Chapter Twenty-One
The next thing I did was wake Rory.
Fennel and Cecil awaited us outside the door, and we all went home together to surprise Ronan. He wouldn’t have to worry anymore. He could face his father at the convocation as planned. And we all lived happily ever after.
Ha ha haha ha HA.
Yeah.
None of that happened.
Sexton disappeared, not even bothering to make it look natural. He just smiled infuriatingly at me and was gone.
I grabbed my cell and sent another text to Ronan and one to Ida then dropped onto the gross motel room bed beside Aurora and peeled back the blanket.
She was indeed alive and breathing. Her pretty brown skin was pale and clammy, her short, cropped black hair damp with sweat.
There were burn marks on her arms, but Sexton had removed the chains, and they were slowly healing. If she shifted, she’d heal faster.
Rory blinked. She cocked her head and peered up at me. After a second or two, recognition set in, and she smiled.
“Cunada,” she said.
I was honored that after the betrayal she’d experienced, her first instinct was to believe that I was there to help instead of hurt. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I wiped them away.
“Your brother is going to be so happy to see you,” I said.
She smiled, but I could see the wheels turning, see the moment it all came forcibly back to her. “Ronan.” The blanket wriggled as she attempted to shimmy out of it. “He’s in danger. Dad’s lost his mind.” Her voice hovered on the edge of panic. “Betty, you don’t know what he’s done.”
“I do know, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s so much worse than I suspected. I overheard his wolves talking about my m-mom—” Her voice cut out on a sob.
“I’m sorry.” I untucked the edge and helped her roll free.
“You knew?” She looked at me with those green-brown hazel eyes, so like Ronan’s. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it would’ve put you in danger. Not sure I made the right call.”
She looked around. “Where’s Ronan?”
“He’s okay. He didn’t keep anything from you, so don’t be upset with him. The evidence was emailed to me anonymously, though I have a good idea who sent it.”
“One of Dad’s old security team,” she said, suddenly calm.
“I’m betting Jade Walker. Her daughter Raquel is a friend of mine.
She and her mom were kicked out of the pack after the whole missing wolf thing with Tasha and Lena Amador.
Dad said she and Gregg Krupp had failed the pack by allowing Blacke shifters into our territory.
He forced her to quit her job, sell her house, and leave this side of the country. Mr. Krupp, too.”
“Why didn’t he just kill them?” I wondered aloud.
“I’m sure he had his reasons.” Rory stared over my shoulder at the window, shrugged.
A squeal of tires outside was followed by three car doors slamming. At a motel like this, there was no reason to believe they were here because of me, yet I was certain they were. I was the perfect example of the law of attraction in action, and lately all I attracted was trouble.
“Come out, trailer trash,” a male voice yelled.
Rory jerked upright. She was dressed in pink running shorts and a cotton top with a rainbow across the front. Her skinny arms and legs were crisscrossed with silver burns. Not as severe as Mason’s, but horrible, nonetheless.
He’d done this to his own kid.
Rage erupted in me.
A growl spilled from Rory’s mouth. She hadn’t shifted, but the emotion I was bringing into the room was making her want to.
“We have to keep our emotions under control,” I said, taking a shaky breath. “Remember, Ronan has to fight him for the pack.”
“That wasn’t my father. That was Shawn Krane. He and some of Dad’s wolves used silver on me.”
I recognized the name. Krane was one of the wolves who’d left Gladys for dead.
“So, excuse me.” She cleared her throat, set her shoulders, and stood. “But I’m going to kill him now.”
“I get it, really. Like, you have no idea how much I get it. But could you give me a minute first?” I took my cell out of my pocket and sent out a group SOS text with the address of the motel. “Just one?”
Her gaze was the same gold as her brother’s when he was more wolf than human. “One.”
I opened the motel room door and stood on the concrete step. Roughly fifty feet away, in the center of the lot, Floyd leaned against the front bumper of his SUV. The alpha wolf was flanked by two males—one I vaguely recognized but couldn’t name, and Shawn Krane.
“Where’s the little bastard who burned up my bar? I’d like to have a word.” Floyd laughed with malicious humor.
“He’s not here.” A bald-faced lie, because Cecil was hiding in the dying oleander bushes to my left. Fennel was to my right, crouching behind a broken terracotta flowerpot.
I glanced down the line of rooms. Every door and window was shut tight, curtains drawn. Not a smoker or skateboarder in sight. The office was dark, the vacancy sign turned off, the cameras facing the rooms tilted down, floodlights off.
