Finding My Breaking Point

by C. C. Masters

  I walked away from Justin knowing that I couldn’t play a role in this anymore. Not now that I knew that the ‘cure’ Justin had been offering would cost the lives of more than one wolf. I wasn’t stupid, I realized that he was taking the power for himself and I was guessing it was out of jealousy that Austin had been given their father’s seat on the council. He ranted about his hatred of Austin, but I could tell he was jealous of everything that Austin had.

  I needed to get out of this, but how? I lowered my head when I realized that my only choice was to take my son and run. Alex would lose his opportunity to go to nursing school and we would both be a couple of lone wolves, shunned by the rest of society. But I couldn’t leave Alex here to suffer the consequences of my actions. I just needed a couple days to get everything in place for our escape.

  Chapter 13

  Anna

  The tires of the twins’ Jeep crunched over the gravel as Mason drove down the partially hidden road that circled around the west border of our property. I had been surprised that Ingrid had volunteered to come straight here from the airport, especially since I assumed it was a gruesome scene. I hoped she might have some insight that would help us because of her experience in the North.

  I had insisted going with the twins to get Ingrid from the airport because, after all, that was exactly how Gemma had gotten to the twins in the beginning. I wasn’t about to let them be exposed and unprotected when meeting a stranger from the Canadian pack, even if she claimed to be my Aunt. Ingrid had raised her eyebrow when I had conducted a thorough magical review of her and her luggage, but she hadn’t objected. Even though I had an old photo of Astrid and I knew Ingrid was her identical twin, I had still been startled by how similar she had looked to me. It was rare to meet another female with my height, let alone with the same blond hair and facial features.

  We hadn’t even left the airport when we all received a group text from Austin with our code to let us know there was an emergency. Ingrid had offered to come with us when Austin requested that I meet him at specific GPS coordinates immediately upon our return. My heart sank when I realized what that meant – they had found another body. I was the first to step out of the vehicle and out of the corner of my eye I saw Ingrid watching me closely as I greeted Austin and James, but she didn’t comment. James had been the one to find the body this time, so we were keeping it quiet until we could thoroughly examine the crime scene.

  I stared down at the second body we had found. Tears of frustration formed at the corner of my eyes, but I could feel the rage from the other guys simmering in the air. I felt like a useless failure. I was supposed to be the magical expert in the pack, and I had no idea how to solve this or even prevent it from happening again. But I didn’t believe it was coincidence that an evil fae presence had taken over Justin’s body and we were finding the corpses of our pack members. He had to be involved in this somehow.

  I crouched down at the side of Derek’s body and desperately searched for anything I could use to determine who had done this. When I found nothing, I tentatively reached a hand out to touch his shriveled skin. I cringed at the texture under my fingertips but used my touch to send my magic deep inside. In my peripheral awareness, I heard the twins introducing Ingrid to Austin, but I tried to tune that out.

  I closed my eyes to focus entirely on what I was doing and block out the sounds of everything around me. I had no idea what a dead body was supposed to feel like, because I’d only had experience with the living so far. But there was nothing for me to sense or pick up on. His body was completely devoid of life or magic.

  I stood up with a sigh. “It’s the same as Blendel,” I announced sadly. “There’s nothing here to lead me to the killer. Unless you can give us some insight, Ingrid?” I tried to ignore the disappointed looks on the guys’ faces after my announcement, but I understood. I was the only one here who had experience with magic, so they were depending on me to figure out that part of it. Without a specific target for vengeance they had to swallow their pent-up rage and continue to struggle to find a lead.

  I stepped back to give Ingrid space to work next to the body and walked around the scene. The difference with this body was that it had been left on the private road that circled around the outskirts of our property. It looked like the body had been tossed out of the car and rolled down into the ditch on the side of the road. With Blendel, we had been unsure if he had been killed there or purposefully placed, but it was clear that whomever had done this had deliberately left the body here for us to find.

  I used the pack bond to communicate with the rest of the guys so I wouldn’t distract Ingrid. “Why leave the body here for us to find?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they have a better chance of getting away with it if they simply took the guys and left us unsure about what had happened to them or even if they were still alive?”

  “Austin realized he was gone before we found the body,” James explained. “When Derek didn’t check in with his team leader at the appointed time, Austin reached out with the pack bond to find the connection had been severed.”

  “And I asked James to search the edges of the property,” Austin said grimly. “Normally, I would be concerned that he had gone outside of the range of our bond, or that he had broken with us to become part of another pack, but after Blendel…” That explanation made me realize that there was still a lot about being a wolf that I didn’t know or fully understand. I knew our pack bond allowed us to communicate between the other wolves we were bonded with, but there was apparently a lot more to it.

  “The murderer is leaving the bodies here to taunt us,” James told us with a dark look in his eyes. “He thinks that he is going to get away with this, that we won’t be able to trace it back to him, and he wants to gloat over what he perceives as a victory over us.”

  “Arrogance is a weakness we can use to take him down,” Austin added.

