Gamma No More - Book 3

He tries to bring his parental side to bear, hoping she will back down like most pups do. Even as an adult, it’s hard to break the familial bond, but hers broke years before.

Yes, she had to acknowledge that standing before her was the man who had been her father, but now he was just the ultimate betrayer.

He had sacrificed her to save himself and his wife. That’s a concept she cannot understand. She would do anything to save her pups from the life she had growing up, even if it meant she died to achieve it.

But while he was technically her father, she no longer recognised him as family.

“You lost the right to refer to me as your family when you and that woman abandoned me twelve years ago.”

Her dark command aura starts seeping out of her, licking at the edges of where Killian stands. She can see him flinch back, even as his anger rises at her response, his tone getting colder as he speaks again.

“That woman, as you referred to her, is your mother. You will show her respect.”

Toni laughs openly at his words.

All those years ago, she’d have given up her life, her freedom, just to see her parents once again.

But once Colin had told her it was the wolves that had ‘died’, that had organised and paid for it, using dead bodies in their place, her illusions had shattered.

Before she had seen the picture the hackers had, she knew he had betrayed her. The picture just ratified it; finally proving it was her parents who had betrayed her, leaving her at the Nightshade pack while they went off to start a new life.

“Was the cost to take me with you too high?

I know Colin gave you a price for a third body, that of a child!

Was I not good enough?

Or maybe were you so selfish that you wanted to keep the money for yourself…. that reasoning seems far more accurate. What do you think?

Time to start talking…

Time to explain how you saved yourself and left me, your blood, a young pup to rot in that pack, that life.

If I sense just one lie, no matter how small, then don’t expect mercy.”

Her dark aura surrounds him now, demanding his compliance, forcing him once again to his knees, but it’s not Tyra who comes forth. She’s buried deep to protect her, Tyra still feels the familial connection.

Facing the man who tried to claim a paternal link to her would bring her pain, no he faces Toni the Lycan, even if he hasn’t yet heard the news and she is demanding his submission.

She can feel his fear increasing over the weight of her command. His voice stutters as he begins, slowly gaining confidence as he speaks.

“Y… y… you trained to be the Gamma, you know that, but you exceeded every expectation I or the Alpha had of you.

Faster than any male, yet despite your slimmer build every bit as strong as one, intelligent, understanding everything the first time it was demonstrated, you were beyond compare.

No one, and I mean not even the Royals, could hit the targets you did, your first kill. The speed and accuracy of your weapon work was insane.

I thought I loved you, at least at first, but I think I was riding on the pride I felt in your achievements.

As you progressed, I saw you as a means to an end. Distancing myself seemed to be easy, by the time you were four, I saw you as the method of our escape, not as a daughter.”

“Rule number ten,” as she interrupted him. Toni’s voice is flat.

“Exactly, don’t get close to anyone bar your mate,” Killian confirms

“Once I started pain tolerance training with you, I thought you were numb and emotionless. You never flinched. Even when I fractured your arm, it was as if emotions bypassed you.

I realised you could be so much more, would be so much more than I had been.

It was as if every generation before had been to create you, the perfect killing machine.

It was clear I could retire early, young enough to have more pups to have a proper family, but the Alpha was far too interested in you already.”

He pauses, and Toni is looking at him with disgust, hiding the pain. How could he not have realised she cried herself to sleep every night during the pain training, never wanting to disappoint him?

All the time she’d thought of herself as a monster, she now understood the actual monster had been him.

He swallows and takes a break from his story, trying to assess how she is taking it, but her cold resolve remains unchanged and he realises he cannot read her, but wary of her earlier threat, he ploughs on.

“Your mum and I began to plan, for when I could retire and have more pups together.

To do that, I was always pushing you, and the more I and the Alpha pushed, the stronger you became. It was a never-ending growth; you did anything I asked.

I guess you saw my interest as love, but it wasn’t.

From early on, I could see you were going to be a dangerous killing machine. That could push my reputation into nothing.

I realised two things.

One, I would be forgotten quickly, overshadowed by what you would become.

Two, I could never love someone like that.

Our plan evolved slowly, and ultimately, I decided that our best option was to leave the pack. It would have broken your mum had you turned against her and put her up for punishment if you were as cold as I imagined you would become.

Originally your mum was desperate to take you, so we got a price, it was so much higher than the price for either of us because getting a child’s body, well, there are few that would be a suitable match, they may have needed to ‘create’ one for you, killing to order.

The Alpha would never let you go though. If you ‘died’ along with us, he’d want proof, insist on every test to prove it was you, and I couldn’t risk that.

