Chapter 44
Red and blue blinking lights flashed behind me.
Fuck…
Ah.
How fast had I been driving?
I found the closest place to pull over, my heart racing as I drew my car to a halt.
Without making any clear moves, I slipped the balaclava into the gap beside my seat and reached over, popping open the glove box to grab what I needed. I glanced at the bag on the passenger seat.
Nothing inside was visible.
I wore a toque, and my face had been washed. I shifted, catching a view of myself in the rearview mirror as I rolled the window down.
No blood.
Still, this could quickly turn into a complete fucking disaster, just when I was about to return to her with a gift.
We’d found a safe house, but we hadn’t got a complete identity renewal. If my name got into the system… I couldn’t afford any paper trail to where I was heading. Especially not less than twenty minutes from where Glade was.
The flashlight strobed across the back seat before blinding me.
“Licence and registration.” The cop peered down at me, but I was already handing it to him.
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked, glancing over my paperwork.
I winced. “Too fast.”
He looked from the paper to me, shifting the flashlight back to blinding. “What’s the rush?”
“My… Omega. We almost broke up. I got her a gift. I wanted to get home and wasn’t paying enough attention.”
The cop’s eyebrows rose as he considered me, and I sensed the tension diffuse just a little. “Scent match?”
“Yes, sir.”
He glanced back down at the papers before flashing the light back into my passenger seat. “That the gift?”
I nodded, trying to keep my expression neutral.
“What’s a good enough gift to make it up to a scent match?” he asked.
“Uh…” I glanced at the plastic bag, blood roaring in my ears. My trophies were in a box, which made the package look bulkier. That was good, because I’d be getting more than a ticket if he looked to see what was really in that bag. “Box of chocolates and pack tickets to a Swift concert.” I almost winced at the stupidity of the lie.
“She’s a Swiftie?” The cop chuckled. “Same as my daughter. Easy way to their heart—and those aren’t easy to come by.”
I shook my head.
“I’ll let you off tonight, but take it slow on the way home.”
I nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
He handed me back the paperwork and took a step back. Thank fuck.
My chest loosened, until he paused, glancing back at me. “Where did you get the tickets?”
“Dodgy marketplace meetup. Why I’m out so late.”
He snorted, tucking his flashlight away. “Well. Load them into those apps they have before you give them to her. Never know if it’s a dud.”
I nodded and found a weak apology.
I’d never been more on edge as I drove (really fucking slowly) back to the safe house. Or mansion. Or whatever it was that the Forbes family had set up for us. I couldn’t afford to get a speeding ticket. Ace had the kind of resources to track us down if my name popped up on any databases.
Until the flashing lights, I’d been nothing but raging Alpha hormones and thrill, but I needed to get a grip. There was too much on the line.
I arrived safely and clear of the law, grabbing the bag from the car and making my way to the kitchen. I thought that was the best place.
It was the middle of the night, and I hadn’t given any real consideration to how I wanted to present what I’d brought. I tugged the bag open, pulling out the box within and staring at it.
Shit.
Now the initial thrill had passed and my hormones were settling, I was second-guessing everything.
What the fuck had I been thinking?
This was a terrible idea. She was traumatised. Did she really need this in her life right now? I’d been in a state, completely focused on vengeance, furious instincts guiding me. I hadn’t considered how it might come across…
I opened the box, still warring with the dumbass whispers that this was the perfect gift. Blood had dried against the cardboard, turning a rich brown. The blood from the two disembodied appendages I’d brought her.
Two fingers, each from a different Alpha.
Yup.
This was nuts.
Kyan had given me all the information I needed—and fuck knows where he’d got it, but it had allowed me to descend into a full-blown Alpha episode. I’d spent the last few days making the whole plan and then executing it. I had become a monster my own father would have been proud of.
And now I wanted to give her fingers?
But the tattoos between the knuckles, those marked their value to her.
Evidence of what it meant…
Revenge.