  “How do we know it’s a he?” I asked. “We haven’t ruled out the witches as the potential culprits.”

  Austin and James exchanged a look before Austin answered through the bond. “We have to assume Justin is involved somehow. He might have help, but I’m convinced that he’s the ring leader.”

  I gave Austin a hug, because how fucked up was it that the brother he had grown up with was now a psychotic serial killer? Allegedly, that is. Austin rubbed my back and inhaled the scent of my hair before he let me go. I gave him a small smile, because I knew that he wouldn’t be fully comfortable with showing any type of weakness in front of Ingrid. He needed to play the part of a powerful pack master.

  “Is this something you were finding in your territory?” I asked Ingrid once she had gotten a chance to examine the body. She didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that we had all obviously had a conversation without her.

  “No,” Ingrid said with a frown. “Many of our stronger pack members had nightmares and starting hearing whispers, but we found no bodies like this. The whispers would incite anger and jealousy to cause wolves to act in ways that they wouldn’t normally, but this isn’t the direct work of the dark fae.”

  “Does it only affect wolves?” I asked. “We suspect either witches or fae may be responsible for this.”

  Ingrid shrugged. “I’ve only met a witch once - when Arminius brought one with him.” She frowned. “She was rather unpleasant.”

  “I’ve had that experience as well,” I muttered. “Why did Arminius visit?” I asked curiously.

  Ingrid waved a hand. “It was quite some time ago, when he was looking for Astrid not long after she went missing.”

  “It seemed odd that he had so much concern for her,” I pointed out. “How close were they?”

  Ingrid smiled at me. “Arminius has always had a close relationship with my pack, but your mother was quite wild in her day.”

  I wrinkled my nose. It was a very weird feeling to know that he and my mother might have...”

  Ingrid laughed at the look on my face. “She was sure that Froston was your father.”r />
  “When we first met, Froston told me that he could recognize his magic inside of me,” I said out loud – more to reassure myself than to explain it to her. If I were the child of a lamia, I wouldn’t have fae magic similar to Froston’s.

  Ingrid gave me a nod. “Yes, the magic of each of the fae is distinctive. His in particular.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I was just coming to terms with the fact that Froston was my father and that I was part fae. Learning that my paternity could be in question would have been more than I was ready to handle. I might not nominate Froston for a father of the year award anytime soon, but at least I knew where I had come from. I had so much I wanted to ask Ingrid but standing over a body wasn’t the right time for it.

  “Did you see anything unusual about the body?” James interrupted.

  A serious look came over Ingrid’s face. “Several of his fingers were broken before he was killed. He also had several stab wounds and a broken arm.”

  I frowned. “How can you tell if it was before or after he died?”

  Ingrid blinked, as if surprised it wasn’t obvious. “His clothes wouldn’t have so much blood on them if he had been stabbed after he was dead.”

  “What about the broken bones?” I pressed. This was a morbid conversation, but I intended to learn everything I could from Ingrid while she was here.

  Ingrid gestured for me to kneel next to the body with her. “Look for signs of healing in the fracture. If you can see signs that the break started to repair, it happened before death. If the break is clean, like breaking a chocolate bar in half, it probably happened during death. If the break looks more crumbly, like when you break a biscuit in half, it probably happened after death. The bones are much more dry and brittle after death.” Ingrid frowned at the body. “Especially the way this wolf died.”

  I felt sick thinking of how Derek would have suffered before he died, but I tried to push aside all of my emotions. I closed my eyes and focused on the body, pretending he was still alive, and I was looking for a way to heal him. I used my magic to probe his wounds and saw what Ingrid had described, there were signs that his healing abilities had kicked in before he had died and that his bones had started to mend. But I could also see that they were in various stages of healing. He hadn’t received all of these injuries at the same time, they had been spread out.

  “How long had he been missing?” I asked Austin cautiously.

  Austin frowned. “It’s possible he was taken the night before and that his buddy covered for him.”

  James growled and put a hand over his face. “What good is the fucking buddy system if we don’t actually use it?”

  Austin arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re the primary offender when I give the order to activate the buddy system.”

  I sighed. “I’m guessing that his buddy just thought he had gotten lucky or something?”

  “Or something,” Austin murmured as he looked off into the distance.

  I looked over at Ingrid, but I didn’t even attempt to try to keep the desperation out of my eyes. “Is there anything at all here that could lead us to the killer?”

  Ingrid hesitated. “Not that I can see,” she told me reluctantly. “All traces of magic are completely gone.”

  I huffed in frustration. “And the scents in the area are stripped. There’s nothing to indicate what happened or who was here.”

  “I feel confident saying that Justin is behind this,” Austin said clearly. “He may have had help from a witch or a fae, but Justin is the one we need to target.”

  “That may not be entirely true,” I murmured as I stood and moved closer to him. “There’s something evil inside of Justin – something that could be controlling him. Even if we take him out of the equation, that darkness could simply target someone else.”

