Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
Anger isn’t smart. Is it?
Anger isn’t really productive when fear is right there and easier to grab, like low hanging apples on an overburdened tree. I stare at the paper and my father’s signature, dark loops and damming orders.
My vision blurs the longer I stare until Grayson takes the paper from my hands, reading it for himself. Re reading it like the words make no sense to him either.
And through it all—
Moon madness winds its way through me, sinuous, the voices growing louder with rage.
I’m pissed off. I’m so fucking tired of being pissed off.
“So back in the forest, at the cabin, it was him?” Grayson frowns and crushes the paper in his fist. “He’s been hunting us this entire time?”
The hunter glares between me and Grayson like this is a mild inconvenience for him, his hatred palpable. It’s a sickening film coating my skin and I bear down to stop from scratching.
“How can he hunt his own kind?” A rage similar to mine swells Grayson’s voice.
“It doesn’t matter.” Mine is dull in comparison. “He’s been contracted. For him, there’s no space between the job and the mark. Not on a personal level.”
Disgust and loathing simmer in the hunter’s gaze, though his expression remains calm.
He doesn’t care who we are, or what we were before the curse. We’re animals to be put down, a nuisance.
Once again, my life, my death, has been dictated for me. I frown, any sort of confusion and shock replaced with singular focus.
I face the hunter and wish for a knife. Or claws.
And something fractures inside of me.
The fracture starts inside my ribcage, my body going still as blood and rage paint dark spots on my skin. The hunter squirms at whatever he sees but the tingle forming in my head, the one cascading down my back, doesn’t stop until it turns me to ash.
“What are we going to do with him?” Grayson asks.
“We kill him,” Colt says through his teeth.
The hunter twists, his expression shifting as he lowers his head like he’ll snap at their throats.
My mind whirls too fast to think of anything besides destruction. Revenge.
Grayson tosses the orders and reaches for me, both hands cradling my elbows. His fingers tremble. I absorb it. “Whatever you want to do, we’ll do.”
“Whatever it is, do it quick. We’ve got to finish the cure. The sooner we get to the library, the sooner you guys will be healed.”
RJ jerks her head toward the van like we should load the hunter into the back and dispose of him somewhere far away.
Or maybe turn him into a toad.
He’d look decent as a hood ornament, and karmic justice would be served.
“No.” The strength of my insistence shocks me and I shake it off. “Leave him to me. Go work on the cure and we’ll meet up after I take care of something.”
“Okay, that’s fair. We’ll meet up here later, we promise.” The witches reluctantly obey, heading to the van.
I match the hunter’s glare, holding for a beat longer than he’s comfortable with and he’s the first to look away.
My gaze shifts to Lacey and Colt and the cold resolve filling their expressions
I let loose a breath, my wrath free. The dark desires I’ve stuffed down lift to the surface and tangle with the rage, with the curse.
Moon madness is taking us down. If we happen to lose before the cure is finished, then I have things to settle before it happens.
I meet Colt’s eyes. “Help us drag him back to Ironwood territory,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Lacey stiffens.
Colt, for his part, lets none of his reservations show about being caught near a werewolf pack.
“I’m positive.”
Grayson stares at me with an unreadable gaze. A small smile curls his lips upward and instead of the warnings I anticipate, he dips his head, beads of sweat trailing down his temples.
“Then we finish it,” he murmurs.
The hunter balks, but refuses to speak. I’d hate the sound of his voice anyway. There’s something admirable about his resolve, his refusal to spill his secrets.
None of it will help him now.
The vampires help Grayson and I drag the hunter toward home, the only one I remember, having to slow their strides to keep pace with us. But I storm ahead of everyone in a fury-fueled haze.
My father agreed to this.
He’s the one who authorized the hunter.
Had he put this into motion the moment the wolves attacked and we bolted?
Does any of it matter?
Night creatures fall silent on our approach and a lone owl hoots and takes off in the opposite direction. I fill my lungs with the night and wrap my arms around my chest like it will pin my heart into place.
Quaint streets with adorable houses and their resting occupants disappear into thick woods, the boundary separating our community from the rest of the world. Hiding in plain sight. Expected to blend.
It’s a metaphor for my entire fucking life and I’m done.
Our footsteps are the only ones echoing through the trees. I let them sound, thudding along with my pulse, arms pumping.
I’m tired of letting other people or situations dictate who I am or who I have to be. Why can’t I just be the person I want to be? Why can’t I decide the trajectory of my life?
I glance over my shoulder at Grayson, doing his best to keep up with the curse poisoning him from the inside out.
He’s fought so hard for this life and to make something of himself, to be a person his parents are proud of.
He doesn’t deserve any of this either.
Resolve hardening my features, we make the trek until the trees thin and the compound gate stretches up to the midnight sky. Then our eyes lock and hold and my heart stutters like it’s dividing itself into two pieces. One to keep me going, and the other for him.
I don’t miss the fragment.
It’s been waiting for him, long before the day we met. I’m not sure how it’s possible.
Lacey and Colt have the hunter subdued between them and I trust them to keep him contained.
I have another foe to face.
My mouth dries, tongue tangling in a complicated knot because my father is already there waiting at the gate.
All I can do is stare as we approach, a wall of iron bars separating us.
I’d gotten my wish. He was alive.
But this is wrong.
Because he stands there, imposing, a statue carved of ice and control. His eyes, my eyes, fix on me at our approach and for some reason this feels like a fucking trap.
