Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Seven of the eight alphas of Pack Kincaid loitered on the wide back porch, talking amongst themselves, smoking, and passing around what looked like a bottle of gin.
That was not what Roman wanted to see. He had been of the belief that the pack would likely wait inside with perhaps one of them standing guard over the yard to see who would emerge victorious from the trees first. On the one hand, he didn’t have to worry about sneaking into the house if they were all outside, but it meant he and Puppy had to be careful in engaging with the enemy.
They were at a supreme disadvantage like that.
Puppy huffed in irritation and stamped one bare foot into the dirt, squinting through the leaves before turning a questioning glance toward Roman. She didn’t know what to do.
A distraction was necessary. Roman weighed the odds of what he thought they might get away with, though he doubted they would get more than one alpha out into the woods with them. Killing one would alert the entire pack to what was going on.
So it had to count. “Walk further down. Cry like you’re hurt. Don’t make any other sounds.”
Puppy stared at him for a moment before grunting and slinking through the trees, her footsteps eerily quiet as she avoided stepping on twigs and leaves.
She disappeared from his sight after a moment, and Roman could only hope that she would do as she was told, gripping a branch above his head and giving it a sudden, harsh shake.
The wind had died down mostly, and a few curious heads tilted toward the sudden rustling noise.
No one stepped off the porch, though. Not until a high-pitched whine split the night, sharp and brittle over the cascading rain.
An alpha had good hearing, and every single member of Pack Kincaid looked toward the forest, each of them clocking the noise.
Would one of them come to see what was the matter, or would they leave an injured female alpha in the woods to die?
“Shit,” Axel Kincaid swore from the porch. “Was that Puppy crying?”
Knox cocked his head, his eyes sweeping the forest, though Roman knew it would be hard to see through the foliage. The grass was long and thick and lush, and the lack of moonlight or even starlight made the night darker. “She sounds like she’s hurt. You think Kane fucked her up that bad?”
“The alpha is going to be pissed if she’s hurt,” Nash groaned, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Axe, you go get her. You’re the only one who can handle her when she’s jumpy.”
Axel heaved a put-upon sigh. “Fine. Fucker. Next time, deal with her yourself.”
He stepped off the porch and cursed under the rainfall, jerking the hood of his jacket up as if that would do anything to protect him. Roman crouched low to the ground, never taking his eyes off of his target, his tongue sliding over his teeth in preparation.
On every single mission he had been on with the Vipers, he could kill one staff member of each breeding center.
All of them had been betas, and while Roman had delighted in their deaths, they weren’t proper challenges to him.
A beta could never stand up to him, and now that he knew what he was, he realized just how pitiful they were as prey compared to what he could have.
Killing an alpha would be easy. Pitifully easy. Especially when it was an alpha who stood between him and his darling, who had done nothing but aided in Sidian’s suffering. For that choice, for that mistake, Roman would pay back the agony tenfold.
After all, hadn’t he been trained to do just that?
He nearly jumped a foot in the air when he felt a pair of small hands around his neck, fingers curling under the metal of the shock collar that still rested against his throat.
He glanced up to see Puppy looking down at him, with a meaningful expression in her eyes as she gave her wrists one quick twist. Whatever the latching mechanism on the collar was, it broke, emitting a tiny electric whine that was drowned out by a rumble of thunder.
She slipped the metal between her teeth and crept back into the shadows with it, though Roman didn’t know why she wanted it.
He watched her go before turning his attention back to the yard, his blood rushing in his ears as Axel stepped through the trees and entered the darkness of the forest.
“I don’t know where the fuck you are, but I know you’re in here,” he shouted, all bravado whether or not he knew it. “Puppy, where are you, you misbehaving little bitch?”
Roman edged just behind a trunk so he would be out of Axel’s direct line of sight, his lips parting as he inhaled the alpha’s scent. It was rancid—they all were—and he took some comfort in knowing it would never torment Sidian again. Just a little closer. You’re almost there.
Axel’s head twisted off toward the right when something rustled in the bushes, his shoulders tensing and his eyes narrowing. But he was looking the wrong way, and it was easy for Roman to slink around the trunk of the tree and take him down from the left side.
“Fuck!” Axel thrashed like a child, punches and kicks thrown wild as Roman wrapped an arm around his waist and slammed him into the ground. “Get the fuck off of me, you damned mutt!”
“Wrong dog,” Roman murmured before he slammed his fist into Axel’s throat.
The wet crunch made him giggle, the sound alien to his ears as Axel’s hands fumbled with the front of his throat.
