Everything That You Are (22 page)

His office was spacious but already filled with the company of Sam and Michael’s Betas. Nick and Dennis stood in front of several bookshelves that were stacked from floor to ceiling and took up most of one wall. Joseph stood at the opposite wall, leaning against a filing cabinet, and Sam sat in a recliner to the side of Michael’s desk.

Michael took
Kaden
to the loveseat resting against the far wall across from the door and sat him down.
Kaden
expected him to take a seat next to him but the man gave him a tender kiss on the forehead then continued to his desk chair, where he sat down stiffly.

Kaden
felt suddenly very vulnerable and started to pick at a hole in the knee of the jeans, keeping his gaze on his lap. The silence was so ominous that
Kaden
almost jumped when the deep, resonant voice of his mate broke the stillness.

“Okay, baby. We’ll try to make this as short as possible. Because of your power, I need you to tell us everything you know without anyone touching you so that we know you’re not being influenced by another’s emotions.”

Kaden
supposed that sounded like a valid reason, but all he could think about was how bereft he felt without the solid feel of his mate beside him, touching him.

“Why don’t you start with who the killers are?”

Kaden
took a breath and let it out slowly between his teeth. He could do this. It was the right thing to do, even if it did put him in danger.
Even if he would have to run again.

He repeated that to himself as he answered, “Thomas, Brook and Daniel.” He looked up at Michael, but knew by the sober expression on the man’s face that he would need to do this on his own. “They’re Alpha Gregory’s Betas. Their clan is located here in Missouri, up north.”

“Sorry, but if I can interrupt for a moment, that doesn’t make any sense,” Dennis spoke up. “All three of us,” he made a broad gesture to include himself, Joseph and Nick, “searched Stephen’s place and found several contact numbers belonging to guys I did background checks on and they were all located out of state, and most of them were human. I was also able to look up his bank statements over the past few years and found that he was receiving funds from many different domestic accounts, though I wasn’t able to identify who those accounts belonged to.

“From what I gathered, Stephen was trading goods for several different people of influence. Are you saying that an Alpha put a hit on a wolf dealing with humans? If that’s the case, we could be dealing with something that’s a little more serious than just a clan issue.”

Kaden
felt his hopes of keeping the information he had to a bare minimum vanish as he listened to Dennis’ words. While he appreciated the fact that the man was smart enough to figure all of that out without any outside help, he also cursed him for it. He could feel the overwhelming sense of despair and pain grow in his chest and felt a single tear escape as he looked up at Michael and tried to memorise the features of the only man he had ever loved.

He gave himself only seconds, though, before falling into the headspace he always retreated to when he was forced to deal with something he knew he couldn’t handle. It settled over him like a familiar cloak and he took comfort in the emptiness he found there.

Nothing could touch him here. There were no emotions, no dreams,
no
pain.

Kaden
stood and walked to the window behind the loveseat, staring unseeingly out at the expanse of grass and trees, and started from the beginning.

“After I discovered my power, I tried to keep people from touching me, which was easy for a while, but I had to get a job. It took me a bit, but eventually I learnt to harness the emotions of others and keep them inside me, so that when I…when I sold myself, I wouldn’t project the emotions of whoever was touching me too far. It didn’t always work, especially if the emotions were powerful.”

Kaden
shivered as he remembered the night this had all come about. “When I saw Michael, I was drawn to him. I felt like I could finally know what a home was if I just made him notice me, but…well…Alpha Gregory saw him reject me. He knew that if an Alpha was rejecting me, then I must be
clanless
, and somehow he knew I was part mage. He took me behind the building and he…”
Kaden
choked back a pained cry and worked to find his headspace again. “He took me back to his place after that and discovered what my power was because I couldn’t contain it. He was so strong, so demanding. I couldn’t keep his emotions inside me.

“Gregory and his Betas started to take me with them to people who they wanted to influence.
Powerful people.
Gregory would touch me and project his feelings onto them, convincing them to give him money, sign deals, offer lands that he would turn around and sell at a profit.”
Kaden
felt his voice fading and cleared his throat. He had to get through this, and he could, as long as he kept his gaze focussed on the scenery outside the window he was facing. As long as he didn’t catch the look of disgust he was sure was on Michael’s face.

“He also used me to kill someone once, just to see if he could. I was a conduit, and the emotions he poured into me crippled the man. He never stood a chance.”
Kaden
paused to take a shuddering breath. “I never met this Stephen, but if Gregory sent his Betas to kill him, he had to have been in Gregory’s employ.”

Kaden
stopped, not knowing what else to add, and a thick cloud of silence descended upon all those in the room with him. It was eerie and almost suffocating, but he was reluctant to say any more than he absolutely had to. He stayed lost in his headspace, hoping that if he ignored the rest of the story, everyone else would as well.

Of course, his luck always went from bad to worse.

“Did you try to stop him? Tell anyone what was going on?” Nick asked.

A wrenching sob tore through
Kaden’s
chest before he could stop it. He felt his stomach heave and try to rid itself of its contents as he tried desperately to regain control. He wrapped his arms around his waist in an attempt to hold himself together, and hunched his shoulders. Alone and sick to the very depths of his soul, he paused for several minutes until he managed to find that emptiness that surrounded him with familiarity, as if welcoming him home.

In a deadpan voice, he replied, “No. I’m sorry.” He turned to look into the eyes of every man in the room, knowing they probably wouldn’t believe him, and also knowing that he was saying goodbye. “Between the beatings and the starvation that lasted for days on end, being locked in a cage and used daily as a whore and a power source for him and his Betas, no.” Anger rose within him and the humiliation of what he’d been forced to suffer for years suddenly came to be too much.

