Chapter 17
ATTEMPTED MURDER TO ACTUAL MURDER
gus enjoys having mother back.
he doesn’t like it when cousin is sad.
can gus bite the sneaky raccoon?
— gus
Ihold up my hand. “I’ll explain later, Honey. Okay? First, I need to hear exactly from Crystal what the hell she did.”
With Honey scowling at her, Ash looking at her with his puppy dog eyes, Max snarling under his breath, and Gus perched on Honey’s shoulder, hands on his hips, daring her to answer…
it would take a stronger supe than Crystal to keep her mouth shut.
Add in how I loom over where she’s sitting with her back to my couch and she doesn’t have a chance.
It all comes pouring out of her. How she was bored and looking for trouble, she discovered that Ash—or, as she called him, the ‘pretty boy librarian’—was moving to Moonburrow.
She’s known all along that’s where I am.
Curious about her sister’s life, and interested to see how I would react when I discovered that Ashton Morgan was in town, she decided to hitch a ride.
“Why?” asks Max, ever the sheriff. “Why would it matter if Ash came to take over Honey’s apartment and Roxy lived in town, too?”
“Don’t you know?” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes before. Crystal goes for it. “Roxy’s been obsessed with him since we were teens.”
A breath catches in my throat. How did… how did Crystal know that?
Ash brushes his fingers against mine. “Roxy?”
It’s my instinct to deny it. To say that I wasn’t, but with the mate bond singing between us… I shrug. “Let’s just say you caught my eye that summer day, and I never forgot you.”
“That’s putting it mildly. You think I was bad to Roxy? The way she terrorized Honey Morgan because she thought the opossum male was her mate… now that was fucked-up.”
Max scowls at me. Then, almost under his breath, he says, “Honey Lobo.”
He really likes knowing that she took his name after their Alpha ceremony. Me, I’ll be Roxy Kane ’til the day me and my raccoon go belly-up, and I wonder if Ash might like to be Ashton Kane…
Ah. A thought for another time.
For now, I hold up my hands before the sheriff’s scowl deepens. Then, echoing my mate, I say, “I got better.”
“Yeah, because she left. And you left. And then all of Onancock was talking about how Honey mated up, got herself an Alpha of a wolf pack and everything.” Crystal scoffs at Max.
“I never wanted a predator myself, but if Roxy came home for more than five minutes, she would’ve known long ago that Ashton Morgan was Honey’s kin, not her mate.
Oh, no. I knew. I knew all along that the opossum boy… he was meant for Roxy.”
She knew. Why the hell didn’t she tell me?
Easy. Because she’s Crystal fucking Kane, bane of my existence.
“So you followed him here to mess with my mate,” I spit out through gritted teeth, flexing my fingers again to keep from throttling her. “And?”
“I’m sure you figured out the rest.”
“Humor me.”
She does. With a cadence of the bored, as though she’s reciting her grocery list, Crystal tells us how she got the brilliant idea to interfere with my mating because, as she put it, if we were fated, not even her little prank would stand in the way of true forever mates.
Prank. That’s what she called it. Prank.
Crystal shrugs one shoulder carelessly. “The needle was supposed to dull the bond. He wouldn’t realize who she was to him.”
Ash goes very still beside me. “But she would. And that would hurt her.”
Another shrug, courtesy of my older sister. “I thought it would be funny.”
My mate takes a step toward her like he’s about to challenge her, and while the gesture is super sexy to me, this confrontation is a long time coming.
This is between me and my sister.
I move in front of Ash, gesturing for him to stay behind.
That’s the best thing about not tying yourself to a predator.
Ash will stand up for me, but as a fellow prey shifter, he also knows that I can stand up for myself.
Only, unlike Max, his beast won’t prod him to protect me when I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.
“Let me get this straight. You got out of his car and followed Ash to the bakery. When you were in the alley together, you jumped out and scared him. When he dropped… because he’s an opossum and you knew he’d play dead, you yanked off his shoe and shoved a silver needle into his heel.
” It sounds insane. It is insane. “Where did you get the needle?”
“In the trash. Where else?”
“And you stuck around?”
This is Crystal Kane, who loves to watch her handiwork. Of course she stuck around.
“What was I going to do? Hitchhike back to Virginia? No. I figured I would have a little fun, watch the two of you interact, knowing that Roxy is soooo in love with the prissy opossum, and the silver needle would keep him from feeling the mate bond. That’s all it was.
