“I was eight when I first saw them together. My mother didn’t know. She didn’t find out for years. And I was too young to do anything then. But when I was twelve, I got rid of the bitch, and Father never knew.”
Twelve. Two years younger than Morgan had been when he’d left home forever, vowing to find his own father and bring him back to California. He had abandoned his childhood by the time he was fifteen.
At eight years of age, Munroe had seen his father in bed with his mistress. Four years later, he had gotten rid of her. The ugly pictures that formed in Morgan’s mind came from the darkest of places within himself: images of a boy with a revolver, a woman begging for mercy, the terrible finality of a gunshot.
A gun, a knife, poison—it didn’t matter. Niall was too clever to implicate himself in Gwenyth Desbois’s death. It wasn’t easy to kill a werewolf, but it could be achieved by someone with knowledge, resolve, and sufficient hatred.
“I had to do it,” Niall said. “I had to set my father free and restore my mother’s honor. It was the only way.”
Hatred was a ruthless master. It could make a boy, or a man, believe that whatever he did was justified. It could convince him that his reasons were pure and good and unselfish.
The boy had stood there with the gun and listened to the pleas. He had seen the upraised hands, the hollow eyes, the quiver of the lips. He had aimed, so carefully. One shot was all it took.
“You see why I must stop you,” Niall said, his voice very far away. “There is just enough human left in Athena to be worth saving.”
Morgan saw the gun in Niall’s hand. He knew what it meant, and what it would take to stop his enemy. A gathering of muscle and sinew, a leap, a single blow, a clean snapping of the bones in a human neck.
Another murder.
Niall fired. The bullet seared Morgan’s side, a startling instant of pain that seemed less real than the calm indifference of his thoughts. He staggered. A second bullet grazed Morgan’s temple.
For Athena.
He fell. Blood steamed in the snow. Morgan felt his body laboring to heal the wounds, but he let the blood flow and the pain wash over him. He willed his heartbeat to slow, his lungs to cease their struggle for air. He closed his eyes.
Niall’s presence was a faint warmth above him. He waited for a third shot, but it didn’t come. His body absorbed Niall’s kick without reacting. Cold metal pressed into his jaw. He stopped his heart just as Niall’s fingers sought the pulse at the base of his neck.
“So easy,” Niall murmured. “You didn’t even fight, you bastard. Why?” He lurched up and away, his movements receding with Morgan’s awareness. “Damn you. Damn you to hell.”
Chapter 20
Athena knew the way. As a woman she might have become lost, but the wolf could not be confused or misled by distorted senses. She ran without pause through the storm, and at the coming of dawn she knew she had reached Munroe land.
She could not have said what made her stop so close to her goal, with the scents of woodsmoke and horses and humanity thick in her nostrils. The place was very much like any other in the park, where evergreens grew thick at the edge of a meadow. No animal or bird broke the silence. But she stopped, her fur bristling and her ears tilted to catch the sound of a voice.
Morgan’s voice. And she realized what it was that had halted her. The wind had gone still; the cacophony of a thousand scents, tangled by the storm, had settled back into a gentler song. And one subtle note rang sweet and beloved among all the others.
Morgan. She turned her muzzle toward the scent, all her weariness dropping away. Morgan was here, very close, perhaps behind the next stand of firs.
She raced across the meadow, leaving a deep gully in the snow behind her. Halfway across she slowed, and her hind legs began to cramp and seize up with pain that shouted in her body like a warning of doom.