“At the risk of repeating myself—did you ask her?”
I grab a cookie and take a bite. It’s good.
“Is there a reason you’re busting my balls?” I say after swallowing. The crone laughs, and she comes to sit across from me. She breaks a cookie in half and begins nibbling.
“Besides entertainment value?” She leans back in her chair. “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine first.”
“Fine. Shoot.”
“What do you remember about your first shift?”
“Pain.” It’s a strange question, but I’ve been asked it before. I shifted at nine years old. That’s unheard of, and wolves are nosy.
“What else?”
“Blood. Screams. I thought I went blind for a while.”
“Do you remember what happened before the shift?”
“Not really. It was a normal day.”
“Do you remember after?”
“Nothing. It’s a big blank. Where are you going with this?”
She smiles and rests her hands on the table top. For an old woman’s, they’re smooth and straight. “I’m going to tell you a story. It’s also not my tale to tell, but—” She lifts a shoulder. “Rules are made to be broken, right?”
I disagree, but I nod anyway.
“It’s hard to know where to start.” She sighs.
“How about the beginning?”
“’Beginning’ is subjective, isn’t it?” She looks to me for a response, but philosophy is not my thing.
She sighs. “I guess I could start with a sunny day, a young male playing on the commons, waiting for his friend. Or the night sixteen months earlier when your father snuck into the Fane cabin to take what he felt was his due from his lieutenant’s mate? She was in heat after all. And Fane was at a fight in Moon Lake.”
“You’re talking about Thomas Fane.” That’s Mari’s father, the last male my father put down for moon madness.
“I am.” She eyes me like she expects something. Eventually, I guess when I don’t give her what she’s looking for, she leans to rest her elbows on the table. “I’ll start on the sunny day. Una and Rowan Bell were braiding daisy chains. Rowan was watching her baby cousin Mari. Rowan wanders off home to get a snack.”
She tilts her head. I can picture it, but it’s not in my memory.
“Thomas Fane was getting wasted at the lodge. He was listening to his alpha, your father, brag about his conquests.”
My father was a righteous prick. This isn’t news.
“The alpha’s son—” She waves a hand at me. “He was throwing a ball as high as he could and still catch it, waiting for a friend.”
“I was waiting for Tye.” I catch a glimpse. Hiking the hard old pigskin I’d found in the woods into the blue sky, frustrated to be kept waiting.
“Thomas Fane had enough. He cursed your father and left. Stumbled home. And on his way, he came across a little girl and a baby in a basket.”
My gut knots. My memory offers nothing, but my wolf is alert. On edge. Like he knows what’s coming.
“Fane staggered over and punted the baby’s basket.” The crone sneers in disgust. “He would have stomped his own child to death if not for Una Hayes. She put her little body between Thomas Fane’s wolf and that baby, and she nearly died. She would have.”
Abertha pins me with blazing eyes.
“Except?”
“Except for Killian Kelly. The alpha’s nine-year-old son. He raced to the rescue, and on his way, he shifted for the first time. His wolf was a beast. He rent Thomas Fane limb from limb. It took Declan Kelly and three enforcers to drag him away from the corpse.”
“Bullshit.” That’s the kind of story that gets told at every bonfire. I’ve never heard it before. And I sure as shit don’t remember it happening.
“If the pack knew you shifted before your heat, you’d have a target on your back. Your father knew this. The others wouldn’t wait for him to die to challenge you. And you might have a beast inside you, but in human form, you were seventy pounds soaking wet. Eamon or Dermot or anyone with ambition could’ve easily beat you so many times, no one would’ve looked at you and seen a possible alpha. You’d be out as a contender before you could grow a beard. So your father swore his enforcers to secrecy, and it was never spoken of again.”
“My father would have told me about it.”
“Would he?”
The kettle whistles. The crone rises to take it off the fire.