Betrayal - The Matlock Pack: Book Two

Chapter 6_Part 1 - Kadin

Friday 15 January

~*Kadin*~

“Oh, f*****g hell. Look who just walked in.”

I could hear Rowan rolling her eyes as her voice cut through the molasses in my mind, creating just enough interest in me for my eyes to lazily focus on the front door of The Gap.

Cody was standing in the doorway, holding her arms out like she wanted to hug the bar. Goddess only knew why. Nat stood behind her awkwardly, hovering half inside, half outside the open door. Where Cody looked annoyingly happy, like she always did, Nat looked bloody terrible.

I narrowed my eyes at them both as I thought back to the last time I had seen them. Nat had still been in a coma and Cody had been sitting in the chair next to her bed. I was pleased to see that the bruising that had covered Nat’s face a couple of weeks ago had faded from the angry dark purple to a now ugly pale-yellow hue. The deep shadows under her eyes weren’t from her horrific beating, though; they were from exhaustion.

She wasn’t sleeping.

I couldn’t really blame her. If I’d received the beating she’d had, I would be suffering from nightmares, too.

“Who is it, Rowan?” Briar asked, not wanting to turn around, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. She was always up for gossip, and the way Rowan had announced the new arrivals to The Gap had really piqued her interest.

“That freak that disrupted the last full moon and the i***t court jester,” said Rowan as she flicked her long, red curls over her shoulders in disgust. “I know we’re stuck with the court jester, but is there a reason the freak is still around?”

“The freak is probably sucking the alpha’s c**k. You see how he is around her?” Briar laughed, with Rowan joining in shortly after.

I fought the instinct to grind my teeth together. They didn’t understand. Neither Briar nor Rowan had been around when I’d found Nat almost lifeless at the pack’s New Year's Eve celebrations. They didn’t know about the visits I’d made to Nat’s bedside every day while she was in a coma. Come to think of it, I think Cody was the only one who knew about those visits, and I hoped it stayed that way. I didn’t need that getting back to my bastard of an uncle.

I tuned Briar and Rowan out as my eyes followed Cody and Nat heading toward us. There must have been a booth or table behind us they were headed towards. Cody nodded once as she walked past our booth, even though she surely would have expected us to ignore her.

Which, of course, is exactly what Rowan and Briar did. I felt my head dip of its own accord in response to Cody and the fingers of my right hand lifted from the table enough to offer a tiny wave back. Cody’s forehead furrowed, but she said nothing; she simply kept walking. I couldn’t tell if she was frowning at me because I waved at her or if it was just her reaction to us in general.

But if it was as a reaction to us, why would she have nodded in the first place?

I mentally shrugged and leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes, leaving Briar and Rowan to whatever the f**k they were talking about. I didn’t care. Everything they talked about just seemed rather pointless these days. I wondered if they had always been like that, or if I was just noticing it more now.

I only needed to put up with their inane chatter for another hour before I could make my excuses and get home. We’d already eaten and were now nursing a glass of our preferred alcoholic beverage of choice as they chatted. While my friends were now on their third or fourth drink, I’d ordered a single beer. Just like the amount of effort I was putting into the ongoing conversation; my heart just wasn’t in it.

As it had so many times over the last week, I let my mind drift back over the events of the past month. When Nat showed up, Uncle Spence had taken an immediate dislike to her for what felt like no reason and had ‘requested’ my help in trying to boot her from the pack, but nothing I could think of seemed to work.

Initially, I thought it would be easy to piss her off enough to get her to move out of Matlock, but she had this way of letting things that normally bothered other people just slide off her back like it was nothing. I kind of admired that about her, even though it infuriated me.

It also worried me that I wasn’t giving Uncle Spence what he wanted, because he said he’d make my younger brother, Tate’s, life miserable. And Goddess knew he had the power to do that.

Tate had lost his sight when he was a baby because of a medical condition that robbed him of his eyes. He’d adapted remarkably well because he didn’t know any different, but our folks and extended family, including Uncle Spence, had held a grudge against Cody’s mum, Doctor Auden, ever since. That venom had tainted their relationship with Tate. I mean, I assumed they still loved him and all, but there was just something not quite right.

I began noticing the differences when Tate started primary school. It was like he was no longer their problem to look after anymore. They started letting the teachers raise him, instead of taking responsibility for him themselves. I kept an eye out for him, both at school and at home, but the older I got, the more Uncle Spence was involved in my life and the less time at home I spent. It almost felt like my folks wanted my uncle to take custody of me.

They had handed off the responsibility of Tate to his teachers, now they were handing off responsibility of me to Uncle Spence. Neither Tate nor I were happy about that situation, and Uncle Spence used that to ‘request’ me to do things for him—if I didn’t do what he wanted, I’d be kept away from my brother.

So, I complied.

My brother needed me. If I wasn’t there for him, no-one in our family would be, and that was unacceptable.

