Beyond the Grasslands (Mirage Islands Mates #2)

10. Secrets Revealed

Chapter 10

Secrets Revealed

THORIN

I waited until Nika appeared thoroughly worn out by the day’s activities and then had Janella brought to the office to come gather her friend.

“You’re not done, though.” Nika’s instance was part of what I had grown to love about her. She didn’t want me to work harder than she did.

“You might be fully recovered physically, but you still need plenty of rest, especially since you haven’t been eating well during your recovery. I want you and Janella to go run for a bit and catch a rabbit or something to supplement what you haven’t been eating.”

Janella smiled at me for the first time since she had come to the pack with Nika. “That sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ve wanted to stretch my paws, but was afraid to do it without someone I trusted with me.”

“Oh, Janella, why didn’t you say something sooner?” The concern in my mate’s tone made me ache for both of them.

“You had enough to handle, but now that you’re better, I think it would be nice to take Thorin’s advice.”

“Where will you be?” Nika asked. I noticed her trepidation and figured she was worried that I would want to shift and come with them. It was one thing to find my wolf asleep with her, it was another to go running in the wild with him. Even I was wise enough to understand.

“I have some more interrogations to get through, especially after what you revealed for me.”

Nika nodded and turned to go, but then seemed to think better of it and turned back to me. “I want to know what happens with those interrogations, especially before any judgements are cast.” I gave her a nod of agreement and then the two women took off.

Warren stood off to the side and I wanted more than anything to have him follow them and keep them safe, but I also needed him at my side as we questioned pack mates who had gone against my mate, possibly my past potential mate, and my own father as well.

“I can send Alex to look after them. He seems to be popular and well liked amongst the women who came back from Mirage Island.”

I nodded and he immediately used the pack link to have Alex go look out for the two women. When he was done, I groaned and looked at my best friend with regret. “You should have already gone to Mirage Island to see if you have a mate there as well.”

Warren shrugged his shoulders. “Fate hands us what we’re meant to have. If I haven’t gone to the island yet, it probably means my mate is not there.”

“I wish I had your faith in the gods and fate. As of late, I wonder if they’re all just playing a big game with us and we keep obliging instead of questioning things.”

“Would you turn away Nika as a mate?”

“Never. She’s perfect.”

“Okay, then maybe the gods do know what they’re doing.”

I punched the fucker in the arm and waited for him to join me in the hall, so I could lock my office up. It wasn’t something I used to do, but after seeing how much treachery had gone on within my own pack, I no longer felt secure leaving things to chance.

There was a contractor coming from one of the human towns to set up a security system for me. He knew of our kind, so it wouldn’t be alarming if he saw a wolf run by while he was on our land. Having cameras and security set up might feel invasive to some, but I wanted to be sure that there were certain places within the pack that were off limits to others. My office and my suite of rooms were among them.

I had valuable information stored there, but more importantly, there was my mate to protect. After what happened before, it seemed imperative to make sure she was protected. I made a mental note to add cameras to the kitchen as well.

“Any word on my cousin?”

Warren shook his head. That was worrisome. They’d been even closer friends than we were as we were growing up because I was always in my father’s shadow as I learned to be an Alpha while they had more time to go do things most pups enjoyed when growing up in a thriving pack. I had moments where I was able to fuck around and have fun too, but they definitely had more time to spare, and as a result they grew closer to one another.

It wasn’t until my father passed, and I took over the pack, that Warren and I grew closer. It was around that time that my cousin started to grow more distant as well. It had only been in the past year that he stopped coming home as much though. In the past six months, he had started to ignore direct orders from me. I never gave him a full-on Alpha order, because it shouldn’t have been necessary, but I started to wonder if I’d been too lenient with him. Then again, there had been so much going on over the past year that it was partially my fault that my cousin had slipped through the cracks.

“Nika told me that the day she was attacked and kidnapped, she felt funny.”

“Funny?” Warren questioned.

“She said it felt as though someone had slipped a tranquilizer of some sort in her food or drink. She was off balance and out of sorts when Miriam attacked her.”

Warren gave a thoughtful nod and stared off toward the door we would go through to get down beneath the pack house and to the cells kept to house rogues that needed to be questioned. At least, that was what they had been used for previously. They were filled with our own pack mates of late and that made me angry all over again.

“Something is going on.” I lowered my voice before we opened the door to descend the steps. “Nika shared her idea that something else is going on, maybe a power grab for someone. She asked who stood to gain the Alpha position if I was taken out of contention.”

