She stopped, her hands shaking. Danko cut in. “Why don’t you sit down and tell us?”
Gwenola nodded. “Thank you.”
Zohar pushed his food away, focusing on the woman as she sat opposite Danko. “Jermaine always had his eyes on the Alpha position, but he was never strong enough to take it from my father. He was a good looking young man though, and I was a young and stupid girl when he caught my eye. It wasn’t until it was too late I realized I was just part of his damn plan to get his hands on the Pack.”
She stopped, heaving in several large gulps of air and for the first time Danko saw the depth of her despair as tears filled her eyes. He could feel her pain as he urged her to carry on. “You were young and not the first, nor the last, girl to be caught out by love, Gwenola.”
Her eyes found his in a thankful look. “I suppose, but I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
Danko saw her struggle to carry on and used his years of working with victims to help her. “Gwenola, why don’t you tell us everything? Take your time, and start at the beginning. Please, believe me when I say we’ve heard just about every horror story there is. So, don’t think you’ll be shocking us in any way. We’re here to help and maybe, if we know the background as to how the Pack got to this stage, it will aid us in moving forward.”
Gwenola gave him a sad smile. “All right, I’ll try . . .”
Gwenola looked over at Zohar then down at her hands in her lap, taking a large breath in before she continued. “Anyway, Jermaine had been planning things for years. He had Marlon and several of his other men as backup but he needed to get in here, and I was that way in. Plus, to be accepted by the Pack afterward, he needed me by his side. So, he courted me, wooed me until I believed he loved me, adored me, and we mated and we moved in here with my father. My mother had died in an accident barely a year before so my dad was a little preoccupied, otherwise I’m sure he would’ve realized the deception.”
Again she stopped, the retelling of the story obviously painful. Zohar’s face his usual inscrutable mask as he stared at her so it was left to Danko to coax the story out of her. “What happened?”
“It was only two days after we’d mated, or rather, two nights. I woke in the middle of the night to find him gone from our bed, so I got up to go look for him and what I found is something that I’ll never forget.” Her hand flew to her throat as if the words were painful as she spoke them aloud. “First, I saw Marlon on the landing outside my father’s room, which scared the hell out of me. He should never have been in our home, but there he was, all cocky and when I opened my mouth to ask him what he was doing there he slammed me up against the wall and told me to shut up or he’d take pleasure in doing it for me. The next minute Jermaine walked out of my dad’s room with a knife in his hand, blood dripping from it and a huge smile on his face.”
Her words caught in her throat as she fought to control herself. Zohar snarled and Danko couldn’t stop the curse that flew from him. “Fuck!”
“When he saw me he came over and ran his tongue over my cheek before whispering, ‘I’m your Alpha now. You say one word about this and I won’t punish you, well, not at first. No, my sweet Gwen, I’ll start by gutting your best friend, then the next, and the next. And while I’m doing that I’ll allow Marlon and his friends to fuck you every which way, darling. By the time I get around to you, you’ll wish you’d never opened your fucking mouth.’ Then he laughed in my face, turned to Marlon and told him to prepare the Pack for the sad news the Alpha had died and that he, Jermaine, was now in charge.”
Zohar’s body was ramrod straight in his seat, anger flowing from him in great waves as Danko growled. “Gwenola, if we had this information earlier, we would never have allowed him to leave.”
“I know, but Katel is too fragile and I couldn’t have her see any more violence.”
Danko could barely contain his anger but he conceded her point. “I understand you were only thinking of your child. So, what happened next?”
Gwenola’s face flushed scarlet, her eyes dropping to her lap. “I was barely eighteen and had led a sheltered life and I’m ashamed to say I did nothing. Well, the first couple of days afterward I was in shock, and then it was too late. He kept me almost under lock and key. He told the Pack I was in mourning and inconsolable at the loss of my father so my absence was easy to pass off. Any other time I was always accompanied by one of his men, usually Marlon, so I had no chance to say anything.”
Zohar finally joined the conversation. “Typical tactics in the situation. Divide you from the Pack and alienate you so you feel alone and powerless.”
“Exactly, that’s how I felt, powerless to do anything and things went from bad to worse so fast it was scary. The Pack had several good business ventures, fishing, cabin rentals, jeez, we used to even take city folks on tours of the ‘wild outdoors’ and have them catch glimpses of our Wolves. That