No-one could stand against my uncle, not even Takeshi, our pack’s alpha. No matter what Uncle Spence did, his brother, my dad, supported him unequivocally. Nothing I said to Mum or Dad could or would change their minds. It led to some very healthy ‘discussions’, though. I resigned myself to the knowledge that such were our lives until someone killed Uncle Spence in one of the many battles that happened at the Borderlands.

No matter how bad things got, I could always hope.

It wasn’t until the fight between Nat and me in our last Capture the Flag session that I could sense things starting to change. Uncle Spence had forced me to somehow get Nat to attack me so he could prove to Takeshi and the Council that she was too dangerous to have in the pack. If I didn’t comply, he’d keep me away from Tate.

It should have been easy. With Uncle Spence training me, I was much better than everyone else in camp. I often got bored when I was sparring other people both in wolf and human forms, because, thanks to my grandfather, I had Beta blood running through my veins, which made me quicker and stronger. Even though I had never sparred with Nat, I had watched her. She was just as quick as me and I was itching to see if I could best her. Thanks to Uncle Spence’s training, she was the only one that could challenge me.

And oh, how I ached to be challenged. I wanted to prove to my family I was the best, to prove to Uncle Spence that I was good enough to be the Beta of the pack, to take over from him. Maybe then he would stand down and leave my brother and me alone.

I taunted Nat mercilessly in the Capture the Flag session, but she never took the bait. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t attack me. I knew my uncle was watching from the sidelines, just like he always was. I had to look after Tate, so I shifted and attacked her, but even then she was able to parry my attacks.

She was better than me.

From a sparring perspective, I saw it as a welcome challenge—finally someone who could really test my limits—but my uncle saw it as a complete failure.

He pulled my access to my brother as soon as Takeshi released me.

Later that afternoon, I convinced Rowan to spar with me near where Nat and her friends always sparred. I wanted to study Nat’s movements, see if I could learn from her, even if I wasn’t physically fighting her. My focus was off, because my mind was on Tate, but I could tell that Nat wasn’t pushing herself. She almost looked bored because Cody wasn’t quick enough to challenge her.

Not like I could.

And then Uncle Spence showed up.

I had no idea why he was there. He shouldn’t have been. Maybe he was trying to keep an eye on Nat? Or me?

It distracted me long enough that Rowan was able to get behind me on a simple pass. My uncle came down on me like a ton of bricks for my error, but that was nothing new. Like he said, how else would I learn? Though, I must admit, his words did sting.

He taunted almost every other sparring couple there. We all took it because he was the Beta. You don’t talk back to the Beta. Especially not when the Beta is Uncle Spence.

But then! Then! Nat started arguing with him! For the first time I could ever remember, someone other than Takeshi stood up to my uncle. And oh, it was glorious! As soon as my uncle struck out at her, she had him by the balls, gripping him so hard her knuckles were white.

I still remember the grin I had to cover as I watched him walk away uncomfortably. It was at that exact moment I knew she could teach me things. How I hoped she had applied to the Warrior Training course.

Finally, a worthy opponent. And if I couldn’t best my uncle to be Beta, maybe she could?

I had hope again!

Of course, that’s when everything turned to s**t.

Only a couple of days later, at the full moon pack run, Nat shifted into something different. Not even taking into consideration the coloured light show when she shifted, she also turned into a male wolf. I didn’t even know that was possible. I don’t think any of the Matlock pack did.

Uncle Spence took that as a perfect opportunity to get rid of her. He went to attack, but was blocked by Takeshi’s wolf, Kairu. The fight they had was incredible, unlike most of us had seen in recent history. Kairu eventually won the brawl, sending off Uncle Spence’s wolf, Scout, to lick his wounds for the rest of the night.

The very next night was New Year’s Eve. That was the night someone beat Nat to within an inch of her life.

That was the night I found her, and everything changed.

Someone had bested her.

I had seen Nat fight. I had seen how she took on my uncle, undoubtedly the second-best fighter our pack had, and won. Yet here she was, so crumpled and so small. There was so much blood, I couldn’t see how she could possibly survive. I pressed my hands to her broken form to stem the bleeding, but it wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t good enough.

My mind cartwheeled. Who could have possibly bested her? Who could have had an excuse to beat her so badly?

I automatically thought of my uncle.

She had humiliated him in front of everyone. Of course, he would go after her; he was that type of person. I had trained enough with him to know this was exactly the type of thing he would do.

And I hadn’t seen him at all during either of the fireworks sessions.

Everything pointed to my uncle being the one who had beaten Nat to a pulp. Everything fit.

It took Cody to snap me out of it. I honestly don’t know how she did it. She offered me an anchor, and I clung to her like my life depended on it.

Because maybe it did. If Nat couldn’t best my uncle, what chance did I have?

That’s why I visited her in the hospital every day. It was my daily reminder of what my uncle was capable of, what I would need to do to beat him. If she hadn’t woken up, I’d still be making daily visits to her bedside.

I owed her that much.