Chapter 43
forty-three
DANE
Death.
It will be bloody. Slow. Agonizing and twisted.
And it will still be too good for Dr. Brynn.
Briar swallows, her creamy throat bobbing. Reminding me I haven’t bitten her yet… carved out her place at my center… bonded her to me forever…
Jesus.
Calm down, I tell my Alpha. We need to listen.
It’s remarkable, but that’s all it takes. He lets go of his crusade immediately, dialing into her tearful expression.
I want to roar at it. Not because she’s done anything wrong, but because I hate that we’ve put her in a position where she feels guilty for protecting her secrets.
Her own sister.
Of course she didn’t tell us. I wouldn’t have wanted her to trust anyone with this information.
As she goes on, talking about the night they took Violet. The nightmares it still gives her…
My stomach sinks. Fucking hell. Cillian’s background checks on Briar and Brynn were thorough. If he didn’t turn up anything about this missing woman, I fear she may be long gone.
As she winds to the end of her explanation, telling us her original plan for using our resources to help locate her sister, a beat of understanding passes between Cillian and me.
We will do everything in our power to fix this for our mate. Even if we have to rip the world apart.
“And I—” she finally stammers, darting looks between the two of us. “Even though I really needed the money to look for Violet, I probably shouldn’t have made that agreement with you anyway. Because… I have a birth control implant. So I sort of knew none of our, um, efforts would pan out.”
My blood rushes while my lungs freeze. And for second, all I feel, from my core to the top of my head, is relief.
Especially when Cillian captures her green gaze and burns his icy eyes into hers. “If you think there’s anything I don’t know about my wife’s health,” he intones, slow and even, “you don’t know me very well, rosebud.”
Briar’s breath snags. “You—what?”
Cillian resumes petting her hair, his purr kicking up. “I knew the whole time, darling. I was proud of you for being so shrewd.”
That tracks. Of course this bastard knew. He usually knows everything. Which just makes his dearth of information on Violet even more alarming.
Briar blinks in shock. “You’re not mad?”
Cillian shakes his head. “It means you won’t get pregnant and put an even bigger target on your back, for one. But, also… you honestly think I’d want my omega to have our baby under circumstances like these? You’re our mate. When we put a baby in you, it’s going to be because we all want one.”
My relief climbs higher with every word he says—all the things I felt but couldn’t rationalize or communicate before tonight. The reasons I was careful never to come inside her, even when that was supposedly our goal.
Briar quivers, her scent sweetening until it’s so goddamn good I could weep. “You—you’re really not angry with me? For any of this?”
Cillian’s face is fierce, but his tenor is soft.
“No, Briar. Your sister is all you had left. We understand protecting that, the same way our pack has always protected one another. And you may belong to us, but your body belongs to you, rosebud. You will always have a choice. I’m grateful to whoever gave you this one. ”
She swallows hard, hoarse. “At the ballet. They do physicals every season and last year I—I just had a feeling my days were numbered before my father did something desperate. So I asked the doctor to give me the implant.”
Her voice shakes and pure rage boils in my veins. I swear to God, if Dr. Brynn and I ever cross paths, he will pray for a swift end to his misery.
But monsters don’t answer prayers.
And when I see Cillian’s face, I know: devils don’t, either.
They also don’t forget their deals. Our pack leader gathers Briar closer, scent-marking her forehead and purring deeply before he asks his question.
“You ran out of the party earlier,” he murmurs. “Why?”
Briar doesn’t answer right away, biting her lip and staring at her husband while she considers. The solid weight of certainty settles into my gut. I feel my features harden while I growl, “Gideon.”
His name sends Briar’s dark cherry scent plummeting into sour fear. She trembles on top of Cillian and he snarls at me, instinct overtaking him.
I know he doesn’t mean to challenge me—his Alpha is barely capable of letting me be in here right now, let alone withstand me upsetting our omega while they’re knotted.
I snap my teeth back at him out of habit more than anything.
When our mate cringes lower, half-hiding under the midnight velvet quilt, I immediately close my eyes, shaking off any combative impulses.
“Sorry, little girl,” I husk. “Our Alphas are all—we’re both—”
Obsessed.
In love.
My face heats all over again, remembering what she overheard. I turn my head to hide it, feeling too exposed without my mask to at least partially cover how out of my depth I am.
Briar’s hand lands on my cheek, though. Halting me in my tracks. “Hey…”
Cillian roars, bolting into an upright position. His icy irises flash and he starts to lift his arms—either to gather her up or shove me away—but his wife answers with a snarl of her own.
“You,” she barks. “This entire scenario is your doing, devil. If you’d told me you were my mate like a normal person, maybe you wouldn’t have had to knot me for the first time in a gazebo!
Also, this entire house wouldn’t be neutralized and Dane wouldn’t be forced to cram in here with us to keep himself from snapping into a rut without my scent. So you can just relax.”
Well, damn.
Omega barks get obeyed no matter what. It’s a biological fail-safe—a last-ditch way for them to keep themselves safe. But omegas can only summon barks in cases where their children or mates are in danger.
That’s me, I realize, my scarred, ugly heart swelling. I’m her mate.
I’m not sure if anyone has ever tried to physically protect me before. Is it supposed to turn me on? Or is that the queenly way she eyes our pack alpha like she’s deciding on a suitable punishment?
