Chapter 29 Nyx
NYX
The rain started before the first car arrived. It was not a storm and it was not dramatic, just a slow gray drizzle that soaked into black suits and dark dresses until the entire cemetery smelled like wet earth and fresh grief.
Rows of black umbrellas formed a quiet wall around the grave. The city knew better than to stare. Everyone gathered here understood what this funeral meant. Meridian territory meant protection, and the Council had just murdered someone under that protection.
I stood at the edge of the grave with my shoulders straight and my hands clasped in front of me. The coffin had already been lowered halfway into the ground. Dark wood. Polished. Too small for a life that should have been longer.
No one spoke. Malachi stood at my back like a shadow while Kairo remained on my left and Jabari on my right. Elijah kept several steps behind us, his attention shifting constantly across the tree line and parked vehicles with the calm vigilance of a man who expected violence long before it arrived.
Funerals like this never stayed quiet.
The priest began speaking, but I did not truly hear him. His voice drifted through the rain with gentle words about peace, heaven, and a girl who had gone too soon. The language sounded careful and respectful, but to me it felt small. Tatum deserved something louder than this. She deserved thunder.
Rain dotted the coffin's polished surface while I stared down at it.
My baby sister was inside that box. Nineteen years old, and the Council had stabbed her to death like she was paperwork that needed correcting.
My fingers tightened slowly.
Jabari noticed first. His hand slid to the small of my back, steady and warm even through the damp fabric of my dress.
"Easy there, darlin'," he murmured quietly, that soft Southern drawl carrying just enough warning to settle the storm in my chest. "Not today."
I didn't answer him. My eyes never left the coffin as the priest finished and stepped aside.
The first handful of dirt struck the lid with a hollow thud that echoed through my head louder than any gunshot. Another followed, then another, the sound dull and final as it struck the wood.
The quiet did not last.
A black sedan rolled slowly up the gravel path and stopped near the line of headstones. The door opened and a single man stepped out beneath the drizzle.
I knew the type before he even reached us.
Expensive suit. Political lapel pin. The loose sway of someone who had been drinking long before noon.
Congressman Lyle Hartley.
Not powerful enough to sit on the Council, but loyal enough to carry their filth wherever they pointed him.
He walked toward the grave like the cemetery belonged to him. His steps were slightly uneven and the smell of whiskey reached me before he even spoke.
"Damn shame," he slurred lightly, looking down at the coffin. "Girl should've known better than to test authority."
No one answered him. The rain continued to fall, tapping softly against umbrellas and polished wood.
Hartley swayed once, then laughed under his breath like he thought the entire situation was funny.
"Thought I'd come see the famous Pack Meridian," he said, glancing lazily between the men around me. "Heard a lot about you boys."
His gaze dropped to me.
Slow. Drunken. Disrespectful.
"Council said you were trouble," he added. "Don't look like much."
My chest felt hollow where my heart should have been.
Then he reached for his belt.
The metal buckle clinked as he unfastened it. His zipper followed a second later, loud in the quiet cemetery air.
For a moment no one moved.
Hartley grinned like he thought he was about to prove something.
"Figure your sister owes the Council one last apology," he muttered, stepping closer to the grave.
Jabari's voice drifted behind me, calm and polite in that dangerous Southern way that meant someone was about to die.
"Sir," he said softly, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Hartley only laughed and turned his head slightly, still fumbling with his belt like he thought he could try the pack and walk away.
"Relax," he slurred. "Just reminding you people who actually runs this city."
He stepped closer to the grave and started to pull himself free.
For a moment I watched him.
Rain sliding down the coffin. My sister beneath it. This drunk little man thinking he could piss on her grave and walk away because the Council told him he was untouchable.
Something cold settled inside my chest.
I didn't look at my pack when I spoke.
"Do it," I said quietly.
Hartley never finished the motion.
Four guns fired at once.
The shots cracked across the cemetery so violently that birds exploded from the nearby trees. Hartley's body snapped backward as the rounds tore through him, the force of the impact throwing him sideways into the wet grass.
He did not make a sound. The rain immediately began washing the blood into the mud around him.
For half a second, silence reclaimed the graveyard.
