He jerked back. “You cannot imply that I am the same type of man from your former pack, Skye. I’ve never assaulted or abused any female, and I am certainly not a rapist.”
“No,” I hissed, bitterness dripping from my words, “you’re worse. You're like my uncle who stood by and just let it happen. You could have stopped it and you didn’t. You're a damn coward.”
My entire body shook with rage as I tried to form a coherent sentence. “I told you what happened to my mother. I told you how she was brutalized every single fucking day. You saw the scars on the doctors’ documents; they carved her to pieces when they weren’t assaulting her.”
Someone sucked in a sharp breath, but I was too far into my rage and hurt to pay much attention.
I slammed my fist onto the table, the pain ricocheting up to my elbow. “I told you what Cassian and his friends did to me. What Linden was going to do if we didn’t escape that night. You pretended to be on my side, and the whole time you were spying on me?”
He had the decency to look ashamed. “I was doing what was in the best interest of my pack.”
“Explain to me how spying on a teenage girl is in the best interest of your pack?” Nikolai asked coldly. He had gone impossibly, terrifyingly still beside me. “Did you know Skye was my daughter even then?”
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “I didn’t piece that together until later.”
“But you realized it long enough ago that you had a paternity test run on her by the start of the Summit,” Nikolai pointed out. “Which means you had your suspicions when you were visiting my pack in the winter.”
Elias’s shoulders hunched as his body seemed to grow smaller. “I did, yes. It was why I decided to perform the paternity test.”
“And you never thought to tell me?” Nikolai’s brows lifted. “You, who knew what her very existence meant to my pack, decided on deception?”
Elias swallowed, his breaths becoming shallow and panicked. “You don’t understand.”
“Then enlighten us,” Nikolai said with a chuckle, spreading his arms wide. “Tell us the reasons you have for betraying us all.”
Elias turned to me, his expression pleading. “Skye, I never wanted to hurt you. But you don’t understand how special you are.”
“Save it.” I folded my arms under my chest defiantly. “I’m sick of you telling me how different I am, how special I am. All more ways so you can study me like a damn lab rat.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “It’s not just you, Skye. You and Remy—”
“Don’t you fucking say his name,” I spat vehemently. “You betrayed him as much as you did me.”
“It was never my intention—”
“Screw you and your intentions!” I interrupted furiously, my hands balling into fists. “Remy could have died, asshole.”
Nikolai rested a hand on my trembling arm. “He’s a fool, Skye. An old, useless fool who didn’t even realize the answers he sought were right in front of him.”
Elias looked at him curiously.
“You and I have had many a conversation about how shifters in your part of the world, Americans in particular, have been bastardizing what we are for generations.” Nikolai threw him a smug look. “Skye and Remy’s bond might be a unique curiosity to you, but had you told me about them, I could have told you how it’s not as unique as you think. And they certainly are not the youngest bonded pair.”
“What?” I gasped as I looked at him.
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I will explain it all to you, daughter.” He turned his attention coolly to Elias. “But not to this man. He doesn’t deserve answers.”
Now Nikolai leaned onto the table. “But I will have my own answers. Starting with how you managed to copy what we’ve been doing here.”
Sucking in a shaky breath, Elias bowed his head. “That was not my doing. I simply reported your process back to my Alpha.”
Everything in me wanted to ask about this ‘process,’ but I had a feeling now wasn’t the time. Dimitri had alluded to it on the plane, something about making shifters stay shifted into wolf form for an extended period of time with the help of magic.
“I’m fairly certain I never mentioned kidnapping unwilling subjects,” Nikolai countered. “Everyone involved in our trial is here voluntarily. The same cannot be said for you.”
My head snapped up.
Elias sighed. “Also, not my decision.”
“Do you make any decisions?” Nikolai sneered with a laugh. “Or are you only simply capable of thinking thoughts that your Alpha puts into your addled mind?”
“They kidnapped girls,” I added. “Three girls went missing from GPA, Elias. They’re … kids.”
The old man frowned. “I had heard that, yes. But it was not—”
I groaned, throwing up my hands as I rolled my eyes so hard I might’ve sprained a socket. “We get it. It was all Damien’s fault. You’re completely blameless in all of this. Poor, poor Elias.”
Dimitri chuckled, hiding a grin behind his hand as he rubbed his jaw. Even Nikolai smiled.
“I would have thought if anyone understood this, it would be you, Skye,” Elias told me quietly.
“Me?” My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.
“I’m doing this so our people can have a future. So that shifters can have hope.” He lifted his weathered hands to rest them on the edge of the table, his chains jingling. “It may seem dark now, but this was to protect people like you and your mother.”
My eyes narrowed into slits. Was he actually serious?
God, he was.
He actually believed the shit coming out of his mouth.
“What you did was enable men to do exactly what they had been doing for years,” I ground out. “Whatever they fucking wanted in the name of saving us all.”
“No!” Elias cried, his eyes suddenly more alive than they had been the entire time I had known him. “Damien knew what was happening in Long Mesa and assured me that he was planning on stopping it. You, your mother would have been freed of that wretched place. What he has planned is a new order that will help us.”
My jaw dropped as I stared at him.
He was actually out of his damn mind.
“My heart broke listening to those testimonies,” Elias added softly. “Even Damien was disturbed by what I told him. Skye, what you suffered is not lost on us. Our pack does not support the idea of an omega house where people like your mother are raped multiple times a day for years just for the sick, perverse pleasure of a few vile men. You won’t have faced the same fate as her.”
It was like all the air was sucked out of the room in a giant vacuum that left me breathless. The sudden stillness froze everything in the air.
I turned my head to see Dimitri’s hand land futilely on Nikolai’s shoulder as the older man shoved up from the table with a roar that made me jump and shove backwards.
Nikolai’s hand lashed out, catching Dimitri in the chest and hurling him into the wall with a grunt. The table was shoved forward, pinning a gasping Elias to the wall as his chest was crushed under the pressure from the metal.