Chapter 21
The cleanup is grim and quiet, with only the snow on the breeze as any kind of commentary.
I see more than one wolf spit at Connor’s corpse. I refrain, though it’s a battle. Ty is sitting on his haunches, growling slightly, making certain that every wolf in the pack knows what happened here.
Making sure the fate of the traitor is clear.
I make my way around the crowd to the pile of bodies Connor was busy chopping to pieces. More deer, I think, when I get closer. Possibly even horses. Many of the once-domesticated horses have gone a little wild now, out in the hills for years after their people died. Or were eaten.
Savi is standing next to the pile of awful and slick remains when I get there, frowning down at the mess of it as she mutters things beneath her breath.
Though I’m beginning to think that if any of her spells could help us, they would have already.
I do not voice this uncharitable thought.
Winter trudges up to us, wrapped in a parka, with Ariel close behind her.
The vampire king’s cool gaze moves from the mound of sacrifices to Savi, then to the agitated wolves moving around the place where Connor’s body still lies.
Paying tribute to Ty and making their contempt for the betrayer known.
Ariel takes in the sight of Savi, Winter, and me standing there and shakes his head. “Perhaps the three of you should endeavor to present less of a target? I’m not sure there’s any need for you to gather in one place. Not without appropriate safeguards. The goddess never has only one minion.”
“Yes,” Savi says, and it seems to me that I can hear cracks in the smoothness of her voice, which is not encouraging. “I often like to wander about a dark wood, helpless and alone. Thank you for reminding me that it’s not wise.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about, sorceress,” Ariel shoots back.
Ty is still in his huge wolf form. He makes no move to shift back. Instead, he howls.
The pack responds immediately, sounding close enough to thrilled that they have something to do.
Though I suspect Ty did it just so he could watch his vampire and sorceress counterparts attempt to repress their unease as the pack leaps into action to do his bidding.
They drag Connor’s body away. Others come over to handle the slaughtered remains as well.
“Merry Christmas,” I murmur to Winter, and then I shift too.
I can read that look in Ty’s still-flashing gaze, bright with the gold of wolves and battle, and I run with him back to the den.
The death of a wolf is always treated like a tragedy. McCaffrey was treated with respect, and I don’t have to like the man to agree that he deserved it. The death of a traitor, of one of us turned against everything we are, leaves us all reeling.
They take Connor’s body up to the hilltop and begin building the funeral pyre.
I stay with Ty, tending to his minor wounds in the grand cavern, where everyone can see both of us and assure themselves that we’re okay.
That Ty, specifically, is fine. That Connor did not manage to do much of anything out there.
Eventually we all move up to the hilltop to keep our usual vigil next to the funeral pyre. The pack gathers as it always does while the fire claims one of us, but notably without the howls of lamentation, stories, and songs that another werewolf death would require.
With any other werewolf death, those things would be natural.
It’s not until my mother seeks me out that I pay attention to what’s happening outside the tight inner circle of Ty and his trusted few. Far fewer than there were before tonight.
“You knew him as well as anyone.” I study Johanna in the flickering light. “You ran with him many times. And often went off with him around the fires.”
“I would have run with him no matter what,” my mother says flatly.
“He was second to the king. For an extremely old-school male, he was shockingly interested in female pleasure. This is no small thing, daughter.” She holds her head high, and I suspect that she came over here to tell me these things openly.
To make sure no one thought she was hiding them.
“I never had any cause to regret sharing his bed, on a run or not. But I will tell you this. I do not think he ever fully integrated into the pack that Ty was building, for all the lip service he gave it.” She sighs.
“Looking back at it now, I really think he went off the rails when you were born.”
“He was always so nice to me,” I mutter. “That should have been a clue. People either love me or hate me. They’re not nice to me. I’m too polarizing for that.”
I know it’s serious when my mother does not take the opportunity to lecture me about my big head or tell me I am only polarized in my own mind because I refuse to accept fate, or my place, or whatever else.
If you’d told me I would miss those little talks, I would have laughed. I never would have believed it.