“No!” he yelled. “No!” Tears flowed freely down his cheeks and his body trembled so much he thought he might shatter from the force.

He looked straight at Michael and cried, “He broke me. Every day they broke me.” He swung his glare to Nick. “And before you ask, the answer is no, I didn’t try to fight him as a wolf. My mom ran with us after my father was killed and we had to hide from all mages and
weres
to avoid the same fate. I had no one to teach me to shift, so I couldn’t fight them in were-form because that obviously didn’t happen.”

He immediately regretted the insult to Michael, but couldn’t bring himself to care anymore about how he sounded. The horror he saw on each and every one of their faces was enough. It was done. He’d played his part, and he wasn’t going for sainthood here, so it was time to leave. He would collect Missy tonight, but for now, he had to get out.

He walked to the office door and left the room as if on auto-pilot. Each step he took towards the front door of the house was made in silence, and each tear that fell at the absence of the sound of his mate running to stop him was like a knife tearing at his soul. It ripped the tattered, pathetic pieces left over from years ago until there was nothing left.

His body paused as his hand reached for the front doorknob. He absolutely hated that incessant voice at the back of his mind that told him to wait. That maybe, if he held off for just a bit longer, Michael would come for him, but it was the same hope he had held onto for the past four years, and it was time to let it go.

Kaden
scrubbed at his eyes and yanked the door open but managed to stop himself just before he childishly slammed it closed. The glare of the afternoon sun dazed him, causing more tears to blur his sight as he stumbled down the front porch and across the driveway. Before he could wipe them away, though, something solid and sharp struck the back of his skull and the blinding brightness of the sun was all he saw before the world went black.

Michael watched as his mate opened and closed the door to his office, leaving a room full of shocked men in his wake. He wanted to go after him, to force him to stay while Michael’s mind caught up to the implications of the man’s testimony, but he couldn’t risk touching him in the state he was in.

He had never before felt such all-consuming, unadulterated rage as he felt at that moment. Anger at himself for leaving his mate to be subjected to the horror he’d had to live through for years. Anger at
Kaden’s
mother for not providing for her son the way she should have, but especially anger at that son-of-a-bitch, at all those bastards, who had hurt
Kaden
.

Sam’s voice eventually broke through the roaring in his ears. “Michael, I can’t pretend to know what you’re feeling right now, but I think we need to come up with a plan, and soon. I doubt that the rest of Alpha Gregory’s clan knows what he’s been up to and we can’t afford any more deaths.”

Michael focussed on his father’s words enough to let the haze of red that clouded his vision fade. Taking in the concerned faces of the men standing in the room with him, he saw his own anger mirrored in their eyes. His hands shook slightly as he leaned his head forward and wrenched at his hair, using the pain as a sort of release for the violence swirling around in his head.

The truth had been in front of him the whole time.
The scars, the fear of people, the cryptic words here and there.
All alluding to what the boy had been through over the past several years.

How could he not have pieced it together before now? How could he have been so blind?

“I should have known. I should have searched for him harder.” He looked at his father
pleadingly,
as if the man might be able to offer him some sort of reason how he could have failed his mate so completely.

If he were being truthful, he would admit that he was also looking for censure in the man’s gaze. Here he had been blessed with a life full of people who loved him, who were willing to lay down their lives to protect his honour and safety, and all while his mate had known none of that. Michael had only added to his misery from the moment the pup had silently asked for help when they’d first met.

“Alpha Michael,” Joseph said formally. “With all due respect, sir, I think we all owe your mate an apology, but I also think Sam is right. Our self-recriminations should come later. If this Alpha Gregory is behind the murder and has been using
Kaden’s
power for years, we should take the asshole into custody and bring him before a tribunal of our clan as well as his. If what
Kaden
is saying is true, and I don’t doubt him for a second, then I’m also inclined to agree that this Gregory and his Betas have kept their clan in the dark about their…use…of the young man.”

Michael fought to gain control of his roiling emotions and pulled his head from his hands to sit back. “Yes. Of course you’re right. Dad, have you ever heard of Gregory or his clan?”

“Only in passing reference,” his father said. “From what I know, it seems the man has accrued a considerable amount of wealth over the past several years, although I haven’t heard anything about him recently. We should ask
Kaden
how long ago he managed to get away from Gregory. That will at least give us an idea about when he was using the boy so that we can more accurately track his financial transactions. It could also clue us in as to who he’s been doing business with.”

“Agreed,” Dennis chimed in. “If Gregory is dealing with humans as well as wolves, we need to find out exactly who in order to minimise exposure. As appalling as it is that one of our own would be willing to risk the secret of our existence from humans just to make a buck, it’s not the first time it’s happened. Hopefully, though, it won’t turn into the disaster it caused the last time.”

“That time it was a group from a clan up in Washington State, wasn’t it?” Nick asked. “I remember that. It didn’t end pretty.”

Michael nodded and pushed back from his desk, standing up. They were right. The situation warranted their immediate attention, which meant he couldn’t afford the luxury of anger right now. He needed to concentrate on the matter at hand.

“All right gentlemen, it looks like we have our work cut out for us. I’ll get
Kaden
back in here to see if he can give us any more information. Meanwhile, Dennis, see if you can find anything on Gregory through the ‘net. Dad, if you know anyone that might know something about the
man, that
would be great. I’ll be right back.”