Zack stormed through his parents front door, angrier than he could ever remember being. "Mother, father, where are you?" He shouted.

"In the study!" His father called out. As Zack threw open the study door he saw his mother perched on the edge of her chair, his father was stood behind the imposing desk that took up much of the space in the cosy room. As he walked in further his mother stood and started toward him a frown marring her still beautiful face.

"Son," She said firmly. "What is this nonsense about you calling a meeting to challenge your father for the Alpha position?" She demanded. "Surely he is mistaken. You would nev........"

"Just like you would never hide my mate from me Mother?" He retorted harshly. "For two years you purposely and wilfully hid the presence of my mate from me. How could you do that to her? How could you do that to me? And I haven't even begun about the conditions she has been living in, if you could even call what she has endured as living. What were you both thinking?" He all but screamed at them.

"Don't you dare take that tone with me boy!" His dad barked. "I am you father and your Alpha and you will show me respect!"

His mother, her face red with either anger or shame, he wasn't sure which and at that moment he didn't care which, sucked in a shocked breath. "Son, surly you understand why we made the choice's we did." She said, confusion clear in her voice. "She is totally unsuitable for the mate of Alpha heir. She is a no one. She doesn't have the strength to fulfill the duties it would entail. You are far better off without her. We will find you a suitable mate, one who......."

"Can you even hear yourself mother? It isn't up to you to find me a mate! I have a mate. One who has been here all along. Did you know what was happening to her? Did you know he was abusing her?" He asked.

His mother turned her head away, looking at her mate, and he had his answer. "Oh my God! You did! You knew what he was doing to her." He growled. "How long have you known? When did it start? When she realised I was her mate? Before?" He roared at them.

"It doesn't matter when it started." His father said. "What matters is what we do now. Obviously you will have to rescind your challenge, I can't have the pack thinking there is discord within the alpha family."

"Discord? You mean you are worried the pack will find out what you did? That you allowed a member of your pack to be beaten for years and did nothing to stop it!" His father blanched looking away, guilt showing on his face for the first time.

"What?" Zack demanded. "What aren't you telling me?"

His mother moved to stand beside her mate. "What else could there be?" She said briskly. "We will admit that we could have done more, but we did not know for sure he was doing anything worse."

"What do you mean worse? What could be worse?" He scoffed. As he spoke the words, Zack's mind began to race and his heart froze in his chest. The only thing worse than constant beatings was........ No! They couldn't mean that. Horror rushed in, as his mind tried make sense of what was running through it.

"You mean he was...." Zack chocked on the words, to horrified of the possibility to even say them. He looked at the faces of his parents and he saw the truth there. "He raped her, didn't he?" He said, his voice hoarse.

His father shifted uncomfortably before him, opening and closing his mouth several times but ultimately said nothing in the face of his sons wrath.

"He wasn't just beating her, he raped her didn't he?" He could not believe the people standing before him, the people who raised and loved him could have allowed this to happen. Oh they could say they didn't know what was going on for sure but he knew them better than that. They had known and did nothing. He wanted, no, he needed to know why. He knew they were not monsters, a bit pompous and a lot arrogant, but never cruel.

These were the people who had held him when he cried, let him sleep in beside them when he had a bad dream and guided him through his first shift. They had always seemed to him to be fair and honest in their dealings with the members of the pack, he could not even begin to comprehend what they had done to Sophie. He needed to get to the bottom of this now so he could begin to try and put right their terrible wrongs.

"Why?" Zack said. "Why would you stand back and do nothing, when you knew what he was doing. I know there must be more to this that you just not caring. How did Frank Danes get you to keep quiet? Please Dad, tell me why you didn't stop him." He asked, begging them to explain their inaction, his voice cracking with emotion.

His father sighed heavily and slumped down on his chair, his mother still standing beside him, put her hand on his shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "We have to tell him." She said. "He needs to know what will happen if the pack and the wolf council find out. Tell him!"

His father looked at him, his reluctance clear. But when he finally spoke it was with an obvious heavy heart. "He was blackmailing us." He said quietly. "He found out about a family of humans we have staying in one of the remote hunting cabins and threatened to report us to the wolf council."

"Humans? Why are there humans staying in one of our cabins?" Zack asked incredulously.

"I let them stay there. They have been living with us for over six years and myself and a few of my most trusted enforcers have been helping them and protecting them."

"Why Dad? Why would you allow humans to live among us? The wolf council would have all our heads if they found out. Why would you put the whole pack at risk to help them?" He asked, incredulous.

"They saved your mothers life!" His father shouted. "They saved her when she was shot by hunters. She had been out on a run when she stumbled upon two drunk hunters. They shot her thinking she was a regular wolf, she just managed to get away from them before she collapsed by the side of a road." He gave a pained sigh.

