Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (2 page)

“He
did
tell us he’d fashioned a blood curse to avenge his mate, but didn’t provide any detail beyond that. At least not to me.” He gave Remy a pointed look. “Joaquin had private conversations with my father that I was not privy to. As the story goes, Joaquin managed to get himself killed days after our meeting in the Battle of Avaí.”

Alcaeus turned to me then, most likely to see if I was still awake and paying attention. “Now, because my father and I happened to be amongst the last, if not
the
last, of our kind to see Joaquin alive, a few years later we became prime suspects in the Salvatella pack’s witch-hunt to retrieve the Alpha blood magic of Joaquin. You see, three years after Joaquin’s passing, a baby werelock was born possessing many of the same characteristics and abilities Joaquin had displayed as an infant, and then some.” He jerked his head in Alex’s direction.

Alex was standing still as a statue by the fireplace, his arm draped casually over the mantle, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed upon the floor.
Damn it! Down, girl!
I drew my eyes back to Alcaeus.

“As Remy mentioned, they accused my father and I of somehow taking Joaquin’s powers from him before he died, and then passing them to Alex. Crazy, right?” Alcaeus spread his arms wide, palms up in disbelief. “Like I’d just toss away super badass powers like that on a baby brother?”

He sighed, tugging at the back of his neck. “Obviously, we denied their outlandish claims. We’d never had any quarrel with the Salvatella pack prior to that, so we did what we could to reason with those fuckers, despite their incendiary allegations.

“But they wouldn’t let it go. And unfortunately, the Salvatellas, being the natural-born assholes they are, went straight to spilling blood. Alex’s.”

Alex’s?

As in
baby
Alex’s blood? My heart tripped a beat. I quelled the impulse to raise my hand again, as I fought to keep my errant eyes from seeking Alex’s face. I set my sights on my uneasy chair companion’s profile instead.

“But … but Alex was just a baby?” I questioned under my breath. “He can’t actually mean … when he was a baby? Right?”

Kaleb coughed into his fist, nodding rapidly, his nervous eyes focused forward.

“Yes, Milena.” Alcaeus’ rich voice echoed through the room, offering the clarification I’d sought from Kaleb. “The Salvatellas went after
baby
Alex.”

I swallowed.
Don’t look don’t look don’t look
 
…

But I did. He looked so troubled … so far away. So lost. So inconceivably …
hot
.

Damn it! I should’ve just stuck out the temporary dog blindness thing a little longer. Would it be too much to expect him to throw a shirt on if he had to look all forlorn and tormented like that? As it was, he stood by the hearth appearing every bit the perfect portrait of an anguished, misunderstood bad boy.
An anguished bad boy with an eight-pack.

Well, he wouldn’t win my sympathy vote, no matter how well defined his abs or tragic his childhood tale! My inner bitch, however, already yearned to kiss and lick his whole face until he cracked a smile. Such a humiliating cliché she was proving to be.

I needed another cookie.

“Their initial attempt on Alex’s life was alarming, but a failure, of course,” Alcaeus continued. “It succeeded in sparking a long, bitter war between the Reinoso and Salvatella packs, though, as the Salvatellas proved tirelessly persistent in their vicious and increasingly crafty, covert attempts on Alex’s life over the next several years.”

My eyes seemed to possess a will of their own, repeatedly straying from Alcaeus to sneak peeks at Alex’s face. His eyes remained downcast and he appeared lost in his own thoughts while Alcaeus relayed yet more evidence to support why I was going to wind up dead meat at the hands of the Salvatellas if I didn’t somehow convince Alcaeus to keep the power that went with this cursed blood of Joaquin running through my veins.

“Many loyal Reinoso pack members died protecting Alex’s safety before he’d taken his first steps. ’Course, we took out our fair share of their operatives and underground army as well. Regrettably, part of the fallout from the feud was that eventually it bred mistrust within our own pack, as the Salvatellas were successful in either buying off or coercing a few members of our own into assisting them with their twisted mission.” Alcaeus delivered his next words to me. “Helps at least to explain how Alex got to be so paranoid, eh?”

Sadly, it did help to shed light on why he was so controlling and unreasonable all the time. He was born into a world where enemies were trying to kill him from day one.
But it still didn’t excuse his behavior
.

