Chapter 7 #2
"That's for putting your hands on my mother." She drove the blade in again. "And that's for my sister, you sick fuck."
She stepped back, breathing heavily, trying hard to control her next move. Then she looked at me.
"Finish him."
That was when Sage pushed — the largest surge of the night, striking every element on this field at once.
The fire in my chest didn't scatter. It focused.
Precise and absolute. The wind picked up to a dangerous speed, and the earth beneath us began to shift.
She was pushing toward Darius and Carter.
Redmon didn't go easy.
I expected resistance. I didn't expect him to find a second gear.
He caught my forearm on the way in and used my momentum against me, twisting hard, driving me sideways into the wall.
The impact rattled through my shoulder. He was stronger than he looked — whatever was left in him, he'd been saving it.
He came off the wall swinging, and the first hit landed high on my jaw, snapping my head back.
I tasted blood.
He pressed in while I was still absorbing it, one hand grabbing my collar, the other going for my throat. The grip was practiced. He'd done this before — cut off air, cut off thought, wait for the body to do the rest.
I didn't give him the wait.
The fire was there, but I didn’t need it. I had enough rage built up, and he was my release. I understood what he'd done to my family. Redmon felt it the second it moved through me. His grip loosened, not by choice, but because the animal part of him recognized it wasn't safe to hold on.
I shook off his grip, wrapped my hand around his throat, and pushed him backward with bone-crushing body blows until he had no choice but to fall back.
He stopped fighting.
"You think this ends here." His voice was wrecked, barely above a whisper. "They already know what she is. What all of you are." He almost laughed — a broken, airless sound. "The Council has been building toward this longer than you have been alive, boy.” He held my gaze as he said it.
Not threatening. Not performing. Just a man with nothing left to protect, telling the truth because it was the only thing he had left to give.
I held his gaze for one long second.
Then I let the fire move through him from the inside out.
His body convulsed. Eyes rolled back. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
Finished.
I stood over him, frozen for a moment. Not grief. Not satisfied. Just the weight of what he'd said settling in my chest, finding the space where certainty used to live.
Redmon was done.
But the war he was describing had already started.
***
TYRELL
I reached Destiny at the same moment Redmon went down.
She stood with her blade at her side, breathing steadily, eyes fixed on what remained. Blood on her collar wasn't hers. She looked at me.
I looked back.
"I had him," she said.
"Angel—"
"I was about to—"
"Destiny." I stepped in, set both hands on her face, and tilted her chin up to see her throat.
The bruising was real but superficial. Nothing structural.
I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"He was a Gold-Eyed Alpha, enhanced and prepared specifically for your fighting style.
What he wasn't prepared for was your pack.
" I held her gaze. "You felt that push."
She went still.
"Sage," she whispered.
"From two miles away. In that van. Right when you needed it."
Something crossed her face — complex and layered, unlike anything I had seen there before. She looked toward the medical RV, parked off the secondary road.
"She swore she'd stay in it," Destiny said quietly.
"She did."
"She still—"
"She felt you needed it, so she gave you what she had." I lowered my hands. "That's what a pack does."
Destiny was quiet for a long moment.
"Is Dana—" She stopped. Adjusted. "Is Papa Ev—"
"They've had enough time," I said. "We'll know soon."
She nodded. Cleaned her blade. Put it away.
We headed to the medical RV.
Marcus reached it first. The door opened, and Sage stood in the frame — looking exactly like a woman who had stayed exactly where she promised and still managed to reach every one of us from there.
Marcus stopped at the bottom step.
They looked at each other. No words. He put his hand on the door frame, reached up, and brought her forehead down to his. His other hand went to her stomach.
Destiny had come to stand beside me.
She watched the same thing I was watching.
"She pushed from two miles away," she said. Quieter this time. Like she was saying it to herself as much as to me.
"She felt you needed it," I said again.
Destiny didn't answer. She stood in the early morning light with her battle-blooded hands and her bruised throat, watching her sister press her forehead to her mate's.
Sage looked over at her and smiled.
"Back to back," Sage said.
Destiny nodded. "Always, sissy."
The sky was beginning to lighten at the edges. Two miles east, Darius, Everett, and Carter were moving through a cabin. Somewhere in an interior room, behind a reinforced door bolted from the outside, Dana was held.
Destiny knew that. She was standing still, knowing it, and letting the pack do what it was built to do.