Chapter 20
“Fuck you,” Connor snarls back at Ty.
“What the hell is this?” Ty belts at him. “All this bullshit is you? Why would you betray the pack—and me—like this?”
I can’t make sense of this. I can’t believe this.
Too many things are whirling around in my head, like a kaleidoscope shifting pieces into patterns that never resolve into a single, comprehensible image. All those sacrifices. All that blood.
Ty isn’t the only one who can’t get a grip on this.
On everything it means, and everything I now have to look back on and wonder about.
This means that it was Connor stalking me.
More than once. That his are the eyes I’ve felt on me, making my neck prickle, making me jumpy.
That he has been coming for me—all while showing me nothing but his trademark kindness and support to my face.
That he’s been the one sabotaging our runs.
It makes my stomach twist.
I think about a few days ago, when he walked me through the dark tunnels of the den and I had the strangest inkling that he was a threat—but I’d been sure I was just being paranoid. He’d done nothing. I hadn’t even mentioned it to Ty, because I’d thought I was being silly.
I think, here in the snow with the woods and the blood and Connor with an axe, that this is a lesson. I’m known for all kinds of things, but being silly isn’t one of them. Maybe next time I’ll listen to my instincts.
Right now I want to know how Ty’s trusted and beloved VP turned into a traitor.
“She’s coming, you asshole,” Connor bellows at Ty. I watch his fist clench around the axe he holds. “The goddess of filth and misery is coming. The princess of pestilence will arise, and all of this will mean shit. You will mean shit.”
Vin?a.
Somehow this is about fucking Vin?a.
I can’t decide if this is better or worse.
I feel Ty’s powerful body quake with the same impossible realization that careens through me.
In a way, I suppose it makes more sense.
The fact that there were sacrifices at Savi’s place too.
The idea that this is about the three of us, Savi, Winter, and me.
None of that really tracks if this was all a traitor to the pack focused on wolf shit.
Not that Connor being a fucking death clan minion is something I can get my head around.
“You fought against her on Halloween,” Ty growls at him.
“You personally rid the world of more of her creepy little minions than I can count on one paw. How the hell do you go from calling red cloaks candy to chopping up furry animals in the winter woods and pledging your fucked-up allegiance to a goddess who doesn’t give a shit if you live or die? ”
Connor’s gaze is a dark hole. It makes my spine feel like it’s slicked in ice.
“One of her faithful found me afterward and led me to the truth,” he tells us, his hand seeming to convulse on the handle of the axe.
“She showed me. The destroyer of worlds rests, but is not finished. The prophecy did not fail. She will rise again and this time, there will be no stopping her. Her oaths are stained in blood.”
Always with the blood, I think.
“She’s not here now, motherfucker,” Ty throws back at him. “The only bloodstains are the ones you keep making.”
Connor sneers and lurches forward. Ty swings me around so I’m behind him, his big frame between us. I hold on to him, my arms around his waist, and keep my eyes on the threat.
The threat I’m still having trouble believing is really a threat. Then again, that’s a whole lot of blood on the ground.
“It’s just you and me and a few carcasses tonight,” Ty goes on.
“And I’m going to need you to explain how you go from being my second since the day I won my crown to this bullshit.
Chopping up animals and leaving them all over the place like a deranged psycho.
Sneaking around and fucking up protection details.
” He shakes his head. “I was so sure it couldn’t be you.
Even though no one else would have the authority to call back any protection I set out, I was convinced it couldn’t be you.
I told myself it was impossible. I came up with a hundred theories about how someone was working around you because no fucking way could it be you. ”
They stare at each other as the snow drives all around them. They’re both breathing hard. I can see their breath against the dark. I can see Connor’s chest move. I can feel Ty’s.
I’m breathing hard myself.
My head is less of a kaleidoscope, but I don’t like the conclusions I’m drawing. I don’t like any of this.
“Yet here you are,” Ty growls, his voice shaking with temper. Betrayal. Fury. “Making like a serial killer and much too close to Maddox’s cottage.”
That electrifies Connor. It almost seems to me like he’s on something, careening from one emotional high to another and still with that axe in his hand. Not to mention that grim pile of mutilation behind him.