Through the rain I saw shapes shifting along the distant tree line, dark silhouettes that had been standing there longer than any mourners. They had been waiting for the moment the coffin touched the ground.
Then Elijah's voice cut through the rain before the third handful of dirt finished falling.
"Movement in the tree line," Elijah said.
The first gunshot cracked across the cemetery a second later.
Chaos detonated instantly. People screamed and dropped behind headstones while umbrellas scattered across the mud. Bullets tore through marble markers and ripped through damp grass as dirt kicked up in violent sprays.
Not police.
Council mercenaries.
Cheap suits, suppressed rifles, and the disposable kind of men organizations sent when they wanted violence without consequences.
They had come to send a message.
Unfortunately for them, they had chosen the wrong funeral.
Malachi moved first, dragging me down behind a tall stone angel statue as his pistol cleared leather in the same motion. Kairo was already firing before Malachi finished moving.
Two controlled shots cracked through the rain.
Two mercenaries collapsed before they even realized the people they were attacking had already drawn weapons.
Jabari did not rush. He stepped forward into the rain like a man strolling through Sunday service and calmly placed a bullet through the throat of the closest shooter. The man collapsed clutching his neck while blood spilled into the wet grass.
"Now that's just disrespectful, darlin'," Jabari muttered politely under his breath as he lowered the smoking barrel.
More gunfire erupted from the tree line. Elijah pulled a terrified civilian behind a monument before returning fire with controlled precision.
"They brought twelve," he called calmly.
Malachi leaned around the stone angel and fired three quick shots. One attacker dropped across a grave marker and slid into the mud.
Behind the statue I crouched with rain soaking into my dress and rage burning hot under my ribs.
They had interrupted my sister's funeral.
Something inside me snapped clean in half.
"Malachi," I said quietly.
He looked down at me. The grief was still there, but something harder had pushed through it.
"End this," I said.
He nodded once.
Kairo moved like a blade through the rain, closing distance before the remaining attackers could reposition. One mercenary barely had time to turn before Kairo drove him backward into a headstone hard enough to crack bone.
Gunfire echoed across the cemetery for another few seconds before the final attacker collapsed into the mud.
Silence returned slowly as the rain continued to fall.
Bodies lay scattered among the graves.
Jabari wiped rainwater from his brow and looked around the cemetery with that slow, unimpressed calm he wore when someone had made a fatal mistake.
"Council done lost their damn minds," he said softly, voice smooth as velvet. "Interrupting a burial like this. That's foul business."
I rose to my feet. Mud clung to the hem of my dress as I walked back toward the grave. Tatum's coffin waited where they had left it, the rain darkening the polished wood.
I placed my hand against the lid.
"They couldn't even let you rest," I whispered.
Malachi came to stand beside me while Kairo and Jabari flanked the other side. Elijah remained slightly apart, still watching the road in case more vehicles appeared.
I looked once at the bodies scattered across the cemetery, then back down at the coffin.
"This ends them," I said.
No one argued, because everyone standing at that grave understood the same truth.
The Council had just started a war.
The second time I saw Councilman Avery, he was not behind glass. He was barefoot. That detail mattered.
We did not storm his house in chaos. We walked in. Elijah had stripped his security grid down to a hollow shell before we even reached the gates. Cameras looped. Silent alarms dead. His guards were neutralized before they could lift a radio.
By the time we entered his sitting room, the only sound was the soft clink of ice in his whiskey glass.
He turned at the noise of the door splintering.
Annoyance flickered first. Then recognition. Then calculation.
He did not panic. Men like him never did until it was too late.
“You are trespassing,” he said.
I stepped forward until the light hit my face.
He saw it then. The grief. The fury. The promise.
“You held her upright,” I said.
His brow furrowed slightly. “Your sister was under Council authority.”
“She was sedated.”
He did not answer.
“She did not understand what was happening.”
A faint exhale through his nose. Impatience.
“You misunderstand the necessity of consequence.”
The bond snapped tight across my chest at that word.
Necessity.
Kairo moved before anyone said a word. Three fast strides and Avery hit the marble fireplace hard enough to crack stone. The glass slipped from Avery’s hand and shattered across the floor. Whiskey soaked into expensive rug fibers.