My father had said Leah was poisoned by wolfsbane and needed my heart as the cure. My mother chose the most final path.
To keep me safe, she sealed all her assets with my bloodline before she died, binding them with a blood oath. “As long as Irene is
alive, none of this will fall into anyone else’s hands.”
My father was enraged. The very next day, he sent Rhys and me to a correctional facility. That place was designed to break young
werewolves–to strip them of their will and shatter their claws and fangs.
If I hadn’t fought desperately to escape, taking evidence with me to threaten him with exposure to the enforcers, he would have tortured us to death. Later, when he discovered he had lost his ability to reproduce, he finally stopped persecuting Rhys, his only
remaining son,
1/2
But he was utterly incompetent at managing wealth. In just over a decade, he squandered everything. His mind remained fixated
on my mother’s sealed bloodline inheritance.
Since they couldn’t kill me outright, they tried to bind me to a mate bond with a man who loved Leah–to have me bear an heir,
the fortune would naturally pass to them through my child. Leah had been sent to another pack as they hoped she could use her
beauty to seduce a wealthy Alpha.
But she ended up being used and discarded, her reputation in ruins.
She even lost her ability to bear children. So she lied, claiming she was poisoned by wolfsbane, tricking Anderson into marking
me, intending for me to bear children to fulfill her ambitions.
What they never expected was that Anderson would accidentally uncover their scheme. My friend told me that he went mad
searching for anyone who knew me after I disappeared six months ago.
He mauled Leah until she was covered in wounds. The scars on her face were so deep that they would never heal, even in death.
Maryanne and my father tried to have Anderson punished by the enforcers, but Anderson handed over all the evidence of my father’s years of illegal wolfsbane trafficking.
SO
As for the unauthorized excavation of the altar–that so–called proposal–my father had orchestrated that, too. He had colluded with the black market, disguising it as land development while secretly mining silver.
When the truth came to light, my father panicked and fled in the dead of night, abandoning Leah and Maryanne. Leah’s once- proud mother, who had gloated in front of my mother, woke up to find the house stripped bare.
A banishment seal from the pack was nailed to the front door. She howled in rage for an entire night, but it was useless.