I couldn’t help myself, drawing them out and laying them on the counter as if they could offer me confidence in the decision that was quickly turning sour. As I picked up the first, I flashed back to the moment I’d claimed it.
The Alpha was limp, head lolling weakly in the chair he was bound to. His death would be silent. He wouldn’t feel fear, even though he should.
That fear would give me away—would alert Ace to what I was doing before I could carry out my plans in full.
I’d been quick to find him, and found no thrill in execution now that he was out cold. I fixed the obscene, gilded crown to his head, knowing the drugs in his system would keep him knocked out until morning. By then, he would be dead.
I stepped back, examining my work, taking a picture with my burner phone. It was a risk in itself, but I needed to remember the image Ace would also see.
I had two hours.
Two hours before the toxins on the metal crown would have burned through his skin and my brother would know what I’d done.
In the kitchen, I reached for the second finger.
Kill number two.
More depraved, a fall far further into a past I’d spent so long running from. But if reclaiming it meant protecting her, I would do it without hesitation.
This Alpha was tied up, and awake, low whines sounding from his chest.
He struggled weakly against bindings that tied him to the chair, the gag at his mouth stopping him from speaking. I was seated on the bed beside him, propped against the headboard, arm resting on my knee as I waited.
His terror seeped into the room, the scent of mist and oak souring with every passing second.
His death was inevitable; it was just a matter of time.
I tapped on my phone.
Ten minutes.
“There’s no way Ace chose a pack with Alphas he couldn’t trust to be as twisted as he was.”
I’d found evidence of that.
“You use your own product for a quick fuck when you’re bored,” I said. “Doesn’t seem to matter to you that you have a scent match with my brother back in Vegas.”
There was no lack of money to be found in trafficking. The places Ace had extended an arm, branching the Brotherhood, were into territory that even my father hadn’t dared venture.
And this Alpha. He was the key piece of that puzzle.
Cities away from Vegas, he ran trafficking operations that were now making the Brotherhood millions more. Ace had packed up for political gain.
The other, the one with a crown on his head that was slowly killing him, was the kingpin in a drug trafficking ring with reach halfway to Brazil.
Money and control.
“Though, I hear you return to your scent match for heats,” I murmured. “Thistle?” I asked. “That’s her name, right?”
An Omega unfortunate enough to match Alphas like these.
The Alpha struggled again, eyes wide and terrified. I’d given him a sedative, too, but that was working slowly. Slowly enough that he would know what was happening.
My phone blared an alarm through the hotel room, making the Alpha jump violently.
“Time’s up,” I said.
He let out a pitiful whimper through his gag, but I ignored it. The poisoned crown would be doing its job. Ace’s first pack mate was minutes from death.
I got to my feet, stepping before the vile Alpha, who was slowly losing feeling in his whole body.
That wasn’t how he would die, though.
I turned the playing card in my fingers.
Gripping his hair, I dragged his neck back, ripping the gag from him and ignoring the desperate plea.
I was, in that moment, the son my father had raised. Not the Alpha so desperate to pave the way to something better.
I pressed the card into his mouth and raised my gun to his lips, using the tip to drive it deep into his throat. Ignoring his shudders and weak attempts to choke it out, I forced it deeper, shoving it down until, when I pulled the handle back, I could barely see the edge of the crushed card jammed down his throat.
I stepped back, watching as the Alpha seized, eyes bugging out of his head as he fought his bindings.
I cocked my head, watching the whole time, waiting until the Alpha’s last shudder died down and he went still. Just in time for my second alarm. The one marking the death of the first. The poisoned crown now rested upon the head of a corpse. Ace might be hiding out of sight, but he didn’t take nearly as much care of the Alphas he’d bonded. Within minutes of each other, he would feel those deaths. The complete destruction of his pack bonds.
It was agonising, or so I heard.
Agonising, and just the start.
Before I left, I took my knife to his middle finger just like I had with the first. Then held the power button on the Alpha’s phone, watching it flicker to life, traceable once more.
As I stepped from the hotel room, I let a card slip from my hand.
