Emotions, to feel them, didn’t mean someone was weak.

It was to be human.

And sometimes, being human, in a shifter world, was not a bad thing.

Of course, at that moment, I was pure she-wolf as I stormed forward and grabbed the hyena by the throat. My fingers dug into him, into the soft flesh around his windpipe as I squeezed. Mother, I squeezed so hard that it was like I was trying to squeeze the answers out of him.

“Just tell us!” I screamed, and with my spare hand, I batted at Austin and Ethan, who had rushed forward from his position against the wall to come and grab me. Even Eli sat up.

Only, I didn’t let go, and the hyena’s eyes bugged as he tried to reach for any and all air he could get.

When his face was bright pink, when his eyes were bloodshot with burst capillaries, only then did I release him and snarl, “Why?”

And the second I asked, he pissed himself and wheezed, “We were under orders!”

Of course.

Matriarchal.

I glared at my men, who raised their hands in apology, and I knew they’d been pushing me to do this. Pushing me into action.

Austin had been down here a while before they’d asked me to sit in, so they’d known then that the hyenas wouldn’t answer to just anyone. That was why I was here. Not because I could discern the difference between truth and lies when they were spoken, but because these bastards would only listen to a female.

I jerked back, my feet skipping away from the puddle of piss gathering on the floor as I turned away from my men, glaring at the door as I tried to figure out a way to comport myself without turning into a shrew.

Rubbing my face on my sleeve when I realized I was drenched with sweat, I glared at nothing, at the floor, at the fucking blood spatters on the wall, before I spun around and demanded, “Whose orders?”

“Jana’s,” the hyena whispered, his head bowed and his gaze unable to reach mine. “She’s our leader.”

“She was. She’s dead,” I told him coldly. “Why would you attack us?”

“To preserve our clan,” he replied miserably. “She was our future. Without her, we are nothing.”

My brow puckered at that, and for the first time, I cast glances at my mates. They all looked sheepish, and somehow, their minds were locked down tight or vice versa, I wasn’t sure which—if I was keeping them out, or they were keeping me out.

The idea actually pissed me off more than I could say, because if they were locking me out, then they sucked.

I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck, before I tried to broadcast my thoughts. It was harder than it should be, which made me wonder if it was because of the stress I was under.

I sucked down some air, tried to calm myself down, then carefully asked, “Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” Eli snapped.

Ethan roared, “Where the hell did you go?”

“How did you do that? Don’t do it again!” Austin ground out.

The answers bombarded me, and even though not a one of them had moved, even though they didn’t reveal the truth of their distress in their expression, I saw it and felt their anxiety at how I’d locked them out.

Ironic, really. Especially with Austin, who found it harder than the others to accept that I could pluck thoughts out of his mind like I was digging for the letter ‘G’ in a tin of alphabet soup.

Not willing to answer the question, not only because I didn’t actually know how I’d done it when I’d never managed before, I rumbled, “Is he lying? Is a leader the future of a clan?”

Ethan sighed, and in his eyes, I knew he saw that I was pissed, but because he was the most rational of my mates, he accepted it and gave me what I needed most at that moment. Not a kiss or a hug, but the truth.

“It depends on the clan. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. The fact that Jana couldn’t shift, yet had to be guarded in battle and was still the leader, tells me that she was very skilled at controlling them in other ways.”

“She could see the future. Small glimpses of it, at any rate. They probably thought she was the second coming,” I reasoned gruffly.

“Verbiage aside, you might be right,” Ethan agreed. “If she sprinkled doses of the future, offered them insights that helped them grow their wealth, their prestige and position, then why wouldn’t they think the clan’s destiny rested with her?”

Accepting that because it made sense, I demanded, “Why did she think hurting us would help you?”

“Because one of her sister’s mates was destined to kill her. The other one, the younger one, we had under investigation. She had no mate. Therefore, she was safe. You have three. Powerful alphas all of them. If you died, then she was safe.”

The logic wasn’t great. Especially as none of my mates had been the one to kill the bitch.

I reached up and scrubbed my eyes. “Well, considering my mates weren’t behind her death, that tells you how powerful Jana was, doesn’t it? How well she could see into the future.”

His eyes flared at that, as he registered the truth, and small cackles whispered from the cages, a weird chuffing sound that made me realize they were communicating.

“Your clan had no ill will against the pack aside from her so-called premonition?” I inquired. “Does it really make sense that, to get to my mates, you’d attack a large pack?”

“I’m only low on the pecking order, ma’am,” the hyena rasped, ducking his shoulders, which had to hurt with the cuffs he had on his arms. “I wouldn’t know the full story.”

“Who would?”

He gulped, but twisted around, looking over his shoulder to stare at the cages, to find the one he was looking for. “Fourth row down, the one in the middle. Second row to the back, the one on the left.”

“Who are they?”

“Jana’s mate, Michael, and the other is a female, Kim, who was her second-in-command.”

“Do you know how Jana came to the clan?”

“She said she was one of the daughters Draga Krasowski offered as payment for debts outstanding. Naturally, we welcomed her into the clan.”

My mouth tightened. “All of us were payment?”

“Every daughter he had,” he confirmed, a malicious gleam in his eyes that had me backhanding him.

The act, so violent and so like my father, had me jerking back in surprise.

How many times had he done that to me? To my mother? To Jana and to Lara?

How I didn’t storm out of the room, I’d never know. I just knew that if I did, the hyenas wouldn’t respect me, and apparently, we needed that. We needed them to know I was in charge, because I was the only one they’d answer to.

No way in hell did I intend on having a bunch of hyenas moldering away in my basement, so they needed to be dealt with, and fast.

“I’m nobody’s idea of payment,” I spat.

“Any debts accrued, for which Sabina and her sister Lara cost, will be covered by the pack,” Eli intoned, and it amazed me that he sounded bored of all things. “Seeing as they’re mated, they’re no use to you anyway, are they?”

The hyena hunched his shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. You should speak to Michael or Kim.”

“Don’t you worry, we will,” Austin grumbled, before he slammed his fist into the bastard’s face, broke his nose, and knocked him out for good measure.