Chapter Eleven
Chase, Wade, Liam, and Zeppelin moved silently through the ankle-high grass, hugging the hedgerow that ran along the driveway like a dark spine. Midnight draped the street in sleepy quiet. Porch lights glowed here and there, while moths pinged a yellow bug-zapper like idiots chasing the sun.
Derek’s ranch sat squat and tidy, brick painted the color of burned toast. One gutter hung a little low, catching moonlight like a crooked grin. A box fan rattled in a bedroom window. Somewhere close, laundry detergent and lemon cleaner drifted off a vent.
Scare him into leaving me alone.
Zeppelin slid ahead, one hand signaling the pace like they were on a late-night hike instead of stalking a human stain.
Wade slid past a cypress with a rustle so soft it barely counted.
Leaves shifted at the chain?link fence. Liam slipped through the gate from the alley like a shadow unrolling, lifting two fingers at his hip in silent greeting before taking the corner near the grill.
Not a word between them. Not with Jalen’s mother asleep somewhere in this house and the reason for Jalen’s pills parked inside it.
Chase let his breath in slow and thin, every step placed carefully. Pebbles under the arch of his boot caught and threatened to skitter. He eased his weight away.
Zeppelin pointed two fingers then tapped his own eyes. Window check.
Low and slow, Chase crept to the living room picture window and angled himself to avoid his reflection.
A man on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, a bottle neck gleaming next to his ankle.
A stack of mail.
Remote near his knee.
No sign of Jalen’s mom in the main rooms.
In the reflection of the TV, the corner of a forearm moved. Derek’s, judging by the wristwatch and the smug casualness of the gesture. Remote in one hand. The other hand on his thigh near a black pistol laid out like he was on the cover of Middle-Aged Men’s Weekly.
Just great. An idiot with a firearm. What could go wrong?
He’d come to “scare” Derek. That had been the agreement Jalen could live with. What Chase carried in his chest wasn’t something he could lay at Jalen’s feet. The pack understood what needed doing when it came to mates.
Wade caught his eye through the leaves and pointed two fingers to the back. Kitchen door.
Before Chase could move, Zeppelin touched his ear then pointed to the street.
A front door across the way opened, and a minivan chirped. Headlights blinked.
Chase went flat so fast he ate grit. Wade belly?crawled under the kitchen window box like a commando in an action movie. Zeppelin melted behind the old maple at the property line, which was an impressive trick for a man built like a refrigerator. Lian stayed hidden behind the grill.
Neighbor in yoga pants and a messy bun shuffled out, phone cradled under her chin.
She popped the minivan’s hatch and leaned in, digging around like the fate of the world depended on unearthing a reusable grocery bag.
Plastic rustled. A stray can rolled and clunked.
Chase pressed closer to the house, nose full of spiderwebs and old mulch.
Ten seconds stretched. Yoga Pants found whatever life-saving object she needed and closed the hatch with a whump that felt like a gunshot to his nerves. She shuffled inside again, porch light clicked off.
Everyone moved.
At the kitchen, the doorknob didn’t give. Wade fished a pick from his pocket and worked the lock with the kind of patience that would’ve made a saint jealous.
A soft snick , and the door eased inward.
Cold air whispered out, carrying the concentrated scent of dish soap and damp sponge.
They slipped in single file, stepping over a pair of women’s flats left neatly on a mat that said “Welcome” with daisies around the edges.
Chase had to fight the urge to flip it over.
Coils in the fridge kicked on with a hum. Someone had left a plate of brownies wrapped in foil on the counter. Chase imagined Jalen at this sink, young and cornered by a smile that meant danger. His nails tingled. Chase flexed his hands to keep the claws where they belonged a little longer.
Wade slid left, covering the hallway. Family photos lined the wall—smiles at graduations, a birthday cake with too many candles, Jalen small and skinny, eyes wary even then. Derek appeared in a few shots with an arm around someone’s shoulders that didn’t look like affection so much as possession.
Scare him into leaving me alone.
The urge to rip frames down almost won.
They reached the archway to the living room and fanned out. Liam slipped in from the sliding glass door off the patio, a shadow with a knife and a grin that said he’d been dying for a good reason to use it. He set up to the right of the arch, ready to flank.
Four wolves could end a man without raising a sweat. That wasn’t the problem. The problem slept twenty feet away and had no idea she might wake to a horror show.
On the couch, Derek sat with his feet on the table, TV painting his face the cold blue of late-night sports. He had a gut that had known too many drive?thru dinners and a posture that said he owned this room as much as he thought he owned the people in it.
The pistol now lay on the cushion by his thigh, muzzle aimed at the wall. Safety off. Finger already resting wrong.
Chase moved first. Fast, quiet, a line straight for the gun because you removed the loud obstacle before you had a meaningful conversation. A shifter could heal from most things, but a bullet to the brain wasn’t survivable.
He’d gotten three steps in when Derek lunged for the pistol, his hand slapping at it. The barrel swung.
Finger tightened where it shouldn’t have.
The report cracked the room open. Heat and cordite slammed into Chase’s nose. Liam staggered like someone had clipped his knee from behind, then folded, both hands flying to his belly.
The uncle hadn’t just sealed his fate. He’d gift-wrapped it, put a bow on it, and handed it to a pack of enraged wolf shifters.
Zeppelin wrenched the end table aside, dragged Liam by the belt and shoulder into the kitchen, and pressed a hand hard to Liam’s abdomen, where red spilled through his fingers.
