CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED & SIXTY SIX
Jason’s POV
Three days passed and there was still no word from Robin.
My father was not concerned while I was all nervous. I chewed on my nails while fidgeting in my chair. My father slammed his book down on the table and snapped, “Stop with that annoying tapping of your feet. You’re giving me a headache.”
“How can you be so calm?” I asked.
“Because I know Robin will not betray us. We have his daughter. He’d be even more of a fool if he believed I would not harm that girl if he disobeyed,” Father replied.
“But he has not reported whether the second attempt was a success. Something could’ve gone wrong,” I argued.
“He is being careful,” my father stated. “The palace will be on alert after the first attempt. He cannot afford to move quickly.”
“Or he has been caught.”
“Enough of your delusions,” my father snapped. “Robin will do what needs to be done.”
The following day Robin arrived. Robin looked like a man who had barely escaped death. He was thinner than the last time I had seen him and there was a bruise along the left side of his jaw that had gone yellow at the edges.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“I was interrogated,” Robin replied. “I told them nothing.”
“Good,” Father said. “Now, did everything go to plan?”
“The Alpha King is dead,” Robin answered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring that he offered to my father. “His ring. I took it from his hand myself.”
My father took the ring and examined it. He turned it in the light and went still. His serious expression morphed into a cruel
smile.
“Finally,” Robin said quietly as he closed his hand around the ring. He looked at Robin with something approaching warmth.” You have done well. I did not think you had it in you.”
“My daughter, where is she? You promised me. I have done everything you asked. I need to know she is safe and I need you to
release her,” Robin said.
My father glanced at me. The warmth that was there was not replaced with the usual cruelness. I felt my wolf tense within me.
“You have been enormously useful, Robin,” my father said as he leaned back in his chair. “But useful men become liabilities the moment their usefulness ends.”
‘Shit. Robin is dead meat,’ my wolf muttered,
“Kill him,” my father ordered.
I did not move. My father turned to look at me. “Did you hear what I said, boy?”
“Robin did what you asked him to do. Give him back his daughter and just let him go. He won’t betray us because it would implicate him too,” I argued.
My father snorted. “Your mercy will get us both killed. I should not have to explain to you that Robin is a liability. He is a thread that leads directly back to us.”
“He won’t betray us,” I said firmly.
+25 Bonus
“Enough! Your softness is what cost us Shadowclaw. It is what costs us every time we have come close and failed. I will not let it cost us again,” my father responded. “Kill him or I’ll kill you both.”
My wolf whined within me. “This is getting out of hand.’
As I moved toward Robin, the door went flying off the hinges. I dodged it as it slammed into the hall.
Nolan came through it first and Talia was directly behind him. Robin was between me and them. Before I could close the distance, Nolan had put himself in front of Robin. His punch landed square in the middle of my chest, sending me flying back. My father caught me before I hit the wall.
“I told you,” I snarled. “I told you something was wrong with this!” I had been right. It had been a trap from the beginning.
“Leave,” my father said to me as he pushed me away. His voice did not rise but the command was absolute. “Now. Go.”
“Father…”
“I will hold them off. Now, go!”
I ran through the back of the safehouse and into the tree line beyond it. I ran hard and kept to the shadows between the trees and let my wolf guide my footing in the dark. My shoulder ached as I had torn the stitches of my wound, but I let the pain drive me to
run faster.
Behind me I could hear nothing, which meant either my father had contained them or they were already past him and tracking me silently. Either way stopping was not an option.
I had covered perhaps a mile when my wolf made a sound, I had never heard from him before. It was not a howl. It was something lower and more broken, a sound of pure loss that I felt in my chest before I understood what it meant.
My father was dying.
Even though I feared my father, I still loved him. I turned around, ready to run back to save him when his voice filled my mind.
‘Keep running, Jason!’
‘Father, I…’
‘Do not look back, Jason. Don’t ever look back!’
Then, there was silence and I knew I would never hear my father’s voice again. I bit into my arm to muffle my scream of anguish. I had lost the last person that truly cared about me.
‘We have to go. They will be upon us soon,’ my wolf urged. I didn’t have to be told twice.
The Rogue King was expecting me, and I was going to finish what my father had started. I had a direction and I had a purpose and I had nothing left to lose.
That, at least, was something my father had always said made a truly dangerous man.
