Chapter 8 #3
Tension twists through both shifters. Bellamy sneers in response, all but challenging them to a dominance contest with a mere look.
Doc Z bares her teeth. “You killed my sister.”
Bellamy hums dismissively. “Very possible. And you are?”
Doc Z takes one step forward.
I turn my head away from the view, leveling my gaze on the pegasus shifter. She pauses, hands fisted at her sides.
Presh opens her mouth, poised to offer some of her always-ready compassion.
“Kris made her own choices,” I say mildly, pointedly interrupting Presh because I won’t have her taking this extra grief on.
“And so have you, apparently,” Doc Z snaps without looking at me.
“Fuck me,” Cay mumbles, shifting her stance slightly, though I can’t quite tell if she’s backing Doc or readying to step between her and me.
I eye Doc’s profile. Her attention is fixed on Bellamy. “I move as the universe wills.”
“Or,” she snarls, “however Precious asks of you.”
That’s also true.
“I don’t need you to stand between me and her,” Bellamy snaps at me, leaning back against the car and crossing her arms in a classic mage pose to appear nonthreatening. But awry don’t need their hands to cast essence.
It could be that the purple sunglasses, shadowing Bellamy’s still-disconcerting eyes, are just enough of a disguise for Doc Z to forget what she’s truly capable of. I quash an inappropriate grin at the badass, belligerent, former dire awry wearing them just to please her youngest sister.
“What are you going to do, shifter?” Bellamy taunts. “Or is having a go at my baby sister the best you’ve got?”
Ah. It was the jab at Precious that bothered Bellamy.
Doc Z hesitates for a moment, glancing toward Precious. As if maybe she’s momentarily forgotten how everyone is related.
All the light that Precious was radiating has been snuffed out at the mention of Kris. She watches Doc Z with wide, guilt-ridden eyes. “That was my fault,” she whispers.
Bellamy stiffens.
“My fault that Kris was targeted by my father,” Presh adds, firming her tone. A single tear trickles down her cheek.
“No,” Bellamy says, jaw set with tension and glaring at Doc Z. “It fucking wasn’t. It was a test of the Outcast MC. Which, if Zaya hadn’t been in play, they would have failed. Spectacularly.”
“Oh, so now you’re forthcoming,” Doc Z says sarcastically.
“You’ve got your snout so far up the Outcast’s ass that you can’t see him for what he really is,” Bellamy says mildly. “You just want the life you visualized so desperately to stop unraveling. But no matter how many mood boards you obsess over, my brother never belonged to you.”
Doc Z vibrates with energy, clearly holding back her beast. “You can twist anything. All of you awry are the fucking same. Rotten, tainted. A corruption of nature. How fucking … dare … you …”
She sways on her feet, as if her own words have filtered back to her. She takes a shaky breath.
Bellamy smirks at her. Then she says mockingly, “The unvarnished truth will truly set you free.”
Doc Z swallows, glancing at Presh. The young awry has both hands pressed over her mouth, as if she tried to stop Doc’s words even though they weren’t her own.
“I … that’s not … I didn’t mean …” The pegasus shifter shudders, angling her gaze toward me but looking at the gravel under my feet, not anywhere near my face. “You just … you’re just letting her walk around … what am I supposed to think?”
“That it isn’t any of your business,” Cay says quietly. “That we’re supposed to be guarding Presh’s and DeVille’s asses when they aren’t at the pack house, not harboring hate for the subset of essence-user who’s the focus of our protection detail.”
Doc Z squares her shoulders, preparing to defend herself.
Cay cuts her off before she gets started. “Fuck me, Zephyr. Zaya is standing right fucking next to you. You can feel the power she wields. You can feel that she is power. If our pack ties weren’t so strong, we’d probably be groveling at her fucking feet right now. Just walk it off.”
Doc Z shakes her head. “That’s not … this is not justice.”
“So sheltered, little horsey,” Bellamy purrs maliciously.
“Never had to truly fight to survive. Always been handed everything because you’re just that extra bit special, aren’t you, pegasus?
Never had to make a choice at all, I bet.
Just attached yourself to the strongest shifter you’d ever met and tried to ride him all the way to a mythical white-picket fence. ”
“You’re so not helping,” Cay snaps.
“You did kill Kris, though,” Presh says quietly to her newfound sister.
Bellamy snaps her mouth shut on whatever she was going to say next, her face blanking.
She looks at Presh for a long moment, then she nods.
“She was dead the moment she sat down at the table. Could have been either of these two.” She inclines her head toward Doc Z and Cay.
“But Kris was closer to your age, so I followed that thread.”
