Chapter 7
FINISH HIM
TYRELL
We were in position at eleven minutes past Carter's signal.
The eastern tree line was exactly as the satellite image had promised — dense and dark, with forty yards of open ground between the last tree and the south face of the structure. Reeve was at my left, steady, reading the field as he always did — quietly, completely, without a word.
We waited.
Carter's diversion had done its job before Carter himself had gone east with Darius and Everett toward the cabin.
The signal had come through clean, and their truck had been visible on the property road long enough to draw attention.
By now, they were two miles out, moving toward the real location and toward Dana.
That was their fight.
This one was ours.
Through the trees, I found Destiny.
She approached from the north along the tree line, visible and alone, like a daughter who had received a photograph and had no choice but to come.
She’d said in the truck that she could do it, and I believed her.
What I hadn’t expected was how precise the performance would be—her stride urgent, carrying enough emotion to read as instinct rather than as tactics.
Redmon's men read it exactly as she needed them to.
They went for her.
The first one was six-foot-something, broad across the chest, a Beta. He moved like a man confident in his size, which meant he had never met anyone who could turn that size against him.
Destiny let him get close. That was the thing about ice — close was where she was lethal. She held her ground until he was almost on her, then she moved. One fluid step into his reach, and his throat opened in three seconds. Clean. Precise. No wasted motion.
The second one rushed harder and took her to the ground.
I took one step forward. Reeve's hand landed on my arm.
I stopped.
"She can dismantle them in her sleep," I said, because I needed to say something that wouldn't let me go.
Reeves didn't answer. He was watching too.
Destiny was already moving on the ground — not fighting the fall, but using it. Her blade found the second man's abdomen in a single, clean horizontal cut. He rolled off her. She was on her feet, wiping blood from her knife, before he stopped moving.
She scanned, took control of the situation, and walked slowly forward.
One minute later, he stepped out of the tree line.
Redmon.
I had read his file: Gold-Eyed Alpha. Strategic, experienced, and accustomed to moving through the Underground Market without paying the price for his actions.
He looked at Destiny. At the two men on the ground. At the blades, she hadn't bothered to sheath them.
Something flickered across his face—not surprise, exactly, but recalculation.
"Well." His voice carried easily across the open ground. He was not worried about being heard. He had not yet done the accounting for what that meant. "The little Omega came ready."
Destiny didn't move. "I stay ready."
He tilted his head, closing the distance by two steps with the ease of a man who believed the ground beneath him was still solid.
"You know, I've been watching your family for a long time.
Your mother—beautiful, resilient. The untouchable Omega, the boss's favorite.
" He paused, his eyes sweeping over her with a calculation that sent something cold and absolute to the base of my sternum.
"He got sentimental—lost focus. I'm here to correct that. And when I bring him one of his heirs—" a slow smile— "he'll understand exactly where things stand."
Silence.
"A warrior Omega with ice wolf genetics." His gaze settled on her the way a man looks at something he intends to take. "The things that would come from that. The Council would pay extraordinarily well."
We were waiting for Marcus’s signal from the west. Until that fire, Destiny needed Redmon to be talking and exposed.
"You really think you can take me?" Her voice carried enough edge and instability to sell the act.
"I think—" he smiled—"if I can't reach my little broken bird, I'll take what she loves most. She'll come for you, won't she?"
I watched Destiny go still in a particular way. Not fear. Calculation. The stillness of someone who had just grasped its full shape.
The trap was never for her.
She was the bait for Sage.
"Smart," she said.
"I thought so."
"Not smart enough."
He tilted his head. "Breadcrumbs, little Omega. Dana brought you here. You'll bring me my little bird." A pause. "The boss had his time. Once I handle the inconvenience of your fake-ass mates, both of his daughters will be mine."
Fire blasted from the west.
I was already moving.
Destiny closed the distance to Redmon the moment the signal fired — not away from him but toward him, because Destiny did not retreat from what she had decided to end.
He was quick, much quicker than his physique suggested, and his speed had an uncanny quality. I had noticed a particular sense of wrongness since he emerged from the tree line, an undercurrent beneath his innate power.