A piece of silver to muffle his beast shouldn’t have done more than that. I didn’t mean for him to, like, die.”
As soon as Crystal stops talking, both Ash and I speak at the same time.
“You’re in love with me?”
“Don’t call him a prissy opossum!”
Wait. What did he say?
I turn to Ash. “What? Yeah. Of course I am.”
Before, my raccoon was drawn to him. Then, when I found him in the dumpster, I knew he was my mate. I wanted him, and then I got to know him, and I love him.
His lips split into a grin that makes him even more handsome to me. “I love you, too.” His grin widens. “Since the banana peel.”
My heart sings. Yeah. Since the banana peel.
Somewhere behind us, Crystal performs a slow clap.
I wonder if Ash will wait for me to do a stint in prison.
How much does fratricide go for nowadays?
I could claim temporary insanity. Max is the sheriff.
Even he looks like Crystal is driving him a little homicidal.
Only Honey’s gentle hand on his back is keeping him from taking over the whole scene.
I look at Crystal. There’s a dare in her yellow eyes. She wants me to be as miserable as she is, no matter what it takes.
No. I won’t stoop to her level.
Not anymore.
“What happened next?” I ask her.
Enjoying her torment, she answers.
“The freakiest fucking thing, okay? I shoved the silver in and his, like, soul popped out of his body. It looked just like him, but see-through, and it floated away. I figured that meant he was a ghost and that I killed him so I picked up the corpse, tossed him in the dumpster, and hightailed it out of there. But, look, he’s not dead.
And, from the mark on his neck, no harm done.
You’ve got your mate.” Her expression twists into one of bitter jealousy. “Just like you get everything.”
I also got a confession.
I jerk my head toward Max. “What do you think? Is that enough to charge her for murder?”
Crystal chokes. “Murder? What murder?” She gestures at Ash. “He’s fucking breathing, Rox. How is he dead?”
Max moves to stand next to me. “The suspect has a point. Since the victim didn’t die, but the suspect confessed—”
“Gleefully,” cuts in Honey.
“Gleefully,” agrees Max, “to administering silver in enough quantities that it led to the victim’s soul being expelled, I think we have a pretty strong case for attempted murder.”
“It was a prank!” Her eyes go wild as she jumps to her bare feet. “Roxy… you know it was a prank. That’s what the Kane sisters do.”
“Yeah, but we’re not kits anymore, Crystal. And you fucked up when you messed with my mate.”
Max doesn’t have any cuffs. Anytime he’s in Moonburrow, there’s a badge on his belt, as though anyone could ever forget that he’s the sheriff. Because of that, he doesn’t need cuffs. Once he gives control over to his wolf, the Alpha can cower any supe in his borders to obey him.
That’s what happened with Riordan. Back when he was an alpha without a pack, he used his wolf too wildly and pissed off the wrong witch with his commands.
Now he’s cursed, and he refuses to rely on his wolf at all.
That’s how Max ended up in charge. He only taps into his wolf when he has to, and when he does, he packs a wallop.
Crystal drops to her knees. “I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear? I was jealous that you got your fated mate and I picked Eddie when I knew he wasn’t mine.”
Of course. It seems so obvious now, but I don’t want an apology. Not from Crystal.
“I just want you to leave me the hell alone,” I tell her.
Honey goes up on her tiptoes. She grabs her mate by the shoulder, pulling him down to her level so that she could whisper in his ear.
Every single one of us in this room is a shifter with supernatural hearing—except for Gus—but she’s careful not to say anything that anyone except for Max can overhear.
When she’s done, he frowns for a moment, then nods.
“Crystal Kane, you have fifteen minutes to be outside of Moonburrow’s borders. If you’re still here at minute sixteen, I’m arresting you for the attempted murder of Ashton Morgan.”
I glance at Ash. He’s the true victim in all of this. If he wants her going down, she’s going down… but my mate nods in agreement, letting me know that he’s okay with kicking her out of Moonburrow—and out of our lives.
Crystal is cruel, but she’s not a moron. Pausing only to flip me her middle finger, she storms for the door in my borrowed clothes, slams down each of the stairs, and disappears.
I know her. Too well, I sometimes think, and I’d bet next month’s profits that she’s pocketing as much shit as she can on her way out. She might even ‘borrow’ a shifter’s car to make sure she can get out of Moonburrow in the sheriff’s time limit, plus get her the rest of the way to Virginia.
And if that happens? I’ll send the law in Onancock after her. Finally, after all these years, Crystal Kane is not my problem any longer.