After that, Pearl let Rory get away with pretty much everything. Maybe that was why he was so arrogant, egotistical, and self-indulgent. Or maybe her lack of discipline just made those traits more defined. Whatever the case, Rory had been a nightmare to live with.
He became even worse when Pearl got pregnant with their sister. Rory didn’t like sharing anything, particularly Pearl’s attention. Striving to ensure Rory didn’t feel “left out,” she’d emotionally neglected Shelby. Zander suspected that had fed Rory’s bloated sense of self-importance.
Jesse played with Harley’s dark hair as he spoke to Zander. “Do you think Dale will have left you much in his will? He was unmated and had no direct descendants, but Rory somehow managed to manipulate your parents into making him their sole heir—not that there was much money left when they died, since Rory had bled them dry over the years. But he might have found a way to do the same to your uncle.”
Zander shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t spoken much to Dale over the years, so I don’t know if he was in constant contact with Rory or not.” He’d find out soon enough.
Eli, the Head Enforcer, folded his arms over his broad chest. “What’s Rory like? You said he was fucked up, but how, exactly?”
It was Jesse who answered. “I’d like to dismiss him as a dumb asshole, but Rory’s smart. Too smart. That’s why he does so well as a computer analyst. He’s not nerdy, though. He dresses like a CEO, comes across as slick and charming.”
Rory was also one of those guys who waxed his chest, back, and eyebrows—Zander would rather walk through fire than do girlie shit like that to himself.
“When he was a juvenile, our pack was wary of him,” Jesse went on. “He wasn’t quite so smooth back then, and it was easy to sense that something wasn’t right with him.”
“Even though he’s smart, he’s immature,” Bracken added. “He’s not happy unless he has a rival who he can ridicule and compete with—winning is more important to him than anything else. If someone upsets him in some way, he never lets it go; he carries it with him like a rucksack on his back.”
“He’s a spiteful piece of shit too,” clipped Jesse. “If Zander wouldn’t give him something, he’d shift into his wolf form and piss on it. Remember when you were kids and you had those pet mice, rats, gerbils, and ferrets, Z?”
Zander nodded. He’d gone through a phase where he’d wanted to be a vet, so his father had indulgently bought him lots of small pets to care for as “practice.”
“When Zander refused to give him his new Star Wars figures, Rory went down to the basement where Z’s pets were kept,” Jesse continued. “He let out the mice, rats, and gerbils. Then he let out the ferrets and watched while they killed the smaller rodents.”
Shaya’s mouth fell open. “That’s cruel.” She turned to Zander. “What did your parents do?”
“Nothing,” Zander replied. “Rory said he hadn’t let them out, that I’d done it and was trying to pin it on him. Pearl sided with him, and Jerold went along with it. Our father was submissive, and she was very dominant. She used that strength against him until he eventually learned not to question her.”
Nick’s green eyes blazed. “That kind of abuse should be rare, but it isn’t.”
“No, it isn’t,” agreed Zander. “And neither is a parent favoring one child over the others—it’s just life.” He’d long ago accepted it.
“Blood isn’t thicker than water, no matter what anyone says,” said Harley. The margay cat shifter would know that well, taking her own dysfunctional family situation into account. “Still, I’d have thought you being identical twins would make a difference. I’ve heard they’re usually pretty close and feel each other’s pain and stuff.”
“We don’t have any kind of mystical connection.” It wasn’t hard for them to be apart, Rory wasn’t his ideal companion, they were not best friends, and they didn’t have a psychic link that told them what each other was thinking and feeling. “We do understand each other well, though—that’s why he knows how to get under my skin.”
“The only way Zander and Rory are alike is that they can both read people easily,” said Jesse. “Rory will size you up, find every hot button you have, and sense how best to manipulate you. If manipulating you doesn’t work, he’ll push those hot buttons as hard as he can. And he knows all Zander’s hot buttons. That’s why I don’t like them being in the same room.”
Ally, the Beta female and Seer, twisted her mouth as she looked at Zander. “Hell, no wonder you’re predominately calm. I’ll bet you spent your life having to keep a lid on your emotions so you didn’t give him the reactions he wanted. You’re never too happy, never too sad, never too anything . . . which I have to say is a little weird.”
Well, she’d know, thought Zander. Part of the Seer package was that she was also an empath. “He was harsher with our sister, Shelby, than me.”
Jesse cocked his head. “Will Shelby be there for the reading of the will?”
“She said she would,” replied Zander, “but I doubt it. She doesn’t go out much anymore.”
She’d been through a lot over the years, more than anyone should have to endure. He’d worried when she’d adopted Luke, her friend’s orphaned seven-year-old son, concerned it would be too much for her, but it had seemed to heal her. When Luke was later kidnapped by human anti-shifter extremists and hunted within a game reserve, she’d fallen apart.
Zander hadn’t known Luke long, but he’d considered him his nephew. It hurt to imagine what the kid had gone through. Hurt to know that Luke would have expected them to come for him, would have believed they’d save him. But they hadn’t found him, and they couldn’t even pray his death had been quick and painless. It would have been far from it.
Bracken’s uncle and Jesse’s sister had also been snatched by the same extremists. With the help of the Mercury wolves, Zander, Bracken, and Jesse had hunted down the people who ran the game reserve—both motherfuckers had suffered long and hard before dying, just as Luke likely suffered when he was set free in the wild, hunted like an animal, and then killed.
“Having heard about Rory,” began Ally, “I really think me and Derren should go with you.”
Bracken snorted. “You just want to see if the B&B is really haunted.”
Derren blinked. “Haunted?”
“I looked at reviews from guests,” said Ally. “There were a lot of them, and they were all good. It gets a lot of tourists and ghost hunters, since the locals claim it’s haunted.” At Derren’s scoff, she said, “You all believe in the soul, right? And you believe it vacates our body when we die. Is it such a stretch, then, to think that maybe some souls might stick around a little while?”
For Zander, yeah, it was a stretch. He just wasn’t a believer in all that stuff. Turning to Bracken, he said, “Ready to go?” The enforcer nodded, so Zander opened the driver’s door and said, “See you all in a few days.” As the pack called out quick goodbyes, he and Bracken hopped into the SUV.
In honesty, Zander wasn’t looking forward to spending the weekend around humans. He had nothing against them per se, but humans often fell into three camps when it came to shifters. They either feared shifters, were disgusted by them, or found them so fascinating that they gave them the kind of appraisal they’d give an ancient artifact. He supposed whether humans were prejudiced against shifters or not, they were often unable to see them as “people.”