“That would be Vik.” Warren scrunched his face up and then heaved out a deep sigh. “If you had mentioned that a year ago, I would have vehemently denied the possibility of Vik being behind a coup to take over the pack.”

“His behavior lends credence to the theory, though.” Warren gave a quick nod of agreement. “Hell, if he wanted that badly, he could have challenged me for it when my father died.”

“We both know he wouldn’t have won. Vik was never meant to be Alpha, and I never thought he had any designs on the position. He always pitied you a bit when we were able to go fuck around while you had more to learn from your father.”

“People change, I guess. Nika had another theory about Vik.”

“If she were any other person, and you continued to offer up their theories, I would think you’d been snowed over.”

“But?” I asked, knowing there was more to what my Beta wanted to say.

“But, I trust and respect her. Nika has a sharp eye and wonderful intuition. If she thinks there’s something about Vik we need to pay attention to, then let’s hear it.”

“She thinks there may be another involved.”

Warren’s brows rose nearly to his hairline. “What does she mean by ‘other woman’? That would entail that there was a main woman to begin with.”

I nodded my head and opened the door to go down into the cells. “Janella and Vik seem to be moon-blessed. Janella has nearly confirmed it with some of the things she has said about him, but Vik refuses to have anything to do with her.”

“That’s strange as fuck, considering I wouldn’t think he would be too keen to repeat mistakes that almost cost you your mate. Although, he hasn’t been around lately, so he doesn’t know about Bethany either.”

“Or maybe he does know,” I muttered.

“No way. I might believe he has a woman somewhere. In fact, that sounds entirely plausible and explains his recent behavior. I don’t think Vik has it in him to outright murder an innocent woman, or even be in on a plot like that.”

“Fuck if I know what anyone is capable of anymore.” I growled in frustration as we hit the secondary set of doors at the bottom of the stairs. This portion of the pack house was soundproofed, much like the office, so we would have to put a pin in our conversation and come back to it later. I hoped that we would have enough information by then to get to the bottom of everything. It was my greatest hope that we would be able to exonerate my cousin from the possibility of being in collusion with Miriam and her cohorts, but that remained to be seen.

Miriam’s smug smirk and narrowed eyes stirred something in my blood. It called out for vengeance, but that would have to wait until we could claw the truth out of her. “You think you have the upper hand?”

“I know I do. It’s hard to be wrong when you have a goddess on your side.”

“You think Selene sanctioned everything you’ve done.”

Miriam spat at my feet. “She is a false Goddess. Selene is nothing more than a bottom-feeder who attempts to play cupid and fails more than she succeeds.”

“Is that so?” I asked. Miriam narrowed her eyes impossibly lower.

“You think this is all a game. We’re supposed to meet the one the gods chose for us and live out some crazy happily ever after, but if that was the case, then why are we always at war with other packs?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Miriam? We haven’t even been involved in a pack war in two generations.”

“Only because She watches over us. Only She can offer us that peace. Your Selene is nothing compared to her.”

“Someone ate too many of those human fruit loops,” Warren commented.

“Uh huh,” I murmured. “And you think you’re special enough that a Goddess has come to you, told you her plans, and you’re what?” I chuckled. “Let me guess, Miriam… You think you’re her warrior put in our pack to set some great misdeed to rights?”

“I am the misdeed!” Miriam shouted. “Johann was mine to start with. He was always meant to be mine!” Spittle flew from the woman’s mouth as the shock of what she implied landed right in my gut. A flash of my mother, suffering with a pain no one could pinpoint came to mind. Miriam laughed. “Yeah, you finally understand. “Your father and I were together for years before that whore you call your mother came along and enticed him away from me with the lure of the moon-blessed union.”

She spat again. “She was never supposed to find him. The Goddess told me that she would never reach the pack, but something happened to distract her and the whore got in, and then she pulled my love away from me.”

“My father was faithful to my mother.” It was a statement, but also a demand. I needed to hear that he was the man I always thought him to be.

Miriam cackled. “Yeah, he tried to be. After you were no longer underfoot, it became easier to win him back to my side. I’m sure you noticed how sick that bitch got.”

I pushed forward and wrapped my hand around Miriam’s throat. “Lies!” I spat in her face. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, since my tight grip didn’t allow much movement. She told no lies. I could smell the truth of her words in the air around us.

“Ease up, or we’ll never get to the bottom of this,” Warren commanded as he placed his hand over mine that was wrapped around Miriam’s throat.

