“My father was a pack leader when I was a child but his people had died in flooding and mudslides that wiped out his town. A few, who were not relatives, took off to join other packs. Father was devastated, living like a mountain man for ten years with my mother, brother, sister, and me, until he felt the call of the pack and joined my mother’s reds. She was the pack leader’s daughter, and had fallen in love with my father at first sight. She tried to heal his inner self after the tragedy had struck his pack while we lived amongst her reds. But when her father died, a new and ruthless leader took over. Most of her pack fled, and Bruin’s flourished. Father had been injured in the mudslide, a spinal injury, the kind that can permanently damage a lupus garou. And so he was confined to a wheelchair. He couldn’t fight for the pack, but he stubbornly refused leaving the land that was his ancestors’.”
“Being a born leader is hard to give up,” Darien said, the fury quieting in his blood. But he couldn’t believe how her father would have cared more about the land than his own family.
“He challenged the leader, yet couldn’t lead. The natural disaster in his town hadn’t been his fault, yet until he died, he blamed himself. The pack leader’s brother wanted either my sister or me for a mate. We were descendents of the first leader lines of Wildhaven, and since our pack leader, Bruin, was already mated, his brother took Larissa for his own. Bruin figured it would get my father in line if he gave up one of his daughters. My father assumed my sister was the best choice because she was a lot more… even-tempered than me. He feared if Crassus bullied me, I’d attempt to kill him. And I tried, once.”
Darien opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “It was a foolhardy venture. Do you and your brothers have a… well, a connection?”
Darien frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“I could sense when Larissa’s emotions were out of control. When she was angry, or hurt, when she was terrified. We shared the ability to detect extreme emotions in the other. Every time Crassus beat her, if she was within a fifty-mile radius of where I was, I knew. Can you imagine knowing someone is beating your sibling half to death, and you can do nothing to stop him?”
Thor almighty, and he’d considered sending her back to her pack? He’d kill the bastard first. “Lelandi—”
“Four times, I allowed it. I told my father, but he could only speak to Bruin, who denied his brother’s cruelty. The fifth time I felt my sister’s pain, her emotions running from sheer terror to hating the bastard, I couldn’t allow it to go on any longer. But I wasn’t prepared to face him. I barged into their home and found my sister’s face bruised and battered. Sobbing, she looked up at me, her eyes filled with pain and horror. Horror because I’d be next to suffer the brute’s beatings. Jumping onto the bastard’s back when he took another swing at her, I yanked at his long hair and reached around and gouged his face. I tried to strangle him. But I don’t remember what happened afterward. A few days later, I woke to find myself at home in bed with a concussion, a broken arm, and collarbone.”
She lifted her eyes to Darien, but they weren’t filled with tears as he’d expected. Hatred burned brightly in the jade gems. And he couldn’t blame her. His blood craved revenge. No lupus garou would ever touch a woman like that in his pack and get away with it. She looked so vulnerable he wanted to pull her into his arms, and for a minute, he hesitated. If he attempted to console her, he feared she’d quit talking. And he needed to hear her whole story.
Hell, he couldn’t bear to look at her and not do something. He rose from his chair, and she looked ready to bolt. With a couple of lengthy strides, he crossed the floor and took her hand, then sat down beside her.
He wanted to embrace her hard, give her his strength because she looked so peaked, but her back remained rigid. He sat beside her on the leather love seat, opting to hold her hand instead.
“Tell me all of it, Lelandi.”
“She shouldn’t have suffered such cruelty at the hands of the beast. Crassus told me if my sister died, he’d take me for his own. I didn’t perceive the threat lightly. But my father didn’t believe Crassus would kill Larissa to have me.” She pulled away from Darien, her eyes sad as her gaze dropped to the floor. “For a couple of weeks, my sister seemed to tolerate the forced marriage. I think Bruin had told him to lay off because I was a witness, and he’d pummeled me so badly also. Like a sickness he couldn’t control, Crassus beat her again a week later, and she told me she had to find herself.”
Darien swore softly under his breath. He had meant to tell her pack where she was as a goodwill gesture, but now he had every intention of crushing the brute who’d made the women suffer.
“When I asked what she meant, she said, ‘You know, get a hobby or something.’ She meant to run away. I didn’t realize that until she’d been gone several weeks. Crassus hid the fact she’d run away, probably figuring he’d find her before anybody knew she had left him for good.”
