“You expected the pack to close ranks around us because you told them to, because they respect you and this is what you wanted.” I spotted the damning flaw in that expectation as soon as the words left my mouth. “Do you ever think this beta gig isn’t enough for you?”

From what I had seen of Graeson, he was driven to protect those he called his own. Even when they didn’t need protecting. His biggest flaw was in failing to see how his calculated machinations pushed away the very people he tried to keep close. He had been willing to sacrifice me to protect his greater good, to bring down Charybdis, but somewhere along the line his prerogative changed. I was now one of the protected, and that meant he felt he had total control over our not-exactly-a-relationship.

“It used to be.” His fingers tapped mine absently. “A switch has been flipped in my head, and I can’t seem to unflip it.”

“Sometimes trauma can cause radical changes in behavior.”

“I can’t blame Marie’s death for this.” He rubbed a white smudge on his wrist. “I was already getting twitchy. The older I get, the worse it becomes, the more Bessemer and I clash over what’s right for the pack.”

I cocked my head at the pale spot, but he kept it covered. “What is that?” I’d noticed it the first time we met, but I had yet to ask what it meant. “Can I see?”

His fingers peeled aside, and I got my first clear look at the full design of his tattoo.

A tiny figure in white ink stood in the pitch black forest with her head tilted back and hair spilling down her back. She stared up at the sky, where the moon ought to be.

“I had it done days before she went missing,” he said softly. “It was her idea. She never did like how dark and lonely the woods looked on my arms, so I promised to ink some life into them, starting with her.”

Throat tightening in sympathy—how could he stand living where his sister had been murdered when I couldn’t stomach the sight of water not inside a bottle?—I nudged the topic away from his loss and back to warg business. “Is it normal for betas to evolve?”

“Yes.” The change in topic relaxed him and chased the pallor from his cheeks. “It makes for a difficult transition, because it means more clashes with the alpha as those same primal urges to protect and lead emerge.”

I scoffed. “From where I’m sitting I don’t see Bessemer doing much of either.”

“The alpha tendencies manifest in us all differently, and he’s a power among our kin.” A breeze ruffled his hair. “He wants the best for his people, I still believe that, but he doesn’t see that strangling their free will makes them weaker, not stronger.”