Adversity by Claire Farrell Page B

him
to reveal whatever was going on in his head.
    He panicked, on the edge of giving in.
I saw it in the droop of his shoulders and heard it in the
passiveness of his protest. “There’s nothing wrong with
secrets.”
    “ There is when people start
dying.” All eyes turned to me. That’s right. I didn’t have to be
the scared little girl in the corner. I deserved to play a part in
family business, too. To my surprise, Opa nodded. Had I gotten
through to him after all?
    With a reluctant sigh, he revealed that
he knew the wolf in charge, the one who was sending his pack after
us. All along, he had known exactly what was after us. He expected
us to trust him when he still hadn’t shown all of his
cards.
    “ When I was young I was
eager to run wild and find my mate,” Opa explained, “but the years
went by, and I still hadn’t found her. I would have the dreams. A
face would appear for a while, then poof, the dreams would end.
Later, they’d start back up, but this time it would be a different
face. A different girl.”
    “ How is that possible?”
Jeremy voiced my own concern.
    “ I couldn’t figure it out at
first,” Opa said. “Couldn’t understand what was going on. So I did
a lot of research and asked a lot of questions. I eventually found
out quite a bit. It took a lot of effort, but to make a long story
short, a certain group of wolves were headed by a particular alpha
who wanted to fix their pack. They had been unable to breed
properly for years. The werewolves were dying out, becoming weaker
with each new generation created. All except our family. We kept
getting stronger, and they wanted to break the line to make sure we
weren’t stronger than them.”
    I glanced at Nathan who looked as
surprised as I felt. This was big news, yet we were only hearing it
now.
    “ The wolves had a special…
tracker. She could find the mates, intuitively. I don’t know if
it’s anything like what we do. The werewolves planned to use their
tracker to find my potential mate and kill her before I found her.
Just like that. No guilt. I found the tracker, and… persuaded her to talk to me.
She told me where to find Lia and said Lia was my true mate, even
though the dreams of her had already stopped. So I found her, and I
made her mine.”
    He swallowed hard, and I exchanged a
horrified glance with Nathan, unable to even begin processing what
he was telling us. I still didn’t trust him. From the way he spoke
and the agitation in his hands, I was sure he wasn’t giving us the
full story.
    He cleared his throat, and I wondered
if he might be making up a story in his head.
    “ Eventually, the alpha lost his
role. He was overtaken by another wolf named Vin. Vin wanted to
breed his own wolves, and he was convinced that the curse was
actively selecting women who were capable of breeding with
werewolves. He thought we were essentially stealing potential breed
mates for his wolves. But he lost his tracker, so he had no way of
taking the potentials away from us anymore.”
    “ That’s sick.” I wanted to
vomit. How had he persuaded the tracker? How had this Vin wolf lost
his tracker? Because of Opa? Did he kill her? The whole thing was
sleazy and gross and overwhelmingly new.
    “ Their werewolves will die
out. I can understand why he would take desperate
measures.”
    It was official. My grandfather was a
complete stranger to me.
    “ Well, I can’t.” Nathan
looked as repulsed as I felt. “And we could have used this info
ages ago. This is madness. If our mates die we’re assigned a new
one? What a load of crap!”
    “ No, no.” Opa shook his head
fervently. “Only if you haven’t connected yet. Haven’t bonded. The
curse has to continue, one way or another. At least until it’s
broken.”
    Ding-ding . Amelia, get a move on. The
curse wasn’t the wonderful thing I had once imagined it to be
because it led to misery, broken families and death. It had to
go.
    “ I still don’t get why they’re
doing this.”