The Lost Pack (Paige) novel Chapter 209

** Paige’s POV **

Silence drops over the group.

My heart slows, and for the first time since we walked in, I feel something like peace.

“I am Jaxon’s mother,” I say simply. “And the woman you underestimated.”

He laughs once, humorlessly. “You think you are terrifying now, do you? Just because you have some party tricks with lights and a pack of dogs at your back.”

Callen grins. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”

Greg ignores him, eyes locked on me. “What did you do to them?” he demands suddenly. “To my friends.”

I frown. “Your friends?”

“The men who went after you in the forest,” Greg says.”

You remember them. You will have seen them. The ones with the guns, the ones you set your mutts on.”

My stomach flips at the memory.

“They went out there after you,” Greg continues. “They were good men. Strong and focused. They knew what they were doing. They had done it before. They had dealt with wolves before. But when they came back…” He trails off, and for the first time I see actual confusion on his face. “They were wrong, quiet and shaky. Refused to step foot near those woods again. They told me not to get involved anymore, that I should cut tjes and run. They looked at me as if I were the one who had done something bad. What did you do to them, Paige?”

Everyone looks at me.

I remember the light. The way it spread through the woods like a tsunami of cleansing fire that night.

I don’t flinch. “I took their hatred,” I say quietly. “The rest was theirs all along.”

Greg stares at me as if l am speaking another language.

“You are insane,” he scoffs. “This is insane. You are all insane.”

He points at my mates. “They have done something to you. Turned you into something unnatural. Normal people do not glow, Paige. Normal people do not talk like that.”

Ryder’s voice is a low rumble. “You lost the right to talk about what is normal for her the moment you chose your cause over her safety.”

“Says the one that knocked her up and left her for dust,” Greg laughs harshly. “Look at you all. Playing house in the woods. Sharing a woman. Pretending you are some kind of family. Do you hear yourselves? I’ve been the one who supported her and raised that little demon spawn while you ran around howling at the moon and ruining people’slives. She was my wife, and still is legally.”

“Correction.” Parker cuts in. “She was your possession.

You never treated her like a partner, just a resource you were entitled to. That is not a marriage. That is captivity.”

“No one asked you,” Greg snaps. “I do not even know who you are.”

“I am the one who held her together when you let her break,” Parker says simply. “That is who l am.”

Something burns in my chest, and my power responds, golden light blooming briefly. Greg flinches when he sees it.,

Ronnie steps forward quietly. “Paige,” he murmurs. “You have enough information. You don’t need more from him.

Anything else we can gather from the hunters themselves.”

He is right. Greg is trying to taunt us, to push one of my mates to react so he can prove a point. I step closer.

Greg goes rigid, stumbling back until his back hits the wall of the hallway.

“Stay away from me,” he says. “I am not like them. I am not like the other hunters. You can’t do whatever you did to them to me.”

I look at him for a long moment, at the man I once thought I loved. The man I chose because he seemed safe and stable. I lift my hand anyway.My fingers brush Greg’s forearm, and light surges. It doesn’t flare violently or explode outward. It simply seeps under his skin.

I wait, and I feel it…. nothing.

No deep darkness. No outside corruption. No hatred that does not betong to him. Just a lifetime’s worth of small, selfish choices. A pattern of cowardice. A brittle shell of ego wrapped around a hollow core.

He was never poisoned. Never controlled. He chose this.

1 pull my hand back, and the light fades, leaving him panting slightly, and his eyes wide with fear.

“What did you just do to me?” he whispers.

“Nothing you did not already do to yourself,” I say quietly.

“You are still you, Greg. That is the problem.”

He stares at me as if I have become something unrecognisable. Maybe I have. Maybe that is the point.

“You do not have power over me anymore,” I continue.”

Not over my choices. Not over my future. And you have no claim over my son.”

“You cannot keep Jaxon from me,” he spits. “I raised him. I was there for his first day at nursery, his first day at school. You can’t erase that.”

“I am not erasing anything,” I reply. “I am protecting him.

There is a difference.””You can’t do this. The courts will not let you. Social services will not let you. The hunters will not let you. You think you can just run off to,some wolf band camp and hide?”

Ryder steps forward until he is almost chest to chest with Greg. His eyes are pure gold now, his wolf close to the surface.

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