  Austin sighed but didn’t say anything.

  “It might be time to bite the bullet and ask the fae for help,” I said reluctantly.

  “Are you insane?” Ingrid snapped at me. “They’ll never help, you’ll just bring disaster down on your entire pack.”

  “What’s our other choice?” I challenged her. “Just allow someone to murder our pack one by one?”

  “No,” Austin interrupted. “It’s time to take Justin down.”

  I looked over at Ingrid. “How did you manage to get the fae influence out of your pack mates? Is there a chance we could save Justin?”

  Ingrid shook her head. “The pack members who were infected with the dark fae’s influence started a rebellion against Ragnar’s leadership. Their thoughts became twisted and angry, their behavior erratic. We had no choice but to search them out and execute them.”

  I swallowed back my nausea at the thought of hunting down and executing our own pack members. “That must have been a difficult decision to make,” I said softly.

  Ingrid looked at me with hard eyes. “The North is no place for soft hearts or weak bodies. We do what we must to survive.”

  I sighed. “Austin, if you can get the council’s approval to go after Justin, I can try to help him, but I won’t have a connection with him like I did with James. I don’t know if I’ll be able to free him of the darkness that has a hold on him.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Austin assured me. “We can finish up here if you want to take Ingrid back to the house.”

  “I would prefer to run rather than drive to your house,” Ingrid stated. “With your permission, of course?”

  “I could use a run to relieve some stress,” I added as I looked over at Austin. “Do you need the twins to stay with you?”

  Austin shook his head. “I’d prefer for them to stay with the two of you, at least until you return to the house.”

  ***

  The twins accompanied us to the back of the house, but circled around to look for anything unusual around our property. I led Ingrid to the back patio and shifted before I reached into a storage chest we had placed out there for robes that were useful in situations like this. Ingrid followed me through the door but froze when she felt the barrier pass over her. “What was that?” she asked with hostility.

  I held up a hand. “It’s a barrier to prevent anyone who means us harm from coming in.”

  She eyed me dubiously. “How’s that been working for you?”

  “Not that well,” I admitted. “There’s a lot of loopholes.” I went to the fridge to hand her a bottle of water before getting one for myself.

  “I’ve never heard of something like that,” she told me with a frown. “Where did you get the idea?”

  “Froston,” I admitted reluctantly.

  She snorted. “I doubt he helped you with it out of the goodness of his heart. It serves another purpose; I guarantee you that.”

  “Would you like something to eat?” I offered politely. Most wolves were usually starving after shifting and Ingrid probably hadn’t had a real meal since before she started her travels to come to Seaside.

  Ingrid accepted and I started to heat soup on the stove while I put together a couple of sandwiches. “How well did you know Froston?” I asked curiously. “Were he and my mother together for long?”

  Ingrid rolled her eyes. “I knew he was going to be a problem the moment your mother confessed why she had been sneaking out every day. She continued the relationship for months, but her initial intention of seeing him was merely to learn more about what she was truly capable of. He drew her in by dangling tempting bits of knowledge and before I knew it, she was pregnant.”

  “Do you think they loved each other?” I asked softly as I stirred the soup.

  Ingrid shrugged. “I doubt it. They both wanted something from the other person, but Froston was never honest about what he was getting out of their relationship.”

  “He took me to an island that he had purchased for her,” I volunteered. “He seemed like he cared about her.”

  Ingrid gave me a stern look. “He may have told you that to try and gain your trust, but you can’t believe m
ost of what he says. The fae might not lie, but they’re experts at twisting their words and manipulating others.”

  I sighed before I dished out the soup. “What really happened to my mother? No one has been able to answer that question, but I hoped that you might have more information.”

  Ingrid accepted the bowl of soup and the sandwich I placed in front of her with a smile of thanks. “Even I’m not completely sure. Our pack master banished Astrid and demanded your death, but he suspected Arminius of secreting you both away.”

  “Arminius said he initially thought that the pack master had killed both of us, but that he was now satisfied that he was innocent.”

  Ingrid nodded. “Froston came to me in search of her as well, but I always thought that he might have been behind her disappearance. Until James had come to see us in the North, I had assumed you were either dead or with your mother.”

  “But you didn’t believe Astrid was dead?” I asked curiously.

  Ingrid swallowed a bite of hot soup and shook her head. “If Astrid were dead, I would know it. I told everyone that she was, so that they would stop searching for her, but I never believed it myself.”

  “So where is she?” I asked in frustration. “And why would she leave me behind?”

  Ingrid looked thoughtful, but she didn’t answer. Before I could question her further, Mason contacted me with the bond. “Your special delivery has arrived; do you want Ingrid’s things upstairs?”

  “The blue room is fine,” I answered.

  “The guys are back with your luggage,” I announced to Ingrid as I heard the front door open and heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs. “They’re bringing it up to the guest room now.”

  “Wonderful,” Ingrid said with a smile. “Thank you for the meal, but I hope you won’t be offended if I ask to continue this conversation later?”