The Society Series Box Set 2

by Mason Sabre

  Those were happy days. Some of them so happy, she thought she would burst from it. They were gone, now. Snatched away from her … moments between her and Cade. He had loved nothing more than to lie her back, expose her growing belly and talk to their son. He’d kissed him with a thousand promises of how he would keep him safe … in the end, it had been Gemma who had failed. A familiar lump formed in her throat, and she pushed her thoughts away, snapped her mind shut and put Connor back in that box in her mind.

  “However, sometimes a couple does not follow the rules. They try to keep the baby. This,” he said, continuing where he was, “as I am sure you are all aware, is against our laws. It is against nature. Imagine if we let cats breed with dogs, sheep with cows … the abominations that would be conceived. These rules are in place for a reason and those who break them, must face the consequences of their actions.”

  There was a hush in the room, a silent blanket that went across everyone. A few of them nodded as Trevor spoke, but he was wrong. He spoke of animals … true animals that did not have a Human side to them. So much as shifters hated the Humans, it was not to deny that that very thing was part of their being. It would be naïve to think no one mixed the species with shifters. Gemma was sure that if anyone looked hard enough, they could dig up a mix-breed within the stray community. Strays were lucky. They had freedom.

  Gemma’s thoughts went to Jessica and her baby. It wasn’t how Trevor sold it. It never really was. If she hadn’t been murdered, if her baby hadn’t been killed, it would have lived. It was healthy, fully formed … unlike Connor.

  Trevor gazed around the room again, his expression filled with hatred. No one spoke. No one asked him about it, but as her father said, they had voted on it. That meant they all already knew and this little performance was for nothing. He waved his hand, and just as he did, the door behind him that led to his own private office opened. Two more wolves emerged, wolves from his pack. Behind them, three more figures moved, but the middle one … chains clinked as he walked. His feet shuffled against the tiled floor.

  Gemma tensed. He had a sack over his head. The wolves either side of him held him under the arms. He was slumped, half drugged by the looks of things. Blood marred the exposed skin close to the cuffs on his wrist. Silver …

  The wolves pushed him into the seat at the head of the table and silently, they shackled him into place.

  “As you agreed, breaking the rules and then facilitating your error with lies and deceit must not be tolerated. It hurts me that this is one of my own. I do not do this easily. But I would not be alpha of my pack if I were to break the law when it suited me. I am not above it. None of us are.”

  He moved closer to the shackled wolf and gave a nodded signal. One wolf, a blond man, slim, nodded back. He grabbed a fistful of the sack and then ripped it from the wolf’s head.

  Danny …

  Chapter 38

  Cade

  “Father …” Cade lunged without a second thought. His wolf instinct had one goal only, and that was to get to his brother. He knew it could be a fatal mistake, but he’d stopped thinking like a rational being the moment that hood had been pulled. All he saw was Danny. Danny tied and bound like a fucking criminal to the chair. They acted like they were scared of him. He was a kid for Christ’s sake, a stupid kid who’d made a stupid mistake.

  “Danny,” Cade said, reaching for him. They’d wrapped silver around his wrists, around his ankles and throat. His head hung down, his eyes were closed. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, but the silver was weakening him, invading his body. Blood ran down Danny’s hands and feet and Cade knew without looking they had cut his skin to get the silver inside.

  He pushed to get to him, but big hands slammed into Cade’s chest, holding him back. He growled at them, “Get out of my way.” He shoved a hand back against a solid wall of muscle and the wolves in the room all moved into a strategic position, putting themselves between Cade and his brother and father.

  “Get the fuck off me,” he roared, his mind ablaze with fury. He twisted his body, fully intending to barrel through them. One on one, these wolves were no match for him … he was the son of the alpha, strong, built by fate and nature to protect those who mattered. He had no care that he was making his father look like a fool. He gave no thought to the idea that his father might punish him for disobedience towards his orders. All he saw was Danny, and all his wolf wanted to do was to get there and protect him.

  Three wolves pushed back against Cade. One of them jammed an arm against his throat and forced his head back. He cut off his breathing. Cade hooked his right arm up with enough force that he broke through them, and his fist slammed into one of the men, knocking him back. The man staggered, clutching a hand to his bloodied face. Cade ducked and slipped out from under their hold.

  So many hands, so many people grabbing for him, but he pushed through them all. Sheer determination made him ignore hands that tried to hold him, then lost their grip. When he stood again, a click echoed in front of him and his father stood with a gun aimed as his chest.

  “No …” Gemma’s yell rang through the room as she almost jumped around Karl. A chair clattered, and Malcolm’s chair screeched back as he got up and grabbed for his daughter before she too did something that could not be undone.

  Cade’s eyes shifted, darkening to a deeper, richer, almost midnight blue. Pressure built in his cheeks and his jaw, creating the feeling of something bulging inside his bones as his wolf rose to the surface and faced the challenge. He stopped, though, hanging onto logical thought by only the tips of his fingers and the edges of his claws. One more move and it was likely that Cade would blow, and the entire room would fall down around him.