“You think you’re smart,” Connor snarls at him. “You swagger around, calling yourself some kind of high king when all you are is a pussy-whipped upstart who’s never known his goddamn place.”
I feel Ty stiffen, and I like that Connor is landing blows even less than the rest of this.
“You’re a traitor,” I tell him, my voice calm and clear in the snowy night.
Despite the blood and how I still feel like I’m reeling, I pull it together.
“You can call me anything you want. You can claim you found truth. You betrayed your king, and you’re a traitor to the pack.
In the end, that’s all you are. No one will ever sing about you.
No one will remember you—they’ll only remember what you did. ”
I can feel the growl in Ty, though I’m not sure it’s audible. It’s like he’s simmering and it’s beginning to boil. The heat of his fury should be enough to melt the snow.
“And what they’ll remember,” I continue in the same steady way, my eyes on Connor, “is that you’re a two-faced bastard who sold out everyone who loved you. What a legacy.”
“I’ve heard more than enough from you, Maddox,” Connor growls at me, and he starts tossing that bloody axe from palm to palm.
This is not exactly comforting. “I should have killed you when I had the chance. And do you know how many times I had the chance? A thousand times when you were a girl. When it became clear again and again that your role in this life is to pervert everything this pack stands for.”
“I think that’s you, friend,” I tell him.
“Hey asshole, news flash,” Ty barks out. “This pack stands for what I say it stands for. If you have a problem with that, take it up with me. Don’t sneak around like a fucking coward, trying to scare females.”
“Another legacy right there,” I can’t help but drawl. “Did you really think you were going to scare a fucking sorceress? Or get anywhere near the vampire king’s consort?”
“I watched you sleep,” Connor growls. “I was as close to you as a breath, and you didn’t even notice.”
Ty laughs at that. Loud. Long. It makes the trees seem to cower, but that’s better than imagining Connor—drenched in blood and entrails—staring into my windows. “That works for me, because I’m going to watch you die.”
“You still don’t know what this is about,” Connor shouts at him. “I don’t give a shit about you. I don’t give a shit about your mouthy, unworthy bitch. Neither one of you will survive the night when she comes. She will make you pay in blood.”
That echoes back too, a distorted roar against the canopy of trees laden with blankets of snow.
It’s a very pretty place to find out someone you trusted is a monster. A real monster.
“How does a werewolf become the blank-eyed minion of a death goddess he helped put back into her place?” I ask him. “That’s what this is about for me. One of her faithful showed you the way? Does that mean she fucked you until you crashed out and started massacring woodland creatures?”
Connor has clearly had enough talking. Or maybe he really has had enough of me talking. Either way he throws back his head and howls.
Then he glares our way and throws his axe.
It flies through the air, spinning end over end in a shower of blood until Ty smacks it out of its flight path.
One swipe of his arm and it ends up embedded in a nearby tree.
Connor only laughs. It’s a madman sort of a laugh, which suits this grisly moment, but I still can’t really believe this is happening. He throws out his arms, there’s a flash of familiar energy, and then he’s a wolf.
And he doesn’t waste a moment.
He catapults himself straight at us.
But Connor doesn’t make it to a full landing, because Ty leaps up, shifts midair, and swats him out of the air too.
Then everything gets even more deadly.
It’s teeth and claws, and it’s vicious. It’s frenzied.
I might not be able to believe this is happening, but reality doesn’t seem to give one shit what I believe.
Two enormous wolves clash again and again, rending and tearing at each other, no belief necessary.
The two of them fight in front of me with all those animal bodies in a wet pile behind them as they grapple in the bloodstained snow.
I do the only thing I can. The thing I must do. I shift. Then I throw back my head and I howl down the goddamn mountain.
I start howling out our version of a 911 call and I don’t stop.
Everyone comes running. The pack pours out of the woods and the hills. Winter and Ariel and a set of vampires I assume must have been on watch appear. Briar stumbles out from inside her cottage, wearing what looks like pajamas—but still with that beanie.
Even Savi appears, bathed in her usual golden light, though she frowns when she sees the piles of guts and gore in the trees. Not because it’s nauseating, I think, though it certainly is. She almost looks as if the way Connor arranged the bodies means something to her.
I can’t concentrate on that.