“Keep pressure,” Wade hissed, which was code for “don’t pass out, asshole,” in pack-speak.
“I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch,” Liam gritted out. “Where’s my goddamn knife?”
Derek jerked the gun again. Wild. Hands sloppy. Another shot buried into drywall, spraying plaster. Every haphazard shot just screamed, “coward with power he never deserved.”
Chase slammed into him. They hit the recliner, the wooden frame groaning. He wrenched Derek’s wrist until bone cracked, yanked the gun free, and flung it under the couch, where Derek’s little hands couldn’t find it.
The pills make it stop. They make me forget. They make everything numb.
Chase’s chest cracked open. Because this wasn’t just violence. It was justice. He wasn’t fighting one man. He was fighting every ghost that ever sunk its teeth into Jalen.
A backhand sent Derek staggering into the wall, ribs-first. A framed photo dropped and cracked, glass shattering.
“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” Derek rasped out, grabbing his wrist.
Addiction? Is that what you think this is? This is survival. This is the only way I can function without...
“I know exactly who you are. A man who hurt a boy and called it family.”
He didn’t just call him a monster. He stripped Derek of every lie, every excuse, and laid his rotten soul bare for the world to see.
Chase drove him into the carpet. Knuckles met jaw.
Teeth clicked. Derek bucked and tried to bite, petty and mean.
He clawed for Chase’s eyes. Chase caught that wrist and pinned it.
He didn’t go for the throat. The throat was too kind.
Claws slid out with a clean, electric sting along his fingertips.
No shift. No fur. Just tools for a job that should’ve been done years ago.
Jalen’s face surfaced in his mind. That stubborn tilt of his mouth, the nights he’d sweated out poison, the way he’d looked at Chase hours ago like he might finally believe in something.
“This is for every tear, every pill, and every moment of pain you caused Jalen.”
He buried his claws into Derek’s gut and ripped. Warmth spilled across his hands. The body arched then stilled. Death had been too quick for the rot inside of him.
Derek had worn the face of family, and Chase wore the face of a beast, yet only one of them was the real monster.
Chase scrubbed his hands in the sink. Water ran pink then clear.
His reflection was a stranger he recognized—jaw set, eyes edged with things he didn’t say out loud.
Somewhere between the hum of the AC and the tick of the wall clock, he heard Jalen’s voice as if he were standing right there. Scare him into leaving me alone.
“He can’t hurt you anymore, baby,” Chase whispered, ready to get home to his mate.
Boots hit the porch. The back door swung wider, and two uniforms filled the frame. Deputy Santi and Deputy Leverton.
“Report of shots fired,” Santi said. “Everyone breathing who’s supposed to be?”
“Liam’s hit,” Zeppelin replied, not lifting pressure. “Gut. He needs to shift.” His mouth set. “We kept it contained.”
Leverton glanced at Derek and didn’t bother with a pulse.
Chase crossed the few steps to Leverton and Santi and filled them in. No details that would drag Jalen through this again. Just essentials. A child’s years lost. A den at midnight. A man who pulled a gun and paid for it.
Santi’s mouth went hard. Leverton’s jaw flexed once, subtle as a blink. No handcuffs came out.
“Homeowner?” Santi eyed the hall.
“Asleep,” Chase said. “Surprised she slept through it.”
Zeppelin held up a small bottle. “Sleeping pills. She would’ve slept through an elephant stampede.”
Santi looked at Chase for a beat that felt longer than it was then half turned to the door. “Go. We’ll secure the scene.”
“Appreciate it.”
They hauled Liam from the house and vanished into the night, leaving Santi and Leverton to handle the tale the humans would tell themselves about gun safety and tragic accidents. No one would see the actual wound to contradict the lie.
The vampire after Jalen still hadn’t surfaced. If he did, he would die like a bad memory.
Chase fell in at Wade’s shoulder, keeping pace with a bleeding wolf and the throbbing promise in his chest that his mate would sleep the rest of this night without waking to monsters. He’d delivered what he promised.
Derek had been scared.
Right before he died.
* * * *
Sun baked the grass until it smelled sweet, like summer had spilled itself out just for them. Smoke drifted lazily from the grill, sweet and savory, the sizzle of fat punctuating Zeppelin’s running commentary about not over-flipping.
Sodas sweated in a galvanized tub, ice clicking like little bells whenever someone dug around for a cold one.
Preston sprawled beside Jalen on the blanket, barefoot, a smear of barbecue sauce drying at the corner of his mouth like war paint.
“Don’t trust Liam’s baked beans,” Preston warned, pointing his fork at the suspicious pan on the folding table. “He said, ‘secret ingredient’ and wiggled his eyebrows.”
“Hard pass.” Jalen laughed so hard his stomach hurt. “I barely survived your unicorn ice cream suggestion yesterday. I’m not dying by bean.”
Shadows pooled under the trees at the edge of the yard. Sunlight glittered on the house’s windows. Somewhere, a radio hummed along to a rock song that had too much guitar. It all felt normal, which, for Jalen, translated to surreal in a good way.
He felt it before he saw it. Eyes on him that didn’t feel like a weight but more like a warm hand between his shoulder blades.
Across the lawn, Chase watched him with that quiet, reverent look that crawled under Jalen’s ribs and set up camp. Not just looking. Studying him like he’d done something holy simply by existing on a piece of plaid blanket.
Preston followed his gaze then grinned around another forkful of potato salad. “Go,” he said, flicking his fork toward Chase. “I’ll guard the blanket with my life. And the deviled eggs.”