She is very serious when she keeps talking.
About Connor, not my ego. “Before you came along, I think he fooled himself into imagining that Ty would never come to the attention of fate. Seventy-five years on the throne and no hint of a mate? He wasn’t the only one who began to murmur that maybe the moon didn’t wish to involve herself because Ty wasn’t a real king. ”
I roll my eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
Johanna, who never jokes, only gazes at me. “Your appearance, while a delight for me, did not exactly create jubilation in all quarters. I thought Connor got over it in time. Apparently I was wrong.”
I think about that as the fire dwindles and the pack, seemingly chastened in all directions, heads back to their own private dens.
Down in Ty’s den, I’m not surprised when he hauls me to him the moment we cross the threshold. I wrap my legs around his waist as he slams me against the nearest wall, and then everything is a blistering rush of heat and need.
His mouth is on mine, a kiss of fury and fear, need and wild passion. Between us, he frees his cock and pushes in deep. He waits for my body to adjust around him, then he pulls me back away from the wall and holds me in place with his feet spread wide and a hard palm on each of my ass cheeks.
Then he does what he wants.
He makes me come again and again. My head is thrown back and my arms are looped around his neck, and I completely surrender myself to this vivid display of the emotions I know he doesn’t want to show any other way.
The emotions I know he won’t admit are eating him alive.
When he finally comes, it’s scalding hot and goes on forever.
He carries me into the bedroom and we tumble down onto the bed together, a tangle of not entirely removed clothing and quivering limbs. We are little more than sweat and panting, holding on to each other for dear life.
The specter of Connor’s betrayal is wrapped all around us. It’s like a smell that tells us both entirely too much and can’t be banished, no matter how many breaths we take.
I don’t say anything. I hold him and listen to him breathe as his big body presses me into his soft bed. Eventually, he flips over and lies there beside me, staring up at the uneven curve of his ceiling.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him.
“It is,” he replies immediately. “He was my VP for one hundred years, Maddox. Who’s fault is it if not mine?”
“His. It is entirely and only his fault.”
“But here’s the thing,” Ty says quietly, here in this cocoon of ours in the dark.
Here where no one can hear us. Where no one but me will listen.
“How can I trust my judgment after this? Why should I ask anyone else to trust it? I had no idea. What kind of king am I if I had no idea that the man I trusted the most was sharpening knives to stick in my back all the while?”
He doesn’t speak again, though eventually exhaustion takes him down and he sleeps. I don’t. I lie there in the dark, wondering why this part feels like a bigger betrayal than I think it would have if it had been directed only at me.
I was creeped out by someone stalking me, targeting me.
I was sick over the idea that someone was using my work to hurt the pack.
But the fact that Connor made Ty doubt himself?
It makes me feel incandescent with sheer fury.
It makes me wish we could bring the old man back from the ashpit so I could take a turn at his throat.
When the next day dawns, my eyes are gritty and I still don’t know how to handle it.
I move around the den. I go into the kitchen and make myself breakfast in the hopes that protein might make that burning fury inside me ebb a little bit.
When I hear people muttering about last night, about how they never liked Connor anyway and blah blah blah, I can’t help myself. I turn on them, staring them down across a wide countertop in the den kitchen.
“How fascinating,” I say, with a certain scathing politeness. “Did you know?”
It’s a mated pair I’ve never thought about one way or the other. Now I’m fairly sure that I will root against them until the end of time. They both flinch a little, as if having all of my attention on them like this is alarming. Polarizing, even.
I sure hope it is.
“Um,” says the male.
“Because if you did know that Connor was a traitor to this pack all this time and you kept that information to yourself, what does that make you?” I ask in a voice that would make a razor feel dull by comparison.
The male looks as if I’ve struck him. The female bursts into tears.
I feel . . . not as bad about that as I probably should. I make myself a huge plate of food and eat it standing there at the counter with a face that could make children cry. Or so I assume. No one comes near enough to me to find out.
I can hear Ty barking out orders as he puts wolves through their paces up above. He sounds as friendly as I feel.