Page 98 of The Alpha's Seer

“Why do you think?” I hiss.

He chuckles. “You don’t know pain.” His eye focuses on something behind me, but there’s only the stone wall. He’s somewhere else, I realize. “But I do.”

I wish he’d spit it out and put me out of my misery. I can’t think of a single thing my mother could’ve done to make him this twisted. I study his burns like they’re going to tell me the truth, but then I frown. He hates my mother, and the only people I’ve ever heard of that had any reason to hate her are from the pack that took her.

Chills run through me. “Were you there when my mother was taken? Were you part of it?”

He must have been. Oh my God, I’m reliving my mother’s experience. I’ve been kidnapped by the same pack?—

“Part of it?” Faolan snaps. “I was her firstborn.”

Time freezes, and the icicles nip at my skin as my brain tries to process what he’s saying.

“Not that she ever treated me as such,” he continues bitterly. “I was unwanted.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper hoarsely. “You’re my…”

I can’t say it.

Because even if what he is saying is true, there’s no way in this world or any other I’m referring to him as my brother.

“Brother? Yeah, the outcast. The exiled.”

Air leaves my lungs as rapidly as it enters, and I begin to tremble. There’s no way. “You’re lying.”

Hehasto be lying.

“Am I? Your mother was brought to our pack for our Alpha—my father. He got her pregnant, but she hated me as much as she hated him—she was an ungrateful little bitch.”

Stars spark in my vision, and I realize I’m not breathing.

“She wanted to gohome,” he says bitterly. “But my father wanted a family.”

“Your father was a rapist and a kidnapper,” I bite out, knowing full well how he will react.

He doesn’t disappoint.

His fist slams into my nose, causing the pressure in my skull to become unbearable; blood gushes into my mouth from my nose, and my eye and cheek scream in agony.

But I don’t care. “You don’t like the truth, do you?” I rest my throbbing head on the stone wall, bracing myself for more. But I can’t sit here and allow him to do this. To tell the story—my mother’s story—in a web of bullshit.

I refuse. Hot anger prickles my skin, and I glare at him through my one good eye.

Eye to eye, literally.

“You don’t know the truth, you stupid bitch!” he roars, skin flapping. “Youonly know what I’ve told you.”

I shake my head. “So? I know my mother was a Seer. Look at us now—the only reason I am here is because I’m a Seer! Look how history repeats itself!”

He continues to glare at me, his chest rising and dropping.

“You are raping women and making them have your children,” I say, spitting blood onto the ground. “You’re a monster, like your father.”

“I’mcreating the ultimate pack,” he sneers. “You have a place as the Seer—you should be fuckinggrateful.”

The ultimate pack?That’s what he thinks he’s doing? My brain aches with the weight of this knowledge.All of this…to create a pack?

“The most powerful pack the world has ever seen,” he continues, relaxing slightly. “A pack infused with magic and the strongest warriors.”