“He won’t hurt you again, Lelandi. I promise. But if Bruin was your pack leader and Crassus was Larissa’s mate, who’s Leidolf?”
Lelandi’s eyes widened. “My brother. How did you learn about him?”
“Deputy Sheriff Smith from Green Valley said your leader was looking for you.”
“Leidolf’s a pack leader? Where?”
“Portland, Oregon.”
“Did you tell him I’m here?”
Darien shook his head. “No. I didn’t know who the hell he was.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want me to tell him?”
She hesitated. “He’ll want me to join his pack.”
Darien leaned back into the love seat. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She took a deep breath and toyed with the hem of the shirt, her fingers skimming her bare skin. “You might as well hear everything I’ve got to say about my pack. Bruin kept his pack in line and didn’t tolerate any rebellion. I feared he’d seek revenge against the rest of us when Larissa ran away. Then my father and mother died in a fiery car accident.”
“Murder.”
She gave a little hmpf. “No doubt.”
“But you received flowers from your parents.”
“Someone’s sick joke. Bruin kept me under guard, stating he would declare Larissa dead and have me mated to his brother. I received the letters from Larissa, one for me, and the other for you, and escaped the night before I was to be mated with Crassus, dropping the letter for you at the post office on my way out of Wildhaven.”
Darien threw Larissa’s letter to him onto the coffee table. Lelandi’s eyes lit on it. “Why the charade? Why did she claim to be you?”
“She was mated; I was not. She probably thought if she took my identity, no one would find out who she was, but if they did, they would discover Lelandi wasn’t mated. But she fell in love. You were obviously good to her when Crassus wasn’t. She wanted what others had, what our parents had had.”
He grunted. “She wasn’t in love with me. No bond existed between us. Now she’s dragged you into this mess.”
“Knowing my sister, she probably thought you’d want me like you wanted her. Then you could take care of me, and I’d be good for you.” Lelandi shrugged. “That’s what I figure anyway. She was more of a dreamer than me. I tend to be totally realistic.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re saying you and your sister didn’t cook this whole scheme up so you could be my newest mate.” After all that her sister had pulled, he didn’t know what to really think.
Lelandi stood up from the couch so suddenly she wavered a minute, but then her eyes glowed with fury and her face flushed. “You may think all women are after you, Darien Silver, you… you arrogant bastard. But I have no desire to mate with you or any other gray.”
She turned and stormed toward the door. Yanking it open, she gasped to see his brothers in the doorway, then shoved past them.
“Watch her, Tom.” Darien motioned for Jake to come in, grabbed the letter, and walked back to his desk.
Sitting in his chair, Darien still couldn’t believe his mate had been the daughter of leaders on both her mother’s and father’s sides of the family, a rare and highly prized quality in a mate. Which made him wonder why one of the pack members hadn’t already claimed Lelandi. He also considered the despicable possibility that the sisters’ parents had been murdered. One thing he knew, Lelandi wouldn’t be safe until he figured out who killed his mate. And Lelandi was his whether she believed she was his soul mate now or not. Plus, he would deal with this Crassus sooner or later. The bastard would come for Lelandi, if he assumed she’d be his mate. The red was a walking dead man. His pack leader brother, too, if he interfered.
Darien let out his breath in exasperation. “Did you check into the factory’s accounts, Jake?”
“Yep, like you suspected. Larissa was siphoning off money.”
“To pay a blackmailer.”
“Most likely.”
“How much?”
Jake pulled out a notepad and flipped to a page. “Nine-hundred and fifty-two dollars the first month.
Tried to make it look like a strange amount to fit in with some of the purchases for supplies in the tanning processes. A thousand, sixty-five the next month. Went up to eleven-hundred and some change. Each month it went up, until her death, and then the withdrawals stopped. Hosstene said your name was on the checks so she never considered anything was wrong with them.”
Darien shook his head.
“Can I see the letter?”
After passing it to his brother, he watched as Jake read it slowly.
“Do you think it’s just a matchmaking venture?” Jake asked.
“What with the attempts on Lelandi’s life? Nope.
Then we have the stalker in the copper-hooded jacket to consider. The blackmailer won’t want to get caught.