I could see he was already looking forward to promoting you. I was expendable by then; he had set his sights on you, and he felt he could mould you to fit his needs because of your age.

It had been a wise decision to distance myself from you and treat you like a machine. For your mother it was harder.

She didn’t agree, at first, with leaving you behind.”

There’s a sneer in his voice as if he remembers her with distaste. Her own command aura had withdrawn from him, leaving him feeling far more confident than he should.

She had asked for honesty, and it was being given to her. It was obvious he didn’t want to spare her feelings, but then he had already admitted that he thought she was unfeeling and emotionless.

“But then your mother fell pregnant a second time, unplanned, we needed to leave before she began to show, or the Alpha wouldn’t let her off the pack land, she would have been a captive queen, the bringer of his next killing machine.

He’d already applied pressure on me to have a second pup, the idea was that two or three like you would make him invincible, so we left you there and faked our deaths.

The ongoing payments I made were supposed to buy Colin’s silence. I never thought you would seek him out, or that he would tell you things that were meant to be kept secret.”

He pauses, looking at her without fear now.

“I don’t regret what I did, your mother mourned you until Callum was born, a true child she could revel in, at that point, that’s when she lost her grief over leaving you, when Wren, came along, our family was complete.

You wanted the truth. Now what?

Are you going to prove yourself as the ruthless killing machine I saw and try to kill your own father?”

Toni just stares at the wolf in front of her. There’s so much she wants to tell him, but what would be the point?

She doesn’t need to justify her life and how she tried to live a good life, because this person is already dead to her. He means nothing to her.

“My invitation was to your whole family; I wonder how your dearest children would have reacted to that story.

And did you think I wouldn’t know about the baby?

An omission is still lying, bring them all here and do it now. Delaying longer will only annoy me more.”

She watched as a mixture of shock and fear passed over his face.

“I told you at the start not to lie to me and yet you tried to pass off the fact you only had two children. Are they both disposable to you? Do you trade your older offspring for the life of your youngest?

Would you trade your mate’s life to save yourself?

Just how low and debased have you become?”

His face pales, and she can hear his heart rate rising further. Not for what she could do to him, but to them, they are his world.

“Tone…”

“I won’t remind you again. It’s Alpha.

Order them to come here, now, and they come alone,” her command clear in her voice

“Not that your pack would dare to move against me. After all, I took the life of your old Alpha easily enough.”

The casual way Toni speaks is shocking to Killian, clearly, he hadn’t heard of his Alpha’s demise and if he thinks that lowly of her, she will use it to her advantage, his mask has dropped and real fear is visible on his face.

“Or I could wait for your new Alpha. I have an interesting story he may want to hear.

I wonder if he would look so kindly upon you then, knowing you have deceived the pack and have my attention for all the wrong reasons…

One way or another, I will have my justice.”

Her stance is firm, her tone cold and almost dismissive to him. She wants him to know that his life holds about as much importance to her as the dirt on her shoe as she pushes out the darkness inside her.

Her dark aura feels suffocating even to her, watching with a detached calmness as Killian, she cannot think of him as her father breaks down, begging for his family to be spared, tears streaming down his face.

It’s not her he cries for, she knows that.

But for his current family and that hurts, he isn’t feeling guilt over his past, only over what the consequences may be and what that means for the family he loves.

He doesn’t worry about her life or future

“You have one chance to save your family at this point.

Tell me all about who sent you out to the packs you went to visit and asked you to contact the human known as Edwards… one small lie, one omission and there will be no mercy.

And trust me, I know far more than you think I do before you try to lie to me. This point here is your last chance to save the family you love.”

Killian sang like a bird giving Toni all the information that he had about Tane, his location, voice and given name, apologising that he couldn’t remember how he looked, but even going as far as giving Toni his number.

Inside her heart was breaking, the truth hurts, she’s learnt that many times over the years, but ripping off that bandage stops it from hurting for too long, whereas hiding from the truth allows the wound to fester, rot, to eat away at you when you aren’t looking.

So however painful this is, that she had to watch him trying to save his new family, when she was so easily discarded, she will hold fast in the face of truth, look it squarely in the eye and remember that she has a pack that cares about her.

If there’s one thing she’s learnt in this life, it’s that pain comes and goes, it is fleeting like the wind, it passes in the end and her parents died when she was nine, these adults, they are just strangers to her.

She replaces her hood, not wanting ‘Killian’ to see any uncontrolled emotions, masking her emotions carefully as they wait for his family to arrive.