Trachea collapse was simple under Roman’s precise strike; he’d been sparring with a trained fighter for the last two years of his life and pleasure surged through him at how effective the hit had been.
It wasn’t suffering to the depth he would have preferred, but there was something satisfying about watching someone wheeze as they suffocated to death.
He sank to his knees in the mud, watching as Axel’s face reddened. “Hurts, right?”
Axel stared at him with wide and disbelieving eyes, trying to draw in breath through a throat that no longer worked. For just a moment, Roman considered ripping his throat open to give him one last gasp before he gurgled his last, but he didn’t possess the quality of mercy.
Those alphas bled it out of him the moment they laid hands on his mate.
“You’re going to die soon,” he said, relishing the way Axel’s eyes widened up at him, blinking to clear away the rain that fell into them every few seconds. “There is no saving you. I want you to know that. You are going to die, and you are going to die because you touched my omega.”
Sidian, sharp and prickly and yet sweet when he wanted to be. Sidian, who once said all he wanted to do was disappear into the woods and live like a cryptid or something equivalent.
Sidian, who trusted Roman enough to open up to him, who accepted the hand Roman offered him, who wanted nothing more than to be seen, to be respected, to be treated with kindness that did not come with conditions attached.
Sidian, who was so, so afraid of everyone around him, and yet sought connection with a desperation that made Roman feel sick to his stomach.
His tormented, beautiful mate, who only deserved the best things in life.
“I am going to kill your entire pack,” Roman promised as Axel’s body bucked, instinct kicking in as he pissed himself, as the fear took hold of him. “So don’t get too lonely down in hell. I’ll send your brothers to you as soon as I get done with them.”
He held Axel’s gaze with his own until the alpha stopped moving, his body slumping against the earth as the last of the life drained out of him.
Blue-tinted lips stopped smacking, hanging half-open as a thin line of drool trailed down from the corner of his mouth.
The front of his throat looked almost comical, dented in as deeply as it was. Roman had done a good job with it.
He wished he had his phone. It took shitty pictures, but it would have been a trip to show Mal what he had pulled off.
Shouts echoed through the trees, and he lifted his head to see the Kincaids spilling off the porch.
When an alpha bonded into a pack died, the entire pack would feel it. That none of them had noticed Axel’s desperate attempts at survival said something about how sick their bond was, but Roman didn’t care about that. It was a relief that they hadn’t been able to stop him.
He wondered about their omega just as Jett Kincaid fell to his knees.
“No,” Nash said, shaking his head as he raked his hands through his hair. “No, no, no, that’s not possible, is it? There’s no way that just happened.”
They could feel the absence within the bond, which was more than enough for them to know something horrible must have happened. Roman chuckled as he leaned back, taking in a deep breath of the fresh night air, of the blood and piss and shit of the corpse beneath him.
He wasn’t able to give the doctor at the breeding center enough time or attention, but he would rectify that now. He would send everyone who had hurt his mate straight into the fire.
“Axel!” Knox shouted into the trees. “This isn’t funny. Where the fuck are you?”
Denial is such an addictive drug. Roman blew a breath and rose to his feet, rolling his shoulders to work the slight tension out of them.
Puppy was nowhere to be seen, but now that he knew she was there, he could almost feel her like a phantom limb.
Could almost imagine her silent pacing back and forth as she waited to see what would happen next.
She would know Axel was dead; Roman wondered if she would be disappointed she didn’t get to do it herself, but he supposed it didn’t matter too much to her.
All of them had a hand in hurting her, after all. Just like all of them had hurt Sidian.
“Why isn’t he answering?” Jett’s voice was low, careful, controlled, but Roman could see the way his hands shook before he shoved them into the pockets of his jeans.
So much weakness on open display; they must have relied on numbers to get by this long.
“Where the hell is he, Knox? There’s… There’s no way, is there? There’s no way they could have…”
He trailed off, unwilling to admit the truth, but Knox did not answer. He stared into the trees instead, alert and hoping the impossible would come true.
Roman watched him for a moment before his gaze dropped back to the corpse at his feet.
If the Kincaids were unwilling to admit the truth, then it was up to Roman to ensure that they understood the gravity of their situation.
He doubted they would rise to the occasion, but the least he could do was give them a chance to brace themselves.
Sidian did not have that chance. He did not have the luxury of being given an opportunity to prepare himself for what Pack Kincaid had done to him. But he had survived, and Roman would ensure that the Kincaid alphas did not.
He owed it to his mate, and he would deliver no matter what it took.