“And it led you all the way to me.”
“Yes.”
“You could have spared her.” Presh’s voice cracks. “Once you saw the fight with the Outcast wasn’t going the way you wanted … the way he wanted.”
“It went exactly as planned,” Bellamy says.
“It exposed the cracks in the Outcast’s security, the complacency.
And taking the club would have made the intersection point more vulnerable.
” The former dire awry glances my way. “You’ve figured out that part?
That he wants the intersection point? That’s why he took your aunt and tried to … ”
“Drain her power,” I say. “Like he drained mine.”
“What?” Presh’s lower lip trembles. “He … killed your aunt?”
“Yes. I have no idea how he managed it …” Well, I have part of an idea. Or rather, two parts of an idea. Rejected or not, Disa had been vulnerable to her soul-bound mate, and the universe made a choice when its Conduit was trapped. It chose me over my aunt.
Presh takes a long, slow breath in, then blows it out. “Still doesn’t change your actions, Bellamy.”
“It doesn’t. Nothing altered my world view at all … until I found you.”
Doc Z scoffs.
“And then …” Presh prompts.
Bellamy looks at me, as if I might understand her more than anyone else tucked into this small parking lot. “And then … I covered my true intentions with as much brutality as I could wield.”
“So … it was Kris or me,” Presh says. “You kill Kris, or my father puts me in a cage.”
Bellamy doesn’t answer, looking out at the view instead.
Presh nods. Then she looks at Doc Z, her hard expression so foreign on her normally sweet face. “So blame me, then,” she says. “Since I’m at the root of Kris’s death. Since you hate all the awry already.”
Doc Z starts to shake her head.
“Or,” Bellamy drawls nastily, though she doesn’t bother looking at the shifters, “maybe you should look at yourselves first. Since the two of you pampered fucking princesses just sat there chattering about who had the bigger dick between our brothers. Nattering about all the ways you’ve fucked them while getting your fucking nails painted as I coerced your supposedly fucking treasured sister. ”
“Ew, Bellamy!” Presh gags affectedly.
“That’s enough,” I say, slightly annoyed that it’s the references to my soul-bound mates’ sexual pasts that irked me enough to interject. “Bellamy is with me now, and that’s perhaps a fate worse than feigning being locked away by the Outcast. Or dead at the Authority’s hands.”
Bellamy scoffs. “They never would have killed me.” She eyes Doc Z with blatant disgust. “They understand how this world works. I’m too powerful to be put down.”
Doc Z finally makes a move for the former dire awry. Bellamy doesn’t even attempt to stop the vicious punch aimed for her. Cay shouts, also darting forward.
Presh is standing far too close to the brawl poised to destroy the immediate area.
So I reach for Doc Z’s threads, grabbing all of them at once.
She jerks to a stop, her fist only an inch from Bellamy’s smirking face.
“I said that’s enough.” I yank Doc Z back, using a little too much power, because she stumbles and falls to her knees at my feet. “All the choices leading up to this moment have already been made. Dissecting the past fixes nothing.”
Doc Z finally looks at me directly, peering up even as her head is partially bowed. Hatred that I previously missed, or that’s flourished in the months I’ve been gone, radiates from her. “You don’t command me.”
Cay moans quietly, stifling the sound.
I remove my sunglasses, giving Doc Z all the eye contact she seems to crave in this moment.
Zephyr starts to shake, but she doesn’t drop my gaze. “If you’re so fucking powerful, where the fuck have you been? You’re just toying with them and harboring mass fucking murderers now … because you’re just like the rest.”
“Oh, fuck.” Cay takes a shaky breath. “Zaya … please …”
“I’m not going to hurt her, Cay,” I say evenly. “But … you will stay away from Precious, Zephyr. You will voluntarily tell the Outcast that you’re transferring to another pack. Or I will inform him of your prejudices against his nieces.”
“This is my pack,” Doc Z gasps. “It’s not your decision —”
“I could rip the pack bonds from you right now,” I say, still calm.
“I won’t because it might kill you. And because you’re correct.
Normally, I stay outside such petty disputes and interests, but Presh is mine.
As is Bellamy, Rought, Rath, and even fucking Reck.
And you’re very ill-informed if you think the Outcast would even try to countermand my claim on them. ”
“Zaya …” Presh murmurs, clearly thinking I’m being too harsh.
“No, Presh,” I say firmly. “I’m not handing out second chances when someone I love is clearly threatened. Especially without any evidence of remorse.” I release my hold on Doc Z’s threads, offering her my hand instead. I truly didn’t intend to knock her to her knees.