A king of diamonds with a message scrawled across it for his people to find.
“You come for my pack, I’ll come for yours.”
Both fingers lay on the marble kitchen countertop.
Both with a slim rose tattooed between the knuckles. Proof of who they were. These days, most of the Brotherhood had a rose tattooed on their wrist, but these two, they were elites. Ace was the only one, I’d heard, who didn’t have the tattoo. He was arrogant enough to believe himself the representation of the rose, all by himself. Too much about my brother was rumour, though. He kept himself hidden away and protected, far more paranoid than even our father had been.
I stared at the fingers, cycling through the kill once more, I realized how fucking crazy this was.
I should have bought her Swiftie tickets.
Instead, I was giving her… fingers?
She didn”t want something like that—something that tied me so definitively to my brother. I reached for them, absolutely sure I needed to bury them in the backyard (and prayed that no one would ever go digging), then froze.
Her scent was here.
Was I imagining it?
I turned, staring around the kitchen, searching for her. My eyes locked in on movement, just the faintest sway of hair between the crack in the kitchen door, as if she were stepping back.
“Glade?”
There was a long moment, then the door creaked open and a pair of chestnut eyes were peering through. My throat went bone dry, and I took a quick step in front of the counter where my trophies—fingers—were on full display.
Shit.
She slipped in, closing the door behind her as if she was worried there might be people listening in. The moment she entered, it was like the whole world vanished.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. From the glimmer in her eyes, to the red of her lips, and the blush climbing up the rich brown of her cheeks as we stared at one another.
Alive.
Well enough to be up by herself.
I didn’t know why I was shocked. Between travel, planning, and execution, my trip had been five days. It hadn’t felt like it, and the burner phone meant no texts or calls. I’d locked the bond down, too, but now I cracked it open, realising I’d been keeping her out.
I was met by a fierce ball of anxiety.
“You came back?” she asked.
“Of course I did.” How could I ever stay away from her?
She took another step toward me, eyes so nervous that my chest tightened.
I hadn’t expected how hard it would be to stand before her—to truly face her after knowing what she’d given.
Raised on the harsh indoctrination of toxic Alpha rhetoric, I’d never learned to face a queen. A woman so fierce she’d stolen my chance at saving my pack—a chance I would have wasted—only to sacrifice herself instead. My father never taught me what to do in the face of a woman like Glade, because he would have turned tail or cut her down for challenging his idea of power.
Or tried to crush her into a cage smaller than her reflection left him. Just like Ace had tried to do, only to learn she would survive scars before she bent the knee to any Alpha.
But I needed to become self-taught quickly since she was here, living, breathing, and waiting for me to speak. Living and breathing in a bond that tied me to her forever. I couldn’t watch her suffer another day with anything less than she deserved.
While I scrambled to figure out what an Alpha she deserved would say, she found her words first. With a shaky breath, eyes darting to the ceiling like she was trying to stop herself from crying, “Kyan said you bit me because I was dying.”
Shit…
I took two more steps before halting myself.
I had. It was a moment that would never leave me. But I thought… well, she’d entered the bond—accepted us—but of course she had when the alternative was death. “I didn’t want it to happen like that.” My voice was rough.
Another two hesitant steps, and she was almost within reach. This close, I could see the different shades of brown flecking her glassy chestnut eyes.
“Oh…” The word was so broken as it tumbled from her mouth. Her fingers twisted together, each breath a little shaky. “I… uh… I get that…”
My mind was racing, half of it sinking in guilt, at the bond I’d believed she’d taken out of necessity, not the choice I’d always wanted her to have. The other half was ringing alarm bells that something was wrong.
I frowned, my voice still dry.
“I mean…” She looked confused. “It wasn’t fair to you, to make you decide like?—”
“No.” I cut her off, what she was saying finally clicking.
Shit.
“I want you,” I growled, my own hairs standing on end as I closed the gap between us, reaching for her face. “I want you in this pack more than anything in the world.”
She should have been here this whole time.
Her expression crumpled, and I had to steady her.