“As a pack we became less tolerant of anything remotely perceived as a betrayal, exacting swift judgment and rigid penalty for any and all acts of treason. But it wasn’t enough to thwart their efforts.” Alcaeus’ eyes lowered to a spot on the chair beside me. “During Alex’s fifth year, he was attacked during the night by one of his own nannies. A human nanny.”

I swallowed and shifted in my seat as Alcaeus’ eyes found mine. I knew Alex’s parents had died when he was five years old.

“Unbeknownst to us, or to the young human woman in question, for that matter, she had fallen completely under the control of several powerful Salvatella family members,” Alcaeus explained, “as they had at some point gained access to her and conjured a means that would allow them to use her as a vehicle through which to channel their powers when the opportunity was ripe to attack.”

I felt nauseous as my brain wrapped itself around this disturbing intel.

“In that sense she was the perfect envoy and agent of destruction, because while we were vigilant about the human help we allowed near Alex, we also viewed them as far less of a threat than werelock and werewolf staff, due to the simple fact that a normal human wouldn’t have possessed the means to damage five-year-old Alex.”

Alcaeus’ smile was rueful. “And certainly not this quiet, sweet human girl who had fast become Alex’s favorite playmate.”

My insides twisted in revolt at the direction I suspected this story was going. I regretted eating so many cookies now.

“Controlling a human is not as simple and straightforward as Remy makes it look with his bevy of sexy pets, however,” Alcaeus said with a halfhearted smirk and a wink at me. “And it becomes messier long term if emotions are complicated and conflicted.”

“Fuck’s sake, I do not control them and you know it!” Remy leapt from his seat. “And most certainly never in the manner the Salvatellas were controlling and using poor Luiza,” he protested, appearing thoroughly appalled at the implication any similarities might exist between his methods for compelling humans and the Salvatellas’—
causing me to wonder if he even realized how well his second statement contradicted his first declaration
.

“You have never understood, Al! You and your fucking rudimentary comprehension of human emotions—”

“Okay, okay.” Alcaeus held his hands up in surrender. “Just trying to lighten the mood for Milena’s sake. Pray excuse my sophomoric sense of humor and underdeveloped emotional intelligence.”

“Ah, go fuck yourself,” Remy grumbled under his breath as he reclaimed his seat, growling quietly to himself as he gripped the armrests of the wooden and leather armchair he was sitting in in a way that exuded barely suppressed violence. I was learning that Remy had a major hot button—and it was everything and anything to do with the Salvatella clan.

Alcaeus chuckled before clearing his throat and plastering a more serious expression on his face as he returned his attention to me. “Remy inherited his touchy-feely skills from his late mother, Renata, whose ability was quite remarkable, in fact.

“And it was most likely Renata’s gift of emotional awareness that saved Alex’s life, as we’ve come to believe she must’ve sensed the confusion and emotional conflict within Luiza when she was called upon to carry out the Salvatellas’ latest assassination scheme, and that Luiza’s strong emotional response was what awakened Renata from her slumber and prompted her to rush to Alex’s room in time to intervene.”

A loud cracking noise and splintering of wood drew my attention to a fuming, feral-eyed Remy, who’d torn the armrests clear off of his chair. He looked murderous—not at all like the Remy I was accustomed to.

But Alcaeus ignored Remy’s reaction, as if nothing was amiss and Remy hadn’t just destroyed a very nice piece of furniture. Alex remained motionless at the mantle, still staring trance-like at the floor. Kai, who was sitting closest to Remy in a matching wooden and leather armchair of his own, and who had been looking rather distracted himself this whole time, raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head ever so faintly.

“Unfortunately, upon confronting Luiza, Renata became the replacement target for the lethal magic the Salvatellas were channeling through the human girl that was intended to kill Alex,” Alcaeus reported. “My father heard Renata’s scream, followed by Luiza’s, but by the time he and the guards entered Alex’s bedroom moments later, Renata and Luiza were both dead, and five-year-old Alex was still furiously dismembering his former favorite playmate and unwitting Salvatella pawn.”

I gasped aloud before I could quash the reflex, and then proceeded to cover my mouth with both hands when the entire room turned to look at me.