“If I want to touch my alpha, I will,” she adds. “And you’ll deal with it.”
She called me her alpha.
Damn it. I really am in love.
Cillian grits his teeth, still pumping waves of possessive aggression into the air. But his fists fall back to the mattress and he slowly reclines onto the pile of pillows behind him. “Sorry, rosebud,” he rasps, suppressing a growl. “Touch us however you like.”
I decide not to reciprocate, out of respect for him. A pack alpha knotting his omega for the first time is usually sacred, especially for scent-matches. He’s probably actively fighting the urge to “hoard” our mate to himself with every breath.
It really isn’t fair to her, given the revelation he dropped on her head. And the one I’m about to add.
“Or you don’t have to touch us at all,” I murmur. “You might not want to once I explain what Gideon was talking about.”
What we do.
Because that has to be what he said to upset her. There isn’t anything else that could’ve possibly caused the sickened pallor of her skin.
Briar’s hand drops from my face like a stone. My stomach plummets along with it. Fuck. Is this actually happening? Am I really going to find my mate and then lose her on the same day?
“I should tell her,” Cillian interjects, his expression intense. “None of this is your fault, Dane.”
But it is.
I’m the one with blood on my hands.
I stare at my mate, aching down to my core.
Fuck. She’s everything I ever could have wanted. The reddest rose. Eyes evergreen. Mysterious, brilliant, ethereal moonbeam.
“I don’t understand,” she says to me. “Y-you’re so good to me. So angry about what my father did to Violet, but—you’re supplying tools to people like the ones who took her? Traffickers and smugglers and warlords?”
My blood runs cold, all my worst suspicions confirmed. Gideon told her what our pack is known for; and she believed him.
Or, maybe not, given the way she’s lying here with us.
I see the doubt on her face and rush to dispel it. “No, little girl. We don’t supply them. We eliminate them.”
The words sink in, each one jacking her eyebrows up higher.
Beneath her, Cillian’s chest rattles dangerously.
“The illegal dealings were my grandfather’s way of punishing my father for his ongoing affairs, falling in love with my mother, not producing a legitimate heir with Rhys’s mother—all of it.
And he did his job well. So well, my grandfather wanted to keep the money coming in and asked me to take my father’s place. ”
“It was an insult,” I huff. “To Cillian and to us. But we took it, because Rhys suggested we use the deals as a way to track these fuckers down. And annihilate them.”
Briar’s chest visibly stutters as she breathes hard. “S-so you don’t help them?”
“No,” Cillian vows, plucking up her hand and kissing his ring on her finger.
“No, rosebud, I swear on my life, we have never supplied a weapon to any criminal organization without taking them out as soon as we could afterward. There’s a strategy to it, of course.
Rhys meticulously plans every strike and makes sure we hit them when they already have incoming attacks from enemies.
Conflict with rivals is typically the reason they need heavy artillery from us in the first place, so the system is airtight.
It’s easy to explain their disappearances when other groups are actively gunning for them. ”
It helps that we also don’t do nearly as many deals as Forsyth thinks we do.
Skimming a hefty portion off the top allows us to fabricate “payments” whenever we want; and eliminating a unit every few months doesn’t look nearly as suspicious when he thinks they’re one of dozens we deal with regularly.
She bites her lip, blanching the plump pink curve. “Oh. I—I didn’t realize…”
“You couldn’t have known,” Cillian murmurs sweetly, kissing her knuckles again. “We’ve never told anyone but you.”
Briar leans her head back again, meeting his gaze with her awed eyes. “Really?”
Fond softness fills his face in the most unfamiliar way. He nods slowly, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Yes, darling,” he whispers. “Really. If we want you to be our mate—our omega—we need you to be part of this family. And that means you will know everything we know from now on.”
Briar stares at him for a long moment, unfathomable emotion roiling in her depths. Finally, she replies, her voice scratchy. “Okay. I—that would be good.”
She drops back into her spot. Her attention slides in my direction as she mumbles to Cillian, “Could—can Dane come closer, alpha? I really want to be able to feel him, too.”
I can’t help but smirk at our leader’s begrudging sigh.
Instead of totally invading his space, I settle for moving my pillow closer to his side, where I’ll be right in Briar’s line of sight.
She stretches her arm over his abdomen and I lace our fingers together, my eyes drifting shut when pure pleasure sluices through my veins.
We all start to drift off to sleep until she whispers, “You guys really aren’t mad?”
My heart aches. She clearly has a hard time believing we respect her need to protect herself and her sister.
I wonder what her former life must have been like. What sorts of “punishments” her father used to keep someone as strong and smart as Briar in line.
Given the tremor in her fingers, I imagine they were severe.
I didn’t know I could feel murderous and utterly enamored at the same time. The glance Cillian and I share tells me he’s in the same boat. But we both know there isn’t anything we can do about Brynn right now.
My packmate and I purr louder. His fingers rub small circles on her scalp while mine squeeze hers. “No, moonbeam,” I whisper, gazing steadily into her eyes. “We’re not mad.”
Her answering whisper cracks. “And what about—”
Rhys.
My head shakes automatically. “He understands family loyalty better than most. And I think he’ll be glad about the implant.”
Her nose scrunches. “Because he doesn’t want me to have his heir?”
“No,” Cillian exhales, solemn. “Because he wants you to have everything.”