I did as he asked and stepped back out of reach. “You will answer every question asked of you by Warren or myself with complete honesty!” The Alpha order caused Miriam to flinch as if she’d been slapped. Truthfully, I put enough force behind the command to make it hurt when it landed, so that wasn’t too far off base.

“After Johann Greywolf met his moon-blessed mate, when was the first time you were intimate with him?”

Miriam laughed. “The first time was the year Thorin was born.”

“What the fuck?” I yelled as the bitch laughed. It was true. She didn’t tell a lie.

“Was Catalina his daughter?” Warren asked and I felt sick to my stomach at the thought that she might be my half sister.

Miriam shook her head. “No. She was the spawn of my idiot mate. She could have redeemed herself, but she refused to dupe her perfect Thorin.”

That was something at least.

“Did you remain intimate with Johann from that point on?”

“No, that whore caught on to what the pains meant and forced him to cut me off.”

There was no way. No fucking way that my father cheated on his mate - my mother - and they stayed together and even seemed happy to everyone who encountered them. There was no way they could have fooled our entire pack and me. How could they have lied to me?

“Were you ever intimate with Johann again?”

Miriam’s grin nearly sent me into a homicidal rage. “Of course. Why do you think his whore of a mother started to get so sick? That pain no one could pinpoint, it was all thanks to me.”

My mother had been sick for nearly a year, maybe longer. It was in the last six months before my father died that she couldn’t handle the pain anymore and we all started to notice the way she seemed to waste away before our eyes. How could my father do that to her? How could he do it for this evil woman? Nothing made sense.

“Did someone drug Nika the day she was attacked?”

Miriam narrowed her eyes and we could both see that she attempted to fight the Alpha command. “Yes.” The one word was a rough snarl as Miriam attempted to clench her teeth together to hold it back.

“Who was responsible for drugging Nika?” I added a little oomph of Alpha command to the question. It wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t want Miriam to feel as though she had any chance to fight the command.

“Alicia.” I could feel Warren’s eyes on me. Hope for my cousin not being involved dwindled as Miriam accused his mother of being the one to poison my mate.

“Was Alicia involved in the death of Bethany Winslow?”

Miriam’s smile grew and her confidence hit a peak as well. “Clever boy. You finally decided to listen and learn. Yes, Alicia was involved in the death of Bethany.” There it was. Confirmation that my first moon-blessed mate had indeed been killed by my own pack members, my family at that.

“Were you involved with the murder of my father, Johann Greywolf?” I asked.

“Yes!” She yelled hysterically. “He was going to leave me for that whore again. He planned to excommunicate us from the pack. The hindrance to his plan was your love for my daughter.” Miriam laughed then. “Catalina wanted no parts of my plans. She didn’t know about the worst of them, but she was well aware that our Alpha crawled into my bed at night. Your father commanded both my mate and daughter to keep our secret.”

If my mother withered away under the affair my father had, then that explained a lot about the constant state of ill-health that always befell Catalina’s father. I wondered how it was possible to miss so much that went on right before my eyes.

“Is Viktor a part of this?” Miriam glared at me and nodded her head, but there was something wrong about the feeling that left in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t believe her. “Is Viktor knowingly a part of this plot to overthrow the pack?”

“He’s too stupid to know what’s going on around him. A lot like his cousin, I think.” Miriam cackled again then and threw her head back to project her voice out further. If the walls weren’t soundproofed to prevent other prisoners from communicating with Miriam, then her laughter would have echoed along the walls of the room and the cave-like chamber beyond.

I turned to leave and Warren watched my back as I did so. “You will never bring us down. There are too many of us. She is too powerful for you.”

“We’ll see about that.” The minute I walked out of the cell with Warren behind me, we slammed the door shut and our eyes met.

“How much do you want to bet that Nika’s instincts were dead on and the woman Vik is so enraptured with is part of this whole thing?” Warren asked.

“I’m beginning to think the woman he is ditching us for is at the heart of this thing. Something about the way that woman squirmed when Vik was mentioned directly made me uneasy. I’m not so sure my cousin is a willing participant in anything at this point.”

“She said he didn’t know.”

“If a so-called Goddess is behind this, then that would explain why Vik is so enthralled with her that he would forsake the one relationship he coveted having.”

“He rejected Janella?”

“I believe he may have. We need to speak to her before we do anything else. Whether she’s ready to talk or not, we need to get the truth of what happened between them.”

As soon as we made our way up the stairs, Alex mind-linked with me. ‘ Nika and Janella, rogue attack, north border.’

Warren and I took off out of the pack house and the minute we my feet hit the grass outside, I shifted mid-run into my wolf and headed north toward my mate.