Witch-enhanced.
I had read about that possibility in Darius's notes and filed it. I was watching it in real time now and adjusting accordingly.
She had already landed three cuts on him.
Three clean cuts — dark stains spreading across his left side, his right forearm, and the side of his neck.
Any one of them should have slowed him more than it did.
He was running on something that told his body the damage could wait, and he was using that borrowed time to press his size advantage.
He grabbed her with unnatural force, sending her knives clattering to the ground. His arm was around her throat from behind.
I watched her hands come up immediately — the correct response, fingers finding his forearm and working the release angle.
She had it. Her form was sound. But Redmon's enhanced strength completely overrode it, dragging her back against him with the satisfaction of a man who had been waiting for this exact position.
She was managing it. She was not winning it.
Then Sage pushed.
I felt it hit the field like a second heartbeat — a pulse of pure amplification rolling out from two miles east and landing across every element at once.
From the RV. From that van, she had sworn to stay inside, had stayed inside, and still found a way to reach all of us.
My element surged, water running cold and sharp through my veins, clarifying everything.
Destiny’s eyes glowed, and Isdisa was right at the surface. Redmon let out a yell, pulling his now frozen arm loose.
She used the surge the same way she used his size — took it, turned it, and drove her elbow back into his jaw before he realized what had shifted. Redmon staggered.
I was ten yards out.
I hit him from the left — pulled the speed at the last second, redirected the momentum, and came in at the angle that put maximum force into minimal contact, letting his own mass work against him.
Destiny was already moving — dropped, turned, blade up — and added two more cuts to his abdomen before he had fully processed that I was in the fight.
He roared.
The sound was wrong, almost feral. I put myself between him and Destiny.
"Behind me," I said.
"Ty—"
"Behind me." Not a command. A request.
She stiffened. I felt her weigh the situation before she shifted — not retreating, but repositioning, choosing her next angle. She was not behind me for protection. She was behind me because she was coming from a direction he wouldn't expect, and we both knew it.
Redmon looked at me.
"The Delta." Almost amused. "She didn't come alone, after all."
"No," I said. "She didn't."
He charged at me like enhanced fighters do—fast and heavy, using size and borrowed speed.
He telegraphed his first swing by a degree—more than I needed.
I dodged inside, let it pass, used his momentum to redirect him, and hit him three times on his left side—already opened by Destiny—before he could recover.
He recovered faster than he should have.
He caught my right arm on the second exchange—not a grip, but a glancing impact that struck the bone and revealed its unnatural strength. I rolled with it, using the moment to assess.
"She was the operation," Redmon shouted, the cuts beginning to register now, breathing harder. "You're just what's standing between me and finishing it."
"That's going to be a problem for you," I said.
He threw everything he had.
He still had size, training, and whatever was burning through his system. I held by refusing his force a clean line—redirecting, turning, making him work for every inch.
He was trying to end it in one exchange.
I kept him busy until my brother came to claim his kill.
***
MARCUS
I had waited since I saw him disappear into the trees a year ago.
Idris was at my six, having cleared the west approach with the efficiency that had made him worth bringing. The western perimeter was secured. This was handled.
"Been waiting on this," I said.
Redmon turned and saw Phoenix at the surface in my eyes. He misread what he was looking at.
He raised his phone, calling for backup that wasn't coming. I watched his face as the silence on the other end settled — whoever he had been counting on had already been neutralized or had looked at the math and made a different choice. He was alone out here.
I watched him understand it in pieces.
"You made a choice," I said, moving closer. "You helped keep a woman prisoner for twenty-two years and used her daughter to lure her out." The fire intensified. "You targeted my family—my Luna, my mate."
"She is MINE!" The sound that came from him was unhinged—the last noise of a man who had lost his grip on the story he'd been telling himself. He quickly reached into his back pocket and brought a vial to his mouth—
Destiny hit him from the right.
Low and fast, she slipped under his guard, calculating the opening with focus. Two sharp cuts defied the enhancement's advice to wait. His right knee buckled, dropping the vial. She was already in motion, her blade catching the gray morning light.