  “Back down,” Trevor said, his voice thick with authority, but he didn't scare Cade, didn’t command him. Any respect he’d had for his father had vanished long ago. Vanished amidst the whips across his back from his father’s belt and the pummelling of his father’s fist.

  “He’s my brother.” His words were deeper, his wolf rang through his vocal chords and made his speech half man, half beast. “Your son.”

  His father met his gaze equally. His mouth was slightly turned at the corners. “Yes,” was all he said, but that one word was icy cold, malicious … evil.

  Cade’s skin burnt with the need to shift, the need to rip his father apart piece by little fucking piece. He moved, taking one step closer and more wolves blocked his way. Trevor had planned this. This entire meeting was a performance, and he had brought in the security to hold Cade back. “Coward,” he growled out. He stepped closer again, and this time, Trevor’s gun pressed into Cade’s chest.

  The whole room was on edge. Not all of them stood. They’d not get in a fight between alpha and son. It wasn’t their place. If Cade challenged his father, they would sit back and watch.

  But Natalie moved. “Cade …” Her soft voice was the sound of logic and reason somewhere behind him. She placed a hand on his tense shoulder and gripped tightly. He tried to brush her off, shaking himself away from her, but she stepped into his space, put herself to his back and pressed her face against the solid wall of his muscles. She gripped his arm. She didn’t need to speak, the connection between them, in his head, in hers … she searched in the dark space that was their minds. He could feel her reaching, hear her calling to him, begging him … pleading with him. He could hear the soft thump of their child’s heart beating, and that sound alone seemed to get through and make him relax.

  Trevor lowered his gun, but he cocked his head to one side, then he smiled—a big fucking contented grin going across his face. He reached for the papers on the table, picked them up and then tossed them into the middle. “There is a copy for everyone.” His gaze didn’t go to the Council as he spoke, no. He kept his eyes firmly locked with Cade’s … the only real threat in the room. “I went to the lab for the DNA results,” he said. “Got them before you did.”

  Cade breathed hard through his nose, his nostrils flared. “Why?”


  He handed a copy of the papers to Cade. Cade glared at him, then took them.

  “Because I can.”

  “You have no right.”

  Trevor smirked. “I am your alpha; I have every right. Besides,” he said as he backed away from Cade and went to stand behind Danny. “I knew if it was your brother and you got hold of those files, you would do something stupid. You are weak Cadence. Stupid and weak.” He leant on the edge of the chair, both hands at either side of Danny, hands gripping the back. “Think of it this way, I am saving your life.”

  “In exchange for my brother’s?”

  Trevor’s first response was just to smile, a cold, calculated smile full of malicious intent. He turned his back on Cade, then. That alone was a signal … a sign that he did not fear him. He picked up the papers he had been holding earlier, the ones he had before they had brought Danny in. He turned, ready to address the Council.

  Aside from Cade and Natalie, and the wolves protecting his father, only Malcolm and Gemma remained standing. Her chest heaved with the panic Cade could feel coming from her, across the mental connection between them. Her father gripped her arm, holding her still.

  Trevor read from the list … reading the infractions against his own child. Cross breeding, crimes against the pack, against Society, but mostly, he read the crimes against the Council as if Danny and Jessica had done this just to spite them.

  “You’re going to let him do this to him?” Cade said, cutting his father off as he spoke, and addressing Malcolm. “You’re going to stand there and let him kill his own son?”

  “He broke the law,” Malcolm said.

  In the chair, Danny opened his eyes. The blue was so watery it was like he held the ocean in them. He blinked, and the water welled over, rolling down his young cheek.

  “Justice must be given for my Jessica,” Angela said.

  “Danny didn’t kill her,” Cade said. He lifted his gaze from his brother to his father, a vague sense of hope lodged in his throat, but when he saw him … looked at him, he knew whatever made Trevor tick was not something that could ever be reasoned with. And while any logical person might have accused Trevor of Jessica’s death, they’d be wrong. It was beneath him. If he were to have killed her, he would have done so to create a reaction. He would have splayed her out like a slut across the table and then gutted her himself with the backing of the Council.

  As Cade’s gaze drifted across each of them … all of them completely heartless, realisation hit him. They played the part of the united front, of protection, pack … but somewhere, somehow in the chaos of it all, they had lost the sense of what was right. They had forgotten why they had formed, what they stood for, and above all, how to protect. He knew right then that this was not the place for him … not for him, his child, or his mate. Not anymore. He wanted no part of a pack where it was okay to slaughter one another, to punish one’s own child for loving another. “Killing my brother won’t bring your daughter back,” Cade said, focusing his attention back on Angela.

  “There are laws,” Malcolm said, his voice cool, calm, giving nothing away. “We all know them. We all agree to them.”

  “He’s a kid.” Hatred ran through Cade’s veins right then. He couldn’t shake the thought this was all wrong. They were all wrong.

  “I’m not going to kill him,” Trevor said. In his hand he held what looked like a cannula, only at the end of it, it seemed to have a kind of tap. There was a ball attached to it. Trevor pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. “Daniel MacDonald,” he said, “Made his choices, and in doing so chose his own fate. I, Trevor MacDonald, his father, his alpha, call for not only this perpetrator of the pack to be ostracised, but I also deem him unworthy of carrying the lycanthrope gene. It is my request that his wolf be executed, and he may live out his days away from pack.”

