Chapter 62

Helen POV

I swallowed his words and looked around me at the confused, disappointed looking crowd. He was right after all. They were happy to see Scott be taken down by a female wolf, by a pure coated wolf, but just not as me.

They despised me no matter my victories.

“Justin,” I said, watching my mate join the other wolves in the square. “I think I’ve made my point here today. They can still think of me as a mutt, as ugly and a reject,” I groaned, those words still stinging even if they weren’t true anymore. “This pack doesn’t deserve me as their Luna.”

A light whisper traveled through the crowed right then. I watched their faces change, their eyes brighten, like I told them all I was giving out free cash in the town square.

“Luna Helen!”

It started with one shout, then another. It was roaring through the mountain tops not, screaming and cheering and fucking pride. Moon goddess, pride has been so scarce to me before.

Randy looked to his Alpha, the two of them shrugging before coming up to congratulate me. I don’t know what happened, though. Their looks of happiness and joy had been cut loose, same as the crowd around me once cheering my name.

A sharp force pulled through my back, slicing my surface and yanking out seconds later. I could feel the blood on my skin, pouring down over my bare legs while I watched blood pull under my feet.

Scott was no longer on the ground, but instead he had stood up, gained possession of a knife, and somehow managed to lodge it right into my spine.

I hit the ground in a heavy fall, feeling Scott tap my shoulder so I would tip forward just a little and lose sense of gravity. It worked, too. Someone ran through where Scott stood, sending him flying so far out of my range of vision that I could only hear him growl in pain as he hit the dirt.

Justin made it to me first, Randy second, and a gentle looking woman third.

She watched my Lycan mate, like asking for permission, and he nodded wordlessly.

The woman pressed her hands into my back, inhaling deeply as silence struck the on watching pack. The wound sealed slow and perfect. I clung to my mate, panting every breath, feeling like death sucked me under ground and he dug me out.

It wouldn’t stop my shivering. Not when that familiar voice screamed from nearby.

“Helen!”

I cringed at the sound of my father. Scott had probably linked him to turn around the minute we descended on their pack but it had taken him awhile to make it back, my mother in short tow.

“You little bitch,” she mouthed the words, making a point to go to Scott’s aid in the dirt nearby, rolling her eyes as I had still been covered in my blood, although the wound was healed. “Do something!”

She was watching my father now. Everyone was. They both hated to see me here and more so hated that Scott was injured and I was virtually fine. It made his future Alpha look weak. I almost wished I could have beat Scott in front of my father’s eyes.

He wouldn’t be proud of me, that was a known given.

But he would have to accept my strength, my fighting spirit, and he would know he didn’t break me.

“What have you done now?”

“Nothing,” I bit, speaking to that pathetic excuse of a dad. “Your pack has been wanting new leadership. We just thought we would offer that to them.”

My father busted into laughter, waving at his pack as though to stick them on me and my mate and his Beta. No one moved though. No one even corrected my father, which was worse. He stood there looking foolish.

His face turned sour. “You really want a pathetic Luna like her?”

His focus shifted to my mate next, the distain even more apparent as it settled there.

“Really? The Devil as your Alpha? Is that how you want things?” My father sneered at his pack, the pack that everyone could tell had wanted to shift out from under his rule a long, long time ago. “Fine! Go, traitors. Whoever leaves will be my next targets, though! Remember that!”

Justin left me on the ground, standing as he cocked his brow at my tantrum-throwing father. “You and what pack, Henry?”

“I am still an Alpha, you will refer to me as such, Lycan!”

Justin mocked my father in a chuckle. “Alpha of what? Fiery Cross Pack is dead.”

In response, the crowd all moved over behind my mate, looking at me and Justin in solidarity. They had enough of my father’s berating, of his tantrums and his misuse of pack problems. I knew things were rocky before, but not as bad to watch the whole pack turn on him so quick.

“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Take my pack. Take my fucking village, I don’t care! Just know that anything you do from here on out will warrant an unprecedented attack.”

I don’t know why specifically, but he looked at me when he said attack.

“Another threat,” I mumbled.

“What did you say, rat?!” My mother pushed through the pack that had just denounced her as Luna and she still needed to grip onto control somewhere. As always, I was the easiest target. “You will beg at your father’s feet for forgiveness!”

Justin helped me to a stand; my mother being stopped by other wolves that stepped in to keep her at bay. It would be hard to do so, she was on fire at the sight of me so successful in turning her pack against her.

She spit at me but I didn’t even flinch, the searing pain in her eyes so warm and hateful.

“You’re just mad because no one loves you,” she snarled. “You are trying to prove a point. You think any of these wolves care about you? They don’t! They will turn on you too, the moment everyone here really sees how useless you are, Helen!”

I bit on a smile I knew would set her off further. “You’re mad because they see value in me, when you never could. That’s the real reason you’re upset, mother.”

“I’m not your mother,” she breathed, something she said so often but never with so much truth behind her words. I held back from asking further questions, but she saw enough confusion in me to elaborate on her own terms. “That’s right, I said it. I’m not even your real mother!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said in mighty exhale. I looked to my father, drinking my angst like it was wine he just couldn’t put down. “Is this true?”

He grinned wickedly. “Your real mother was whore. She was a tri-color, a pathetic little mutt that I was fated to. When she had you, I could see how weak she was just in childbirth. She would never make a good Luna for me.”

I choked on his words with a tight throat.

He continued anyways, “I took pity on her at first, taking her sister as my mate but I still gave her a pack to stay in,” he said, nodding to my false mother. “She seduced me once and got pregnant with you after I had already had Diana with my real Luna, Kelley. I kept you as a worthless maid and rejected your mother from my pack.”

Even through all of this horrible information, I only wanted to know one thing.

“Where is my real mother, then?”