3.1 | Animal Instinct ✓

13 | haunt

1 3

h a u n t

THE SILENCE BETWEEN us was deafening. A shudder ripped through me as I stared at what Jed had written. "Malthus Trevino," I whispered at last. "That's your – "

– brother, he wrote, shoving the paper close to the photograph and drawing a haphazard arrow to link the word to the person in the picture. Then he drew another arrow pointing to the man on the left, and added – father. Claudius Trevino.

Realisation dawned on me. "The brown wolf. That was...that was the wolf you killed, wasn't he?"

The action was swift, but it was impossible to miss the way Jed flinched, his fingers curled tightly around the pen. He gave a fleeting nod, but looked so guilt-stricken that I felt my chest tighten as I watched him. So he'd killed his father. It was something I'd suspected all along, but I was also fast realising that in a situation like this, everyone's moral compasses seemed to be blurred.

"I'm not mad," I assured him softly, sliding my hand across the table and tilting it with my palm facing up. It took him several seconds to shift closer, his eyes darting up to scan my face intently before he finally skimmed his fingertips across my palm, letting his fingers intertwine with mine. I brushed my thumb gently across the side of his hand, before looking at him. "I've heard the other werewolves talk about your father. He clearly – wasn't doing a good job, judging by the way they speak of him. Is that why you wanted him gone?"

He nodded, even though his eyes fixed on me. I realised then that he'd braced himself for any disgust or condemnation, the kind he'd probably seen from anyone beyond Titan.

But I had none.

I'd always known that Jed had a complicated background, from the moment those rogues had accused him of killing his family, along with innocent women and children. But what if Jed had killed certain members of his family because it was necessary? Because they, not him, were the ones who had captured and killed the innocent?

"The dates." A sudden thought occurred to me and I dragged the list of missing women over. The dates were set in chronological order and I pointed to the first one. "That's dated back over fifty years ago. Your brother wasn't the first person who did this, was he? It was your father."

Jed lowered his head. Then he flipped over to a new sheet of paper and began writing:

I was sixteen when Claudius told me about the initiation. A rite of passage. I thought it was just the usual turning into werewolves. But he drove me several miles out to an abandoned warehouse. Showed me a room with two bound, naked and gagged women. Put a whip in my hands and told me I could do whatever I wanted with them. That's when I realised it wasn't an initiation. It was a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.

Malthus was in the same room. I could hear the screams of the girl he was torturing. I could hear him laughing. And I wanted to leave but couldn't, because Claudius was bolting the door shut. He wouldn't let me leave. He swore that this was how a young boy became a man. A man with Alpha-blood running through his veins, a man with power, a man with a legacy. His legacy.

This revelation shed light on a matter that had remained dark all this while. If I'd been scared of Malthus Trevino before, Claudius Trevino had to be far more terrifying, because he made monsters in his own image. And what happened when you didn't want to become one of the monsters?

Suddenly, I knew, and then I wasn't just terrified. All the memories came rushing back, all the pieces just slotted back into place, one after another. Why Jed never spoke. Why Jed lived in isolation. Why Jed avoided physical contact.