“You were gone when I woke. I thought maybe you were angry, or?—”
“I was angry,” I breathed. “Not at you.”
At the whole fucking world for what had happened to her.
At myself.
My voice was broken as I sank to my knees. “I’m so sorry.” In that moment, I forgot everything in the world but what felt right. She deserved this. A real apology from me. I took her hands in mine, the edges scabbed from wounds she’d given herself to save me. “For everything you went through because I wasn’t enough.”
This was my pack.
My scent match.
I shut my eyes, feeling a wave of grief crash in, held at bay by rage and vengeance, blood and death, as if it made a difference to the agony she’d already suffered.
Her scent calmed, as if, somehow, I might have done something right.
“You protected us when I couldn’t,” I breathed. “I hated you for it, and I’m so… so sorry.”
With tears glistening in her eyes, she was so fucking beautiful as she stared down at me. Dark cardamom settled further as she took her time processing my words.
“I want you to forgive me when… when I’ve earned it.” I couldn’t take anything less from her. I didn’t know how.
She nodded, still a little unsure, but opened her mouth as if about to speak when her eyes flickered up, drifting around the room for only a moment before stopping behind me.
She went still, a frown on her face, and the world rushed in.
Oh…
I staggered to my feet, but she was already crossing toward the counter.
“Hold up—” I darted in front of her, but she tried to duck under me, eyes wide. I grabbed her. “Just?—!”
“Are those?—?”
“No.”
“They’re fingers!” Her voice was weak.
Ah, shit.
I let her go, since it was too late anyway, and she reached the counter, gripping it. There was a long silence as I tried to come up with the right way to say it, but she spun on me, chestnut eyes bright.
“That’s…” Her breathing was tight, shock taking over her expression. “Those are… Wait. The roses… His pack?”
I nodded stupidly.
“They’re dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Youkilled them?”
“That… is what happened.”
Was she angry? Afraid? Shocked? I couldn’t tell.
“How did you know where they were?”
“Kyan had some… guesses.”
All of which were correct. I was going to have to talk to him about that. He knew far more than he was letting on.
“It was a stupid plan. I don’t know what I was—” I cut off. I’d reached out to put them back in the box, but she caught my wrist, a little growl in her chest.
Oh. All right then.
She was staring at them with strange curiosity, and her eyes looked funny.
Was I… witnessing possessive-Omega-Glade?
Damn.
I needed to get my head on straight. Wounded she might be, but she’d been raised in the Romano Mafia. She’d probably seen fingers before. Worse, even.
She reached out for them, and I blocked her. “You… cannot take them to the nest.” Why had I said that? It would be ridiculous. She couldn’t possibly want?—
“Why not?” Her voice was high-pitched, her gaze furious.
Oh god.
Anywhere but the nest.
Why would she want that?
You were the fucking idiot who decided they were good trophy gifts from her new pack lead.
And she was an Omega.
A mafia Omega.
But Knight would string me up if I let her—and add my pinkies to the display.
I cleared my throat. “We have a no-dismembered-appendages in the nest rule.”
“No, you don’t.” There was a definite hint of a brat rising in her voice.
I snorted. “We do now.”
“You can’t give me a gift this good and not let me take it to my nest.”
“Oh… I really can.”
I palmed the back of my neck, an unexpected flush rising. A gift this good? I did puff up a little at that. Maybe I wasn’t so stupid after all. “I’ll wall mount them for you, set them in resin—I’ll even make them into a necklace, but they aren’t going anyplace where we’re going to fuck you.” Uh… That last part hadn’t been the plan.
She did a double take, blown pupils suddenly holding mine with intensity.
We stared at each other for a long moment, then she lifted her hand, hovering toward the severed fingers while holding my eyes.
“Glade!”
They were supposed to be for looking at. She didn’t need to touch them.
That was gross.
The most breathtaking smile lit up her face as her hand flashed toward them. I snarled, catching her wrist, then sweeping her over my shoulder to the cutest shrill squeak.