Chapter 6

In my defense, I never said it was a short story…

Dargan’s POV

I’ll be honest.

I didn’t know that my uncle had joined the Council of Elders. But thinking back it did make sense. His father before him had been a member and while it wasn’t a “family” thing, having nothing better to do (since he was the “baby brother” to the alpha) it made sense he joined them. My father and he never got along very well anyway and if he didn’t look and smelled exactly like my father, I probably wouldn’t have known it was him.

I’d been moved to an interrogation room and was now sitting in front of the three Elders – my uncle, another male I didn’t know, and a female I remembered also was at my trial 15 years ago. My uncle stood as I entered the room, along with the other members of the Elders Council, and gestured for me to take a seat. As if this was a job interview and not my fucking life on the line…

My plan had been for them to show up at some point, but I didn’t expect them to be here this early in the game. But for now, I’d be a good dog and listen to what they had to say and sit down.

“There have been raised some questions on whether or not you killed your father after all,” Uncle Deegan said as he sat down in front of me.

“Just some?” I mocked him, not hiding the fact that--- yeah, I still harbored some resentment towards them. “How generous of you to consider that after---” I pretended to look at my non-existing watch. “15 years. What changed?”

I smiled at them innocently. I knew exactly what changed, but kept my mouth shut about it. Like hell, I was about to show my hand this early in the game.

This was just the beginning…

“This is a delicate situation,” the female Elder said, hiding his discomfort as she sat up straighter and unbuttoned the suit jacket she was wearing. “Alpha Christian has lost his mate and Tristian---”

Tristian, I echoed in my mind, commemorating the name to memory.

I was going to remember that.

“Tristian is his only son,” she continued, not knowing how dark my thoughts had gone. “He’s young and will learn---”

I rolled my eyes and snorted out loud. It sounded like a rehearsed line, and it made me wonder how many others of his victims were out there. Others who didn’t put up a fight.

Or lost it all together…

It made me sick!

“Sure, he will,” I cut her off, eyeing all three Elders who looked more like the rejected cast of Men in Black than werewolf Elders. “He will learn that if he rapes and kills a girl, daddy will make it all go away because the Elders need their money for their little breeding project.”

That caught their attention!

“I’m a rogue, not an idiot,” I snickered, enjoying the stunned expressions on their faces. “I know all about your little side dealings with the Blackwood Pack.”

Werewolves – even in their primes – were having problems producing more werewolves. Even the most hardcore bunnies only managed to produce a child every 10 years or so. In other words, we were a dying race! And while humans got pregnant more easily than she-wolves, unfortunately for werewolves, sex with humans was strictly forbidden, because…

Well, let’s just say they broke too easily!

Trust me!

I had to find that out the hard way…

Anyway…

Despite the laws that prevented werewolves to mate with humans, the Elders Council had started a breeding program, using humans as surrogates. Their plan was to breed more powerful werewolves such as alphas or betas, and later to increase the numbers of werewolves.

I’d stumble across their dirty little secret more or less by accident. I was looking for a woman in that district, and when I finally found her, she was just one of several dozen. All of them were tied to surgical-like tables and kept docile and from screaming in pain, as they were being raped by several of the most powerful alphas in the world.

All in the name of producing an heir and saving the werewolf race.

And Blackwood funded their operation…

“I have no idea---!” exclaimed the other male Elder in outrage, but I hadn’t even begun yet…

“Dunstee Road,” I cut him off, my smile never wavering. “22nd and 3rd. Ring a bell?”

I was teasing him at this point and winked, making him reel back in his chair. But in my defense, to see their faces go ghostly pale and hear their hearts drop was something I found rather amusing.

But I wasn’t here to have fun…

I was here to get out!

“Yeah, now that all the bullshit is off the table, how about you just cut to the case?” I sighed as I leaned forward in my chair and looked my uncle dead in the eye, disgusted to think that I was remotely related to his man.

“You can’t kill the kid, although he obviously deserves it,” I laid in on them. “But you can’t kill me for his crime, because you can’t do that without a public trial, which will be – pardon the pun – murder to have me convicted. Because the second I demand an Alpha command to be put on him, he’s going, to tell the truth, and you’re fucked.”

He was so angry, that there was practically steam coming out of his ears. Not only was I being extremely disrespectful, something that was a sure-fire way to piss off any alpha wolf, but it also sort of rubbed it in his face that---

Yeah, he wasn’t one!

And there might have been some underlying anger-related issues there, that my uncle hadn’t worked through. Which only delighted me more. Hell, just to be sure that I pushed all his buttons, I smiled brightly at them and fluttered my eyelashes.

At that, the vein at his temple popped!

A loud growl filled the room and suddenly the table between us was gone. And my uncle held me by the neck up against the wall. My wolf growled in my head, pushing for me to fight back, but I held him down.

Not the time…

“You little ungrateful---!” he hissed--- and then he was gone.

“Deegan! Control yourself!” hissed the woman, before she turned to face me. “I apologize for that, Mr. Hellson.” She took in a deep breath and straightened out the non-existing wrinkles in her jacket before she looked up at me again. “But I think you’ll find that our solution to our problem is equally beneficial.”

“Really?”

Now I was curious!

I mean, I’d been hoping they were going to offer me some kind of deal, but---?

“How?” I asked, feeling a little wary all of a sudden. I’d planned for most things, but not even I could foresee everything. Had I missed something? Was there something I hadn’t considered? What could have---?

“You’re an alpha wolf and your kind is hard to come by these days,” she stated flatly as if she were reciting the words from a card. “So unless you want us to keep you unfit for trial and execute you here and now.” And then a little grin spread across her lips.

“You’ll become the new alpha of The Tartarus Pack!”

Well--- Fuck. Me!

Of all the things I expected to happen---- that was last on my list!

But this does bring us back to where we started…

Me wishing I was back in a cell and that the people in front of me would just burn in hell, as the Elders gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse if I didn’t want to end up dead.

And here I’d been thinking that nothing could shock me…