Protect. Protect. Protect.
Strong arms wrapped their way around my torso, holding me in place. Caroline? Lake? Did it matter? Did anything?
I needed to get to Chase.
I needed him.
But Chase just met my eyes. I felt him, felt his calm, felt the warmth of his body in bed next to mine when I woke up each morning. I felt myself fighting with him in the forest and knowing that I would always be his first and last and only. I felt my lips on his, his breath on my face, our hearts thumping as one.
I felt him.
I loved him.
Stay. One word, from his mind to mine. The only order he’d ever given me. The only thing he’d ever asked.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to.
But I did—and in that last second, so much flowed from his mind to mine: everything he’d never gotten the chance to tell me about his past, his scars, his certainty that his entire life—the good, the bad, and the inhuman—had all been leading to one place.
One person.
Me.
Love you, he said. It sounded simple when he said it. It always sounded so goddamn simple.
Shay’s fingernails grew into claws.
He thrust them through Chase’s rib cage.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I told him, over and over and over. Forever.
I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t look away. But I did what Chase had asked me to. I stayed put, and I watched, and Shay Macalister ripped out his heart.
An eye for an eye.
A wolf for a wolf.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
TIME SLOWED FOR ME. MAYBE IT STOPPED. THE WORLD just faded away. Nothing mattered. Nothing was real. Shapes blurred together. The smells, the taste of the summer air on my tongue—gone.
All gone.
The only sound I could hear was a strange and gut-wrenching keening: a strangled sob, a whimper, a scream.
It took me a few minutes to realize it was me.
Shay just stood there, smiling, like for the first time in a long time, all was right in the world. Like my pain was his bliss.
Chase. Chase. Chase.
I thought his name, over and over again, but I didn’t feel it, didn’t feel him. The bond we’d shared, the connection, his thoughts, his feelings—
There was nothing left. Nothing of him, and nothing
of me.
I should have done more. I should have fought for him.
I should have died for him. I would have. I wanted to.
There were never any answers. If I’d been faster, stronger—if I’d been smarter, if I’d been more, he would still be here: warm against my side, calm in my mind, loving me the way I loved him. Loving me better.
But he was gone.
My ears roared. I pulled away from Lake’s grasp. She let me go, and I struggled to stand straight.
It didn’t matter that the rest of the pack was there, in my head. I was alone, would always be alone now. I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around my midsection, like I was the one who had been gutted, like everything inside of me was in danger of spilling out.
If death was numbness, I’d died when Chase had—but by some cruel twist of fate, I was still here. I was here, and he was gone, and that wasn’t the kind of thing I could fix.
“Now we’re even,” Shay said.
I was empty inside. Hollowed out. Dead. But something about Shay’s words cut through the shock and the horror and the pain and brought another emotion to the surface.
Rage.
It sparked. Caught fire. Spread through my body, through my blood. There was no red haze, no instinct, no Resilience. There was only me and a certainty that Shay had started something that I would end.
If he wanted to play, I would play—and the name on his lips when he took his last breath?
It was going to be mine.
“We’ll be going now,” Shay said. “My wolves and I.”
I knew he didn’t just mean the legion surrounding us in the woods. He also meant the baby, the pup, the little girl, who he would never see as a person so much as a prize.
She was awake now—so fragile, so small. Maddy cradled her body against her chest. Through the bond, I could feel a need rise up inside of Maddy, one that put my own desire to protect those I loved to shame.
Maddy wouldn’t just die for her daughter. She’d deliver herself to hell to save her even a single second of pain. She’d do horrible things, and wonderful things, and everything in between—and she wouldn’t hesitate, not even for a second.
“I take it you’ll be coming, too?” Shay asked Maddy, pretending politeness, as if the girl who’d just given birth wasn’t covered in dirt, bloody, heartbroken, and nearly feral.
“You’ll understand, of course, if I require you to switch packs before traveling with us.” Shay leaned forward and blew out a light wisp of air into the baby’s nose before turning his attention back to Maddy. “Since Bryn would likely take my head on a platter, I can’t risk having a Cedar Ridge wolf running amok among our ranks.”
He thought he’d played this—played us—so perfectly. He thought he’d won, but it was obvious then that Shay Macalister had no idea what I was capable of, or how long I was willing to wait.
I was human now, but I wouldn’t always be. The odds were on his side, but someday, somehow, that would change.
Bryn. Maddy’s voice was quiet in my mind. I didn’t make her ask me for anything. I didn’t react to the unspoken request or Shay’s machinations in any visible way.
All I did was let Maddy go.
I pulled my mind from hers, unable to do anything else.
There were rules—rules about who we could kill and how and why. Rules about a human life not measuring up to the life of a werewolf. Rules about retribution and inter-pack relations, Senate meetings and territory.
The rules said the baby was a member of the Snake Bend Pack.
The rules said her alpha mattered more than her mother.
We all knew that Shay wasn’t bluffing. He would take the baby, knowing that if Maddy didn’t follow, the pup would likely die. Given King Solomon’s dilemma, Shay would have cut that precious bundle in two, because that was the kind of monster he was.
Face streaked with tears and dirt, Maddy stepped forward and offered her mind up to Shay, allowing him to Mark her, to violate her, to possess her in every conceivable way. I felt the change, saw it fall over Maddy’s body with the weight of chains. The pup in her arms stirred, pressing clumsy feet against her mother’s stomach.
Foreign. Wolf.
Maddy wasn’t Pack—not to us, not anymore. The rules said she was Shay’s now. The rules said that no one else could claim her unless he willingly let her go—and he would never, ever let her go.