“So, you’re here all alone.” He laughed again, this time louder and more crazed. “You make kicking your ass easy, you dumb skank.”
“And yet you couldn’t pull it off this morning,” I said.
His laughter cut off. “Demon bitch.”
I kept my gaze on him but let my attention slide to my partners.
“Go,” I chanted, my voice like a dandelion seed on the wind.
Fennel slunk out from behind the pot and crossed the walk behind me. Cecil scurried through the bushes and disappeared.
If the alpha leader saw them, he gave nothing away. I was pretty sure he hadn’t, though.
“Question for you, Floyd. Why’d you kill Zuri?” I wasn't asking to hurt Rory. I believed his answer would give her what she needed—the truth. She deserved to know what had happened to her mom.
Floyd’s smile stretched widely across his face, wedging pockets of fat under his eyes and pushing them closed. He was an opposite-world Santa Claus, lit from within by maliciousness instead of joy. “You know, my wife was a lot like you. She couldn’t resist prying into my business.”
“What business?”
“She found out about some plans I had for Aurora and became unmanageable,” he said with a shrug. “All I did was promise the girl to the alpha leader of the Riverside County pack when she came of age. You’d have thought I shot the kid or something.”
My voice shook with rage. “Rory couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven at the time of Zuri’s death.”
Neither of the wolves beside him appeared surprised or bothered by this. Dickheads.
However, there was a crack in Floyd’s blustering.
A sliver of guilt that brought the corners of his mouth crashing down.
“Are you deaf or stupid? I said, when she was of age. Not even eighteen, like some alpha leaders do. Twenty-one. Drinking age. It was a fair deal. Daughters are for building alliances, sons are for building empires—not my son, but, you know, in general.”
“What happened then?” I prodded.
“She tried to leave with my kid. I’d already made the deal. Riverside had been gearing up to take my territory, so I made an alliance.”
“Zuri tried to protect her daughter—your daughter—and you killed her for it?”
“Protect her from what? It was advantageous all around. My pack, his pack. Are you too stupid to know what an alliance is?”
“Advantageous for everyone except me,” Rory said from the doorway behind me.
I ached for her. To lose a mother who loved you so much she was willing to die to save your future had to be one of the worst kinds of anguish in the world.
And yeah, the arrow landed right in my heart. Mom.
“What hurts the most is that had you made your case to me as an adult, told me it was to protect our wolves, I would’ve done whatever you asked, Father. Even allowed myself to be sold to your enemies—for the good of the pack,” she finished bitterly.
Still in human form, she moved out of the doorway. The silver wounds were visible on her arms and legs, even in the weak yellow light pouring through the door of the room.
“Aurora.” Floyd’s eyes—fat, pinched slits only moments before—widened to the size of silver dollars in his reddening face. “I knew you stole her.” He jabbed a fat finger at me. “You conniving bitch.”
Rory tapped a finger against her chin. “Also, that was Alpha Milner, wasn’t it? The guy who died in a pack challenge five years ago? That nasty man was grandpa age when you sold me to him—late forties, early fifties?”
Krane and Nameless stood at attention, hateful gazes drifting from me to the young woman behind me. I didn’t care for the way they were positioning themselves.
“I didn’t sell you to him. I was creating an alliance between our packs.”
“Right.” Her tone dripped with disdain, yet not a single drop of the hurt I was sure she was feeling showed. Definitely Ronan’s sister. “Alpha Grandpa is dead, which means you killed Mom for nothing. Or have you sold me off to some other gross old man?”
Floyd actually looked uncomfortable. “Aurora, you know I love you and want what’s best for you, but I have the pack to consider.”
“Fuck your love,” she said, “and fuck you.”
“You’re upset.” He held up his hands as if in surrender. “I understand that. But, in time, you’ll see that what I did was for the good of the pack.”
“It was for the good of you,” Rory snapped. “Everything you do is for you. You don’t have a selfless bone in your body. You’re the evilest, most selfish person I’ve ever known.”
That was The Moment.
Because it was then Floyd—a wolf who’d prided himself on his win-at-all-costs strategy—made the wrongest of moves, the slightest of head nods, the barest of eye flicks, that would seal his fate, mine, and that of the pack.
Floyd’s wolves paced toward us in a circular movement—Krane to the left, Nameless to the right—slow and steady, eyes flashing with their wolves.
“Also, I’m not upset, Alpha,” Rory said, with a discordant laugh that made even me wince. “I’m vengeful.”
Something wet hit me from behind, but before I could see what it was, Nameless was on me. His claws sank into my sides, and I screamed—