Chapter 28
Mariah
The fighting stopped in fits and starts over the course of the next several hours.
Gunfire sputtered out in stuttering bursts, then faded into silence.
Smoke drifted through the streets as fires burned down to glowing embers.
I stood beside Varek in the center of what was once the Council’s square, now a graveyard of broken weapons, overturned vehicles, and the bodies of the dead.
The remaining Council wolves—the ones who hadn’t fled or been cut down—began to lay down their arms. One by one, they dropped their rifles, hands raised, eyes hollow. Some looked relieved, others afraid.
Commander Soren’s voice carried over the radio, strong and resolute. “Ceasefire confirmed across all sectors. Repeat: ceasefire confirmed. The enemy has surrendered. Repeat: the enemy has surrendered.”
Rowan and Silas were already moving through the lines, making sure the prisoners were treated as soldiers, not spoils. There were no executions. We would shed no more blood here.
I looked toward the remains of the labs, the memory of Elsie’s face flashing before my eyes.
I remembered her laughter, fierce and defiant and maybe a little bit crazy, and the order she’d issued: You finish it.
And we did.
We questioned the Council soldiers, then sent teams from the Resistance and the Watch fanning out through the city, finding every warehouse, every vault, every hidden chamber for any more stores of the rage serum and the fertility drug.
We destroyed every drop we found.
As soon as we were able, we saw to the captive human women.
Soren had sent in a team to free them hours earlier, slipping in during the battle and taking them to a safe location just outside the city.
There were hundreds of them. Some cried when we led them back into the city.
Some just stood there, as if afraid to move.
Others—those who remembered my face—came forward and hugged me.
“You’re safe,” I told them. “It’s over.”
But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t really over for them. It never was after something like this. The effects of what happened to these women, what they’d suffered, would remain with them for the rest of their lives.
Days later, when the smoke cleared, the wounded were tended to and the dead were buried, the remaining wolves gathered in what used to be the Council’s plaza. Their ranks were greatly reduced. The silence among them was heavy, respectful.
Silas and Soren stepped forward, together.
“The old ways are done,” Silas declared.
“The Council is gone, and the world they built with it defeated. From now on, wolves and humans will rebuild. Together. As equals. All of us free,” Soren finished for him and resounding applause filled the square.
Varek’s hand reached for mine, grounding me. He was bruised and bloodied, his eyes rimmed red from exhaustion, but when he looked at me, there was peace there.
“We made it,” he said softly.
I looked around us at the people preparing to pick up the pieces of a broken world in order to build something better.
I turned my gaze to the horizon now clearing of smoke to reveal a clear blue sky.
Then at my beautiful sisters, Kendra and Lia, standing side by side with the mates they loved and who loved them in return.
“Yeah.” I had to push my words past a throat closing with emotion. “We did.”