Into the Light Read Free Page B

inherit her magic if you kill her,” he tried again.
    “You’re right,” Quentin surprised him by saying. “You will.”

Chapter 2
    Hell of a way to figure out his father’s grand plan. Quentin didn’t want the lightbearer’s magic for himself—he wanted it for Tanner. In a stroke of shocking genius, Quentin had at some point come to the realization of his own mortality. The magic would be wasted on him, he determined, because he was growing too old to manage this large pack of carnivorous shifters.
    So give it to Tanner instead. Made perfect sense.
    The process would also cement Tanner’s position within the pack, and would prove to the world that he really was Quentin Lyons’ prodigy in every sense of the word.
    Tanner wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the plan. He considered simply leaving again, but he felt honor-bound to stay. If he left, they would kill the lightbearer anyway, and she’d done nothing to deserve such a fate. Nothing other than escape from what she considered her boring life, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.
    Damn it, he had to stay.
    This wasn’t how he intended for his life to play out. In truth, when Tanner left the pack ten years ago, he’d gone just far enough to be out of his father’s reach, just far enough that he could integrate himself into human society and separate himself from the pack. His intention had been simple: to live his life, on his own terms. Without the pack, without the psychosis of his father’s beliefs hanging over his head.
    They found him periodically, over the years, just as they had today. Until today, Tanner had steadily refused to return to the pack, and just as soon as the messenger left, he packed up and moved. Again.
    It was hard for a shifter to leave the pack. Shifters were by nature pack-like creatures. They did not like to be alone. They thrived in an environment that lent itself to close quarters, to regular intrusions by other people.
    But Tanner made it work. It was better than turning into his father. Except now that was exactly what his father intended for him to do.
    Quentin waited until just before dusk to pull the lightbearer out of her underground prison. “She’ll have a little light to regenerate her magic,” Quentin explained. “But not enough to escape before you kill her.”
    Despite his verbal assurance, Quentin ensured her wrists were bound by iron chains. Just in case.
    The pack master summoned his pack to a mandatory meeting. While they waited for the pack to gather, Tanner stood off to the side, next to the manor house, and watched his family and friends pour onto the grounds. Some caught sight of him and hurried over to welcome him back. Others averted their gaze, probably feeling guilty for accepting his father’s ways. Shortly before he left the pack, Tanner had tried to convince those he felt closest to, to come with him, to start a new life out from under Quentin’s thumb.
    Not even his own mother would take the chance.
    “He’ll kill us all, Tanner. You go. He’ll let you go, because you are the one person in this world he remotely respects. But the rest of us, we don’t have that choice.”
    Tanner doubted Quentin’s allowing him to leave had anything to do with respect. The only one Quentin ever respected was himself. Egotistical bastard. So much so that he never stopped believing Tanner would return someday.
    “You’re just sowing your wild oats,” he’d said seven years ago when he arrived on Tanner’s doorstep himself, instead of sending one of his messengers. “You’ll be back. You’re pack. No one leaves the pack. Especially not the future pack master.”
    Fates be damned, was Quentin right? Here he was, ten years later, back in the pack and waiting for his father to introduce the fabled lightbearer—and expecting Tanner to kill her.
    Tanner’s childhood best friend, Freddy, and his mate, Lisa, stepped up to greet him. Freddy held a young female pup in his arms. Lisa’s belly was fat with