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“Give me one reason I shouldn’t blow your brains out right here and now.” I let my anger ride over me, hoping it would chase away the betrayal, the pain, that came with it.

Sharon smiled sadly. “I don’t need to give you a reason, honey. If you were going to kill me, you would’ve done it already.” Her voice was heavy. Knowing. Loving. It almost brought me to my knees.

I didn’t lower my gun.

“When did you figure out it was him?” The iron weight in my hand didn’t waver a millimeter, my grip as unyielding as my demanding tone.

She sighed. “Not long after your parents were killed.”

I sucked in a disgusted breath, resisting the urge to go postal. “What gave it away? Some wolfy instinct?”

“No.” Sadness washed over her features. “I didn’t realize because I’m an alpha or a wolf. I realized because I’m a mother.”

The way in which she said this made it impossible for even me to mock her. There was so much love, pain, and regret etched into her words. In her posture.

“And so you resolved to stand by and watch people get murdered for years?” I hurled the question like a weapon. “Watch Colton doing that, him not having any memory of it?”

My insides felt as if they were melting from the heat of my anger.

Not only was I furious for myself, but also for Colton. Who believed himself to be good and decent, trying every day to embody that. Colton who, without knowing, turned into a heart-eating, murdering monster. It would destroy him. If he ever found out the truth. If he knew he’d killed so many people. And that his parents had done nothing. Had lied to him his entire life.

Sharon winced, and her eyes watered before she tilted her head up. “I have been tortured, Hadley, since the moment your parents died. With every breath I take, I second-guess decisions made since then, decisions made yesterday. It almost killed me. Almost tore apart our pack. But we cannot stop Colton. We cannot kill him.”

She took a deep breath, leveling a steady, commanding gaze at me. “You will have to do that.”

“Me?” I gaped at her. “You want me to do your dirty work?”

She shook her head sadly. “No, Hadley. I do not want this on your soul. Nor do I want the creature who grew in my body, who slept on my chest, who made you daisy chain crowns to be nothing but bones in the earth.” Her voice cracked, and Gerald cleared his throat, wiping his eye before reaching out to grasp his wife’s hand.

I sank my teeth into my lip until I tasted blood so my own fucking eyes didn’t well up. I had to remember where I was—in enemy territory.

“We have dedicated years to understanding Colton’s curse,” Sharon uttered finally. “First trying to break it, then trying to find the witch responsible for it, and finally, barring that, deciding to end my son’s life.” She smiled the saddest fucking smile I’d ever seen.

“We do not know the specifics of the curse,” she sighed. “We’ve employed countless witches to try to understand it, to break it. But they can’t. It is too gnarled, corrupted with the worst kind of magic.” She shuddered. “We believe it comes from a demon prince.”

Before that, I was starting to believe Sharon. Starting to buy the good werewolf thing. The tortured mother. The powerless alpha. Then she had to go and mention a demon prince. All her credibility went out the window, and doubt crept into my mind.

Gun still raised, I scoffed. “Demon princes are nothing but fairy tales and fodder for the romance section at your local bookstores. They don’t exist.”

She gave me a hard look. “Forgive me, Hadley, for I don’t mean to undermine your years of being a hunter, one of the best in the country from what I hear…”

I felt my spine snap straight, an unexpected burst of pride expanding behind my ribs. Even in the midst of my fury, it was a nice ego boost.

“But I was born into the world of the supernatural,” she continued. “And I have spent the last thirteen years as the mother, an alpha, to a cursed wolf. I have dedicated my life to learning everything I can about these demon-blessed witches and the demons who give them that unholy power. I can confidently say I know a bit more than you.”

Her tone was almost scolding, momentarily making me feel like a teenage girl who didn’t know her ass from her elbows.

“If you know more than me and have spent a decade trying to find a witch to break the curse, how come you’ve come up with nothing but a pile of innocent bodies to show for your failures?” I shook my gun at her.

When she flinched, I felt a stab of guilt for my cruelty, but then I remembered who I was talking to. Not Sharon Hughes, my surrogate mother… Sharon Hughes the werewolf alpha. The monster. The liar. Cold fury licked up my spine, urging me to pull the trigger and be done with this.

“Easy,” Gerald muttered in warning to me.

I narrowed my gaze at him, noticing that he’d crept closer to his wife. Nothing remained of the easygoing, kind man I’d come to know. His eyes were light, almost glowing, his lips pulled back, exposing teeth. This was a protective husband. A protective werewolf ready to battle for his alpha.

Oh, how I longed to understand every inch of this hierarchy. To help me dismantle it if need be.

“I can’t answer that.” Sharon waved him off, eyes hardening back to that of the alpha wolf of the pack. Though I saw the glint of frustration at her powerlessness. “The witch is blessed by a demon prince. It is the only explanation for her power to curse Colton so completely, as well as protect him from mortal wounds. And to somehow mask her presence from us.”