  “No …” Cade said, he lunged again, this time he was prepared for his father’s men, prepared for the gun his father might pull on him. He leapt onto the table and pushed them out of his way. Someone screamed his name. Another called him back, but he scrambled across the table and leapt down. Hands grabbed him and held him this time. They bound his arms and legs. Something big and hard slammed him past his father and into a wall, smashing the back of his head off the hardwood wall. He slashed out with clawed hands, growled and snapped at whoever was close, and thrashed until he ran out of fight.

  “Do you want to join him? Is that it, Cadence?”

  “Let me go.” Cade bucked against the men who held him into place. Natalie gasped from somewhere close, her hand over her mouth. Cade let out a loud growl that came from deep inside, pulling everything he felt, every wound, every ounce of pain that had built these years….

  The door to the side of Trevor burst open, slamming into the wall behind it and almost knocking the plaster off. A scream followed, a shrieking scream that pierced ears as Kathleen burst into the room. Trevor put down the cannula, stepped out and slammed a hand into her throat, knocking her back.

  She clutched where he had hit her, eyes welling. Her lip was already bleeding, her arms were bruised. A man ran in behind her, another of the pack.

  “I thought I told you to keep her out,” Trevor spat.

  He wiped at his own mouth, blood coming away across the top of his hand. “I tried,” he said.

  “Trevor, please …” Kathleen reached to her husband, her face red from tears. “Please don’t hurt our boys.”

  “Our boys,” Trevor scoffed. “I have only one son. These are your boys, your defective genes.” He reached for the ball again. Cade roared, fought, pulled, pushed … Trevor broke it under his grip, sending whatever was in it down the tube and into Danny.

  “No … what have you done?” Cade growled out. “What did you do?”

  Trevor tossed the end of the tube down with the broken glass ball. He wiped his hand on a handkerchief like it was nothing. “Silver nitrate,” he said, smug with himself. “He is no longer one of us.”

  Danny’s back arched, his face went taut. The veins in his head bulged, and he threw his head back with a sound that was nowhere near human and certainly not animal. He braced his arms against the chains, pulling the wood and almost snapping it. He lifted his body up, arching his back, twisting it in such a way it was sure to break in a moment. He made a sound deep in his throat, a gurgling, choking sound. White foam spilt from his lips, it was tinged with red. Streaks of it dripped down his chin. His eyes opened so wide, wider than any eyes should ever open. Blood spilt down from the corners, running backwards down his face, into his ears.

  The back door of the meeting room opened, and the Council members left. They just went … walking, talking, acting like this hadn’t happened. Cade hated them. He hated every one of them right then.

  He pulled against the hands that held him into place as Trevor stepped around Danny, ignoring him just like everyone else. He stepped into Cade’s personal space. “I have more of those,” he said, meeting Cade’s eyes, his threat clear. “I do not regard you as my son. Remember that.”

  “That is because you are no father,” Cade shot back at him. “Because you only want the son who is too much of a coward to think for himself.”

  Trevor laughed, and then rested a hand on Cade’s shoulder, the way a father might do if they’re about to impart some words of wisdom onto their child, but there was no care in those eyes, no love, no compassion. He curled his other hand into a fist and, without warning, slammed it into Cade’s gut. “You have a lot more at stake now. Remember that.”

  Chapter 39

  Cade

  A few things happened at the same time. Cade fell to his knees as his father's men released him. He landed with a thump but put his hands out to catch himself and coughed from the force in which his father had punched. He was a fool, an idiot. To have expected anything else from the man who had beaten him while growing up was nothing short of stupidity.

  At the same time, his father walked out of the room without looking back at either
son. He walked around Danny like he had been trash on the floor. Nothing but a waste of a wolf, and nothing to do with him anymore. Then Kathleen moved. Trevor had ignored her too, almost. He had stopped enough to cast a glance at her and then shaken his head with a look of disgusted pity.

  Natalie ran to him. She moved to Cade's side with the speed of a wolf and the panic of a woman. Her light, delicate hand landed on his back heavier than he had expected, and he coughed again. "I'm okay," he said, meeting her worried gaze. He took in a deep breath and at the same time, caught sight of Gemma hovering in the background.

  Their eyes locked. She was an anchor to him, holding him in place, pulling inside him to reach for his wolf. God, he wanted to go to her. He wanted her to be the one to have her hand on his back, the one trying to comfort him. Karl stepped behind her, though, and placed a protective hand on her shoulder, the message clear ... she was his. It was what mates did, a hand, a touch, some form of authority that showed the world around them and any interested parties that they had touch privileges and others did not.

  Cade tore his hungering gaze away and after what felt like a long time, Gemma moved, pulling herself from Karl's hold. She went to Kathleen.

  His mother was on her knees now. She was next to Danny trying to unfasten the binds that held him in place. Every time she tried to touch the silver, she let out a hiss or a cry from the pain of it. Her skin sizzled. It was red and blistered, a mixture of her blood and her son’s. Whatever silver Trevor had used was potent stuff. Cade expected nothing less.