“I doubt Renata ever even saw what was coming until it was too late,” Alcaeus appended quietly.

“None of us would’ve seen an attack like that coming!” Remy vented. “Not from a powerless little human girl. No one had ever devised an attack of that magnitude through a human puppet before.”

“Al was only making an observation, Remy,” Kai jumped in and moderated, “a supposition of events as we believe they occurred. It was hardly intended as a criticism of Renata’s abilities or any perceived lack thereof.”

I got the sense from Kai’s calm intervention that this line of demented discussion had perhaps played out a few times before.

“Exactly,” Alcaeus chimed in. “We’ve all always been in complete agreement that Renata’s actions saved Alex’s life.”

Remy tossed the broken remains of his wooden armrests onto the floor. “Well, I should think so! Considering your mighty Alpha Antonio was MIA and did absolutely nothing to save Alex’s life or the life of my mother despite his legendary power and his sworn duty to protect them both.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, why can’t you fucking get over it already?” Alcaeus threw his hands in the air at his stepbrother, hackles clearly raised in affront at the attack on his late father. “He was a heavy sleeper for a werelock, okay? I think he fucking apologized and suffered enough for that tragic flaw in the brief space of time between mourning the loss of his mate and dying of grief himself!”

“Because you still don’t get it!” Remy roared back, arising to his feet again. His golden eyes flashed with sudden savagery. “None of you do! One hundred and thirty-six fucking years later, you and your whole pack still consider my mother’s abilities a joke and view her as the weak link mate whose death killed your precious Alpha Antonio.”

“Nobody
views it that way, Remy,” Alcaeus hissed.

“No? If you truly valued my abilities and my mother’s you wouldn’t persist in referring to them as our ‘touchy-feely skills,’ ” he challenged. “You wouldn’t state that it was ‘most likely’ her abilities which saved Alex’s life when you know without a fucking doubt that it in fact was!”

I wasn’t sure where all this venom and bitterness was coming from all of a sudden, but I had to hand it to Remy, he
was
kinda sorta making some good points here, near as I could tell.

“Even Alex views our mother as the weak link who cost him both of his parents.” Remy laughed derisively. “When our mother’s ability was what saved his life! If he didn’t, he wouldn’t steadfastly ignore and deny her powers that we all know had to have passed to him, because they sure as shit didn’t pass to me! My abilities have
never
increased since her passing.”

Yowza!
He seemed especially resentful about that last part.

But … wait a fucking minute … was he saying Alex had inherited touchy-feely skills from his late mother?
In what alternate universe?

“And he wouldn’t have so callously rejected and despised Milena at first sight for being a mate he considered abhorrently weak and who he feared could only get him killed the way our mother did his father,” Remy deduced.

“That’s not true,” Alex finally spoke up in an emotionless monotone I couldn’t help but find outrageously ironic, given the circumstances and charges so passionately being thrown about by his enraged half-brother.

“Shut up, Alex!” Remy snapped. “
I
recognized Milena as special from the start,” he proceeded to claim, smacking his fist against his chest. “
I
knew something was wrong with her earlier in the gardens before Alex even had a fucking clue!” he professed to the room. “I am
always
the first one to sense the major events approaching and to feel what danger lurks ahead. Just like my mother! And yet Alex gets to be Milena’s mate? And Alcaeus gets to hold her amazing powers and guide her transformation?”

“Do you have a goddamn point you plan on making anytime soon?” Alcaeus snarked. “Because we have slightly bigger issues to discuss this morning than your ongoing Jan Brady complex.”

Kaleb stifled a bark of laughter at the Jan Brady quip. He was definitely American, I decided. And this family feud unfolding had all the makings of a
Jerry Springer
episode … but with werelocks, and more expensive chairs broken.

“My goddamn point,” Remy seethed, stalking closer to Alcaeus and Alex while gesticulating wildly, “is that poor Milena is doomed if all she has is the two of you insensitive, emotionally stunted Neanderthals to look after her and protect her from the Salvatellas! Never mind the fact Gabriel Salvatella’s abilities more closely resemble mine than they do either of yours. Neither of you know how to handle a human female. Alex, you managed to bruise Amy practically everywhere you touched her, every single time that you fucked her, and you never even realized you were doing it!” he charged.