Page 57 of Ruined Wolf

I didn’t say anything as he stared at the harness, then he blinked and passed it to me. I turned it over in my hands, sad I would never meet the brave man who loved his children as much as their father had. My father had been horrific, and I’d had him my whole life. Lucas had been blessed with a loving one and had lost him too soon. There was no justice in the world. I gazed down at the harness again and turned it over.

“Lucas, I’m sorry... How exactly did they say your father died?”

“The abseiling rope, this part, frayed on a rock and snapped. When he fell, he landed wrong and broke his neck.”

I held up the end of the abseiling robe, still threaded through the carabiner on the harness. “Lucas, this rope isn’t frayed. It looks like it’s been cut.”

Lucas snatched the rope from me. “No, that’s... that’s not how... What the fuck?”

“I’m right, aren’t I? I don’t know much about ropes and climbing, but that isn’t frayed.”

It wasn’t. As Lucas swept the torch over the end, it was very clear the rope had been sliced with a knife or something sharp. There were no frayed edges at all. Lucas looked up and met my eyes, his face confused and haunted.

“You’re right, but that would mean...”

I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “Lucas, that means your father didn’t die in an accident. He was murdered.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

NOVA

Lucas stared at me, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d pushed him too far.

“That’s... not possible,” Lucas muttered slowly. “There was no one else here that night. I’d have heard them. Besides, everyone loved my dad. The only enemies he had were from the High Rocks Pack, and they couldn’t have known where he’d be.”

I nodded, but my mind was turning over. There was something else niggling at me, and I twisted the harness, trying to pin it down. The harness...

“Lucas, you said when your father fell, you remembered the sound of the torch smashing on the ground,” I said slowly, staring at the straps wound around my hands.

“Yes, it’s really clear in my mind, why?”

“Did you have a torch with you? Did you take one?”

Lucas frowned. “No, I didn’t. I thought there would be enough light coming from the entrance and down through the chimney.”

I looked up at him. “So if you didn’t have a torch and your father’s smashed when he dropped it, then how do you clearly remember what his body looked like on the ground, unless someone else was shining a torch down the chimney?”

Lucas frowned, then his eyes widened. “I can see that image as clearly today as I could just after it happened, and yes, I can see his face, his eyes... The light was coming from above. I think you’re right. If someone had cut the rope intentionally, then they would have shone the light down to make sure he was dead, but who was on the island that night who would have wanted my father dead?”

I shook my head. “It has to be someone who would have benefitted from his death. Unless...” My eyes met Lucas’s, and his face darkened.

“Ethan,” he growled, his voice low and ominous.

“It makes sense,” I agreed, feeling slightly sick at the idea. “He did become alpha after your father died.”

“And before then, he was nothing, had nothing. Now, he’s loaded and powerful. I’m going to fucking kill him,” Lucas growled.

I reached out, laying my hand on his chest. “Calm down, we don’t know any of this for sure, it’s just a theory. We can’t prove it, Lucas.” I was right, but at the same time, I remembered Ethan saying there were more than a few bodies on his way to power, and I shivered at the thought. He was a bastard, but was he sick enough to kill his own brother and then leave his young nephew to die? My wolf affirmed the suspicion, but my gentler human nature didn’t want to believe Ethan was that far gone. If he’d murdered their father, the guys would rip him to shreds, and to be honest, I’d be happy to help after everything that alpha had put me through.

Lucas stood up and paced the cave, running his hands over his head. “Fuck, what the hell am I going to do?”

I frowned, looking up at him. “What do you mean? Lucas, you need to go to the police.”

He shook his head. “No way. If I do that, it’s going to start a war. What’s the point? No one is going to believe me over my uncle, not without proof.”

“Then maybe, once we get out of here, we should find some,” I said.

I took the torch from him and cast it about the cave. The water was still high above the entrance where we’d come in, surrounding the pile of scree. The rubble piled up against one wall of the cave, the peak of it just under the chimney chute, and we’d been sitting on a flatter part with our backs against the wall. My torch passed over the gap where the chimney was, evident only by the way the beam of light disappeared up into it. It was dark outside, and no light filtered down. The beam caught the pale arrows of the rain that managed to fall all the way through the vertical tunnel, and I guessed that the storm was still raging above us. I could hear the wind, but we were so sheltered, it wasn’t loud at all. Pointing the torch down, I saw that the ground directly below the chute was soaked, so I gave it a wide berth. Getting soaked would not help our situation. I slowly swept the torch beam over the ceiling, and then down over each wall in front of us systematically. All I could make out was rough dark rock and the occasional green sheen of moss.