, but with a mocking twist to his lips. “Do you think my nephews will allow you to strike at me?”

“What the fuck is happening here?” Rath slams his hand on the table before I can escalate the situation. The dishes and glasses all jump a half inch, sloshing my apple juice everywhere. “We need answers, not pissing contests.”

“I am not beholden to you,” the Outcast says, barely glancing at his nephew. “I owe you no answers. My past is not for your purview. For you to question, to tear apart. ”

Rought jumps up from the table. “You’re bonded to my fucking mother! Does she know you were soul bound to Disa?”

“And you fucking lied to us about Zaya,” Rath says, quietly malevolent. “You knew, you had to fucking know. Even with the three of us in the fucking hospital, you always have eyes on the estate. You let us believe she was dead.”

Those repeated accusations fall around the Outcast, now stone faced. His hand on the table, over the photo, clenches again.

I let the silence linger, the sound of Rought’s and Rath’s breathing heavy within it, as I click together a few more of the clues. My sharpened ire is making it easier to focus.

“On top of bonding with anyone who’s not your crux, or having biological children outside that bond group, it should also be nearly impossible for soul-bound mates to murder each other,” I say. “That little complication must have been in the book you just read, right, Rath?”

Rath shakes his head, not in denial, but trying to focus on my words rather than giving in to his obvious need to lunge across the table and throttle his uncle.

The Outcast’s gaze — hard and rimmed with all the immense power at his command — flicks to me and holds there.

“It wasn’t my aunt,” I say, already knowing that truth, at least. “You said she rejected you. If she’d been the one to murder your brother Ward, whose ashes she secretly interred in the family mausoleum, then why not kill you and Oso as well?

That would have severed her bond to you much more efficiently. ”

Tension etches across the Outcast’ s face.

I’m not sure that Rought or Rath are breathing anymore.

We’re all poised on the edge of these secrets, ready to slash and rend.

“Did you kill me as well?” I ask, even though I’m not at all certain I want that answer.

“Did you take the dire-wrought sacrificial knife my aunt interred with Ward’s ashes and that picture …

” I nod toward the photo still pressed under the Outcast’s fisted hand.

“Did you steal my childhood and my soul-bound mates from me?”

Rought stifles a moan, abruptly settling back in the chair next to me. His hand falls gently on my thigh, only half hidden under the table.

“No, Tempest,” Rath whispers mournfully. “Whatever else our uncle has done, he didn’t take you from us.”

“Is that what happened that night?” The Outcast’s voice rasps with barely contained emotion. “He used the knife?”

“No,” Rath says definitively— but with no elaboration.

But I know now, just from voicing those simple questions …

I know what my mates are trying to … not keep from me, but spare me from. Until I’m ready to know the truth of my first death. The death that cost me all of them.

I focus on the current secret I’m trying to untangle. I’m tired of getting constantly sidetracked by outside influences. “Oso killed Ward, and Disa banished both of you for it.”

“There was no definitive proof,” the Outcast insists. Sounding like someone who just can’t believe that his brother killed his other soul-bonded brother.

“You think,” I say almost gently, “that the Conduit didn’t know who killed her own soul-bound mate? You think she didn’t feel a section of her soul rip asunder? And if Oso would murder his own brother … for what? Jealousy? Or did he think that would consolidate the power shared between you three?”

“That’s not how it works …” Rath murmurs.

“I cannot speak to my brother’s mind,” the Outcast says, getting testy again. I doubt anyone ever challenges him, at least not in public. “I can only —”

“You think living without your three universe-gifted mates is easy?” I really don’t want to hear his justifications.

“You think she didn’t spend every day feeling disjointed?

As if every time she died, parts of her weren’t put back in place properly?

That she didn’t constantly feel as if she was walking the earth on a slightly different level than everyone else, destined to see all, but never to truly connect with anything, anyone? ”

I’m shaking now, tears rolling down my cheeks.

And I know. I know I’m not talking about my aunt anymore. The parallels between us are too much to ignore.

The Outcast takes a shuddering breath. “Disa took Ingrid as her chosen within a month. Mack within six months. She even took Grinder for a spin a few years later.”

I laugh, so harshly that it physically hurts.

“And that makes her the villain in your story? That she needed the support? She couldn’t trust either of you, could she?

Who else would have had the power to harm the soul-bound mate of the fucking Conduit except you or your brother?

And that dire-wrought knife? You think those are just an easy purchase from any corner store?

Ward’s murder was premeditated. You were likely next.

And when Oso realized that the deaths of his soul-bound brothers didn’t come with a power boost?

What then? Murder my aunt? Try to take her power, claim the intersection point? ”

“I don’t know,” the Outcast says, anger and grief edging his words. “She banished me. But I stayed as close as I could. I built the Outcast MC to fortify her borders.”

“And that’s just sad,” I say, spite now pouring out from my sundered soul. “Pathetic, really. The Conduit doesn’t need protection, she needs —”

“I won’t have some child question decisions made before she was even fucking born!”

The Outcast slams his fist down on the table, standing in the same motion. Energy, his power, explodes through the room, shoving dishes, cutlery, chairs, and Rought and Rath all away. The two of them tumble back in a mess of limbs amid flying shards of wood and porcelain.

The table partially shatters under the blow, falling to pieces at the Outcast’s feet. The photo gets lost in the destruction.

The Outcast stares at me where I still sit, disbelief swiftly overtaking his anger.

Not a single iota of his power tantrum has touched me.