Savage by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online Page A

here forty or fifty years ago?”
    He nodded. “My great-aunt has spoken of it often. She grew up around here. That’s why I’ve been to the Fenner house before.” He added the last sentence as if he were giving in to her request to explain his past to her.
    Katelyn’s pulse sped up. “She did? How? Is she a Fenner? Are you?”
    He grimaced; she’d clearly insulted him. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he said. “She didn’t receive the blessing until she was older . . . like you.”
    “But who is she?” she persisted, and when she watched his face glaze over, she realized that it didn’t really matter at the moment. “Did she ever say who she guessed could have been behind the killings?”
    “She didn’t have to guess. It was a werewolf, and she survived an attack by the beast. That’s how she first learned of our world.”
    “She was bitten ?” Katelyn gasped.
    “Just deeply scratched.”
    She blanched at the memory of her grandfather’s scarred back. Two close calls. Why hadn’t she gotten off that easily?
    Because you got out of the truck , she reminded herself. You left the party alone because you were mad at Trick, and you blew it . A wave of bitterness soured her stomach, but she pressed on.
    “Did she ever figure out who scratched her?”
    He took his eyes off the road again to look at her. His eyes gave her chills as he stared her down like the wolf — correction , werewolf — that had leaped on the hood of Trick’s car on her first day of school at Wolf Springs High. She should have taken that as a warning, been more careful.
    He said, “It was the Fenner alpha, of course.”
    Katelyn felt like she was freefalling, and she dug her fingers into the spongy material of the armrest.
    “Lee?” she whispered.
    “No,” Magus said abruptly, turning back to the road. “Tommy Ray Fenner. Lee Fenner’s father.”
    She blinked, processing that information. No one had ever talked about Lee Fenner’s father. But Cordelia had a distinct lack of older relatives.
    “She saw him?”
    “No, it took us years to piece it all together. By then he was dead and Lee was alpha. The matter was closed as far as we were concerned. We didn’t stop to think that sickness of the mind might run in the blood.”
    She felt off-balance, as if the vehicle were spinning around her. Sickness of the mind . A pack forced to endure the rule of more than one demented Fenner?
    “Did that . . . does your great-aunt have problems? With her mind?” She was trying to be tactful, but she supposed it was a little late to try for niceties.
    “No,” he retorted. “We would never have permitted her to become a Hound of God if that were the case.”
    “Do you think Lee’s father was the one who killed all those people fifty years ago?” She hesitated. “Do you know about that?”
    “Of course. Without a doubt.”
    She wasn’t sure which question he was answering.
    “That’s likely why Lee challenged and killed Tommy Ray. We believe Lee’s brother Tyler opposed the challenge.”
    “Tyler. I’ve never heard that name before,” she said.
    He slid her a glance. “Tyler Fenner. The father of Justin and Jesse Fenner. Who died mysteriously.”
    She shuddered. Lee had killed his own father. Justin had as much as accused Lee of killing his father, Tyler. What kind of man could do that? What kind of world required that?
    I think my grandfather killed my father , she thought. And I think my mom knew something. So what kind of people does that make us? What kind of a family are we?
    “The recent maulings,” she said. “Did Lee do that?”
    “So I would assume. However, we have a bigger situation to worry about,” he replied.
    She stared at him, but quickly had to look away when his eyes locked with hers. Locked onto her. “‘For the Lord will send out His warriors, and they will cut down the unrighteous. They will smite the disobedient, and the sinners will sink into the earth,’” he said. “Thiess.”
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