"The Clark's were driving across the state trying to get to family after Jim Clark had lost his job. The bank had repossessed their home, they had three children and no money. When they found your mother they didn't hesitate, just lifted her into the back of their beat up station wagon and were gonna take her to the nearest town and try and find a vet."

"Your mother lost consciousness and shifted back while in the back of their damn car. Most people would have panicked and been terrified seeing a wolf transform into a naked woman in the back of their car. But not them, they pulled over and Anna Clark climbed into the back and applied pressure to the wound till your mothers healing kicked in. She stemmed the bleeding enough that she didn't bleed out before her wolf could heal her." He rubbed tiredly at his face.

"When your mother regained consciousness, they calmly asked her what they could do to help. Still hurt pretty badly, she asked if she could use their cell phone and called me. I met them about five miles outside town."

He cleared his throat looking uncomfortable. "I thought I was going to have to kill them to keep our secret. But when I spoke to Jim he convinced me they would take our secret to the grave. The children had been asleep in the back seat so hadn't seen anything. And I believed him."

"While we were talking to them, Anna Clark took a call from her cousin, who they had been going to stay with telling them that she had had second thoughts about it, and not to come. They had no money and no where else to go. I offered them the use of the cabin for a few nights as thanks for helping your mother."

"When she recovered enough your mother and I went back to see them, intending to offer them some money to help them on their way. When we got there we got to talking and I discovered that Jim had been a stock broker before his company had laid him of."

"The pack's finances had been dwindling for years, so we asked Jim if he would be interested in working for us, helping us to invest what we had left. He agreed, and they have been here ever since. He has made the pack a lot of money over the years and we pay them a percentage of what he makes us."

Zack was so shocked at what he was hearing, he could not even form a sentence. This was unbelievable. His mother had been shot by hunters and he hadn't even known about it and they had risked the who pack so that a human man could make the pack some money. "How does Frank Danes come into it?" He finally gritted out.

His mother moved towards him, placing her hand on his arm. "He followed me one day when I was going to visit with Anna. I didn't even know he had saw us. When about six months after Sophie had came to stay with him we had gone down to his cabin because we had been approached by some concerned pack members. They were worried that they hardly ever saw the child and when they did she seemed frightened, they had noticed some unusual bruising on her arms and legs." His mother huffed out a sigh but Zack didn't know if it was from her concern for an innocent or annoyance. And that worried him.

"When we got inside the cabin and saw the child for the first time in months we were appalled. She was cowering in the corner of the room crying and covered in bruises. Your father grabbed Frank by the throat and demanded to be told what had happened to her. He laughed and told your father it was none of his business. Your father told him he was taking Sophie with us and that he should prepare himself to be banished. Frank again laughed and told us that we wouldn't be doing anything. That's when the blackmail started. He told us he knew about the humans and if we didn't just forget about what we had saw he would report us to the council."

"We had the welfare of the whole pack to consider." His mother said sadly. "It was the most difficult thing we have ever had to do and we will have to live with those decisions. But we had no other choice. When Sophie discovered at eighteen that you were her mate he made us give him the drugs to hide her scent from you and made us agree to make sure you never found out."

His father rose from his chair pulling Zack's attention away from his mother. "Son, we made the best decision we could at the time." He said, sounding weary.

"Best for who Dad? Because it certainly wasn't best for Sophie. I can't even begin to comprehend what she has been through and you both allowed it to happen. You could have done something! Made the human family leave. Hell you could even have killed Frank, but you didn't! You just went on your way making more money and ignoring a child being abused. Then you gave him scent suppressors! You gave him highly regulated drugs to wilfully and deliberately hid her existence from me! Her mate! You disgust me! You both disgust me!" Zack shouted furiously. "And then today, when we discovered Frank dead at Sophie's hand you still tried to cover your asses. Trying to make sure the pack didn't find out you had hid my mate from me."

"Please Son," his father said. "you have to try and understand. It was for your own good. Sophie is broken. After the years of abuse, there is no way she can be sane. She is probably not even capable of being a proper mate to you."

Zack looked at his parents, realising for the first time that he didn't even know these people standing before him. How they could have abandon a child the way they had was beyond his comprehension. And all so they could continue making money.

"I'm done with this conversation!" He growled through clenched teeth. "Be at the pack circle tonight at midnight and be prepared to step down as Alpha. You are no longer fit to lead. If you don't step down voluntarily, make no mistake, I will challenge you! Your are both done here. You can consider yourself lucky I'm willing to allow you to stay with the pack after you betrayed it so grievously."

He walked over to the door, opened it, and without turning said tiredly. "I'm going to check on Sophie now. I can't even look at you both right now. I just pray that she has more compassion in her for me than you did for her."

As Zack walked out of his parents home his heart felt like it was breaking apart in his chest and he could hardly get a breath past the lump lodged in his throat. How had things gone so terribly wrong in his pack? But they had and it was now up to him to try and right the terrible wrongs. He just prayed he had the strength to help his mate and save his pack as well.