Chapter 196
0196
(Brady POV)
I was not happy when my father walked into my office.
We had been fighting constantly since the pack was attacked, and the fights only got nastier after I told him about my fight with Evelyn. We have had four arguments today alone.
In retrospect, I wish I had not told him about the fight with Evelyn and just dealt with the James issue on my own. I had incorrectly assumed that he would be angry at James, and that he would support me
flying to Arkansas to rescue Lily.
In fact, that assumption is 100% the reason that I told my father what happened. Otherwise, I would have
continued to try to avoid him.
Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong about how my father would react. Instead of being mad at James, my father was angry with me for threatening a pregnant woman with an alpha order. I tried to explain that I would only have used the command if Evelyn gave me no other options, but that served to
only enrage him further.
“You do not make a’threat that you are not willing to carry out,” he told me angrily. “And you never threaten the mother of your child. If you are left with no other options, you make new ones.
Then, turning to the James issue, he pulled his phone out and texted him. Right in front of me! It took James a while to respond, but when James did-saying that he had not talked to Andrew since Hawaii- my father arrogantly told me that he considered the accusation that James was involved “case closed.”
When I refused to accept that -explaining that I was still sure James was the most likely culprit- my father became absolutely enraged. He accused me of refusing to trust his instincts that James had not leaked anything to Andrew. (For my father, there are only two sins greater than incompetence: disrespecting the mate bond, and questioning his instincts.)
Then, to make matters worse, during one of our later fights about it, my father accused me of being too blinded by my feelings for Evelyn and my jealousy towards James to see what was really going on.
He even went so far as to make a formal demand that I turn the pack back over to him temporarily until we figured out where the problems were and/or until Lily was ready to take on her destiny. I knew very well what he meant by “until Lily was ready to take on her destiny”: he meant until James and Lily marked
each other. Of course, I was no more willing to turn the pack over to him than I was willing to accept that
Lily would choose to be with James.
Anyhow, this was the pending dynamic between us when he came into my office… without knocking, as
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“The test results on the chocolate came back.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
thing
My father took a seat in one of the guest chairs across from my desk. That may seem like a normal thing for him to do, but it was not. He never sat in a guest chair. Unless he was standing, he insisted on sitting in the alpha chair… even if I was already sitting in it. For my father to be sitting in the guest chair meant
something… and it was not good.
“What were the results?” I asked cautiously.
“The chocolate had technetium arsenide in it.”
I gulped as I stared at my father, not saying anything. My father stared right back at me, with concern in his eyes that was very different from the anger that I had gotten used to lately. My father and I may not be getting along right now, but if there was one thing that we could agree on, it was the need to keep Lily
safe.
Finally, after a full five minutes, I broke the silence.
“Technetium arsenide is the only substance that can be used to drug a member of the werewolf council,”
I said.
“Correct.”
“So whoever it was that hired the imposter guards, they must know about the prophecy.”
“Correct.”
I stood up and began pacing as I ran my hands through my hair.
“I have to get to Lily.”
“She is with James. She is safe.”
I stopped and looked at my father in disbelief. “How can you say that?”
To my surprise, my father did not respond to my question angrily. Instead, he just looked sad.
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