A familiar urge to cower and stand down under his will fills me, seeps through my pores. The voices from the curse whisper a torrent of insults inside my head and come from every direction at once.
The pure torment of the symptoms would drive any sane person mad before the curse takes their sanity away from them.
I keep going, and stop with inches to spare between me and my dad.
He stands alone just inside the gate with the locks snapped shut and the guard houses dark and quiet.
My dad, and my alpha.
His gaze darts over my head toward the hunter, toward Grayson, once.
Through my periphery I study the fence and the stretch of boundary, all the bars between us.
Dad assesses me but finds no sign of the hunter’s wound. Is he upset I hadn’t been shot? Or that Grayson is still here?
I expect smugness and get nothing.
“Jrue told us everything,” Dad says, speaking first. “He knows about your secret. He knows you’re moonlocked.”
I lift my chin. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I rejected him. Did he tell you that part?”
A flash of fury lights Dad’s eyes. His expression darkens but he doesn’t storm forward. He doesn’t flinch.
“There’s no going back from this. Do you understand what you’ve done, Mandi? What I’ll have to do because of this?”
Impatience edges his voice.
Once again, I’m a disappointment. Any spark of hope I might have harbored of this conversation going well, disappears.
Everything detonates at once.
Small bombs go off in my chest and I uncurl my fingers from the contract I’d grabbed, throwing it between the bars. It lands at his feet, a black-and-white grenade.
“Like there was any chance to go back after you sent a hunter after us. You want us dead.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“You sent a killer after us and it must be pretty embarrassing to see me alive and your hunter collared,” I say.
Tears don’t come. They threaten, sure, but they stay inside where they belong and allow me this moment.
The authority of my father’s posture has worked miracles for him in the past. He needs only turn to a member of the pack, no words necessary, and they rush to do his bidding.
I’ve done the same.
I’ve danced to his tune to hide my truth as long as I’ve been alive, and look where it’s gotten me?
“Moon-mad wolves are a threat,” he snaps. “They’re a disease spreading across the world and after what happened to our pack, you of all people should know how hard we have to fight to stay safe from them.”
“Grayson saved me.”
“He’s infected.”
“So am I!”
Those words are a lash, a whip of reprimand, and Dad visibly flinches. He manages to get himself under control within seconds, as though the lapse never happened.
“Stop trying to play on my sympathies.” A growl rumbles up his throat. “You’re not cursed.”
I spread my arms wide to show him the scratches, the raw places where my skin has already started to flay off. The sheen of sweat from the fever dusts my skin like stardust.
“Yes, I am. I’m moonlocked and moon-mad and I’ve been consorting with a moon-mad wolf.”
Dad refuses to listen. He shakes his head as though the motion will dislodge the thought from it. The truth. “He must be eradicated before he turns fully.”
He speaks about Grayson like an object instead of a person, and an unsavory one at that. My head spins as my stomach churns.
“It’s too late. He’s already turned. You want to see where he bit me?” I thrust out my forearm and the ring of bitemarks only now starting to fade.
I step closer to the gate.
“He turned to protect me from the vampires at the Vanishing Mile. Or didn’t you wonder where I went when Jrue couldn’t track me?”
“Jrue—”
“Is no longer my mate. Officially. I’ll leave you to deal with the logistics of that mess. But it was never going to work out. Not when I can’t shift. His family was going to find out no matter how fast you tried to push the bond ceremony.”
My blood goes cold at his expression, one I’ve never seen him make before.
I purse my lips. “Or did you figure they’d be fine as long as we were mated and you finally got the alpha you wanted? Even if it wasn’t your own child?”
A group gathers behind Dad, filling the street, staring between me and Grayson and the vampires holding a now unconscious hunter. His sharp breathing echoes mine in another eerie similarity, and when I glance behind me again, his head lolls to his chest.
Good. I hope they made it hurt.
“Keep your voice down,” Dad hisses.
I spread my arms, raise them. “I’m done hiding. Everyone knows there’s something different about me. They’ve seen it my entire life and they’ve been too afraid of you to say something about it. This isn’t about Grayson.”
It’s about me and it always has been.
“Mandi. Step away from him and we’ll fix this.” Dad is keenly aware of the audience we’ve gathered. “It’s not too late. We’ll come up with a plan for your exile…”
I ignore his outstretched hand. “You already almost killed him once.”
“And I’d do it again.”
Our rage clashes and crackles in the air like the first wave of energy before a lightning strike.
“You’ve always cared more about your reputation than me. You’ve always worried about what the pack will think of you rather than my happiness. You talk about killing someone I care about like it’s as easy as planning what to have for dinner, but if he goes down, then I do too.”
What then?
Dad’s throat works, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he musters up something to say to salvage my parting shot.
There are too many ears, with their keen sense of hearing, to memorize his words.
“Leave the hunter here.” I scoff and turn away from my father, daring him to grab me. To stop me.
He does neither.
“They’ll figure out something to do with him?”
I don’t bother with the fight. Dad’s lack of empathy is unnerving and expected. He’d keep me alive only for the sake of his reputation. Not for my happiness.
It ends unresolved for us. I’d hoped for more. I’d hoped for something along the lines of my family would love me and be there for me no matter what. But it’s never been that way.
I’m a fool for thinking otherwise.
Lacey and Colt leave the hunter at Dad’s feet and I cross to Grayson, taking his hand.
“Let’s go.”
His eyes search my face. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “I’m done with them.”
He laces our fingers tight until we burn together. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
“The sooner we get the cure, the sooner we can get away from this place.” And never look back again.