Chapter 30
SADIE
My words hit Leander as if I’d struck him with a cattle prod.
He jolted so hard, blue-tipped strands tumbled across his forehead as he pinned Oona to the ground, perched on her back like a gargoyle.
A tremor seemed to run through his whole body, snapping his teeth together.
I saw the impact in every muscle of his body, and then I caught sight of those forest-dark eyes.
They were almost black, completely consumed by rage.
“You,” he breathed, pressing Oona into the dirt. The word cut deeper for how soft his voice was, pure wrath distilled into a single whisper. “You were the one who killed her?”
“It was a collaborative effort,” I muttered, moving closer with a slow, prowling pace I’d never been able to pull off before this bitch pushed me to my death.
“But she enjoyed killing me.” I crouched beside her, grabbed a fistful of ruddy curls, revenge a second heartbeat pounding in my chest. “Didn’t you, Oona? ”
“We didn’t kill you,” Oona hissed, struggling. “All we did was push you off a little hill.”
A laugh barked from me, all my bitterness over being betrayed, sold, and abandoned spilling out in a laugh of pure poison. “I might still be here, but you wanted me dead. No one could have survived that fall.”
“It was a tiny fall,” Oona snapped, trying to buck Leander free and failing. “And you survived.”
“She didn’t,” Leander growled, so deep that it shook my ribs where I crouched. “You murdered her. If we hadn’t saved her—” His voice choked off, and pain swelled behind my breastbone. “I would never have met my mate.”
“Mate?” Oona sobered in an instant. “You’re a wolf,” she whispered, her eyes snapping to me. “You traitorous bitch—”
I was looking right into her eyes when Leander snapped her neck.
With a cry, I tore away and stumbled to my feet, catching myself on the nearest tree. My stomach shot so far down my body I half expected to piss myself.
“Leander you—”
Oh, god.
Someone else was dead because of me. First Suri at my hand, and now Oona.
“She insulted you,” Leander growled, as if that was a good enough reason to kill someone.
His eyes were a brighter shade of green when he looked up at me, his brow a hard line over those dazzling eyes and his face…
it was pure ire, sculpted into the shape of a man.
I shuddered hard. “She pushed you. She killed you. She killed my mate.”
“I didn’t want her dead,” I cried in a strangled voice, stumbling back another few steps. “What have you done?”
“Avenged my mate,” he rumbled, unapologetic. No, worse. Proud.
I thought he was the normal pack member, the joker, the sweet, awed one. But he was a psychopath.
When he pushed off the ground, leaving Oona in a pile of dirt and trampled leaves, I exploded into movement.
The back of my neck tingled as I sprinted back to the path, a stitch ripping across my middle as I followed it to the hill.
Faster than ever, I scrambled up the dirt mound, grabbing protruding rocks and slanted trees to haul myself up.
I only stopped running when I was inside the academy’s boundary.
I could never go back to the cottage, no matter what Verne promised. If Leander killed so easily and without a second though, they all did. My mates were no better than the slayers of Lunova Academy. My mates were killers.