Kill him.
“Knox, no—”
“We don’t have a choice,” he argued. “Can you hold the connection long enough if these guys do the fighting?”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s no ‘but’, Piper. It’s our only shot. Now,” he said, forcing a sad smile, “wanna give me a hand?”
I choked back my tears and nodded, then called forth my wind. With a violent gust, it shot him high above the fray to land right in front of Mack. I could barely see past the onslaught of wolves attacking, but I watched through the veil of blood and blows to see Knox squaring off against Mack while I held onto that magical tether like his life depended upon it.
Because it did.
The two of them went at each other like wild animals. Every time I saw blood stain Knox’s shirt, I had to glue my mouth shut. My screams would only distract him, and given how evenly they were matched and how relentlessly the fey king’s power assaulted my hold on Knox, it was a distraction he couldn’t afford.
I could feel my friends waning under the weight of Mack’s wolves, and I wondered if time was running out. But then I saw Mack fly into the back wall and Knox pin him there, his lips at the sketchy alpha’s ear. Mack’s eyes went wide as Knox’s clawed hand plunged deep into his chest and ripped out his heart. It beat once, spurting blood across the room, then stopped.
The second it did, so did the fight.
The pull of Faerie disappeared with a faint scream that I wondered if only I heard. The NYC pack parted as Knox, whose body all but thrummed with newly acquired power, stalked toward us, his eyes fixed on me. Their golden hue warmed the dim light of the room, and the hunger in their depths was undeniable. But there was also an instability, a foreign gleam in them that gave me pause. Grizz, sensing my uncertainty, edged closer to me as the room looked on in silence.
“Piper…” The need in his voice was undeniable, and for a second, I wondered if he planned to fuck me right there in front of everyone, covered in the blood of his fallen foe. Then his eyes closed and he took a deep breath. When they opened, any hint of the wolf shining through was gone. He looked over our crew, making sure those he called his were relatively unscathed. Once satisfied, his gaze swept over the crowd of wolves—wounded, burned, dead, and otherwise. “You know the choice you face, only now, you’ll face it under me, not Mack. Refuse to fight, and it will mean your banishment or death. I’ll be back for your decision. In the meantime, get yourselves healed up and ready for war,” Knox said before heading toward me. He took my hand as he passed, and together, we led our crew to the door. “Because it’s coming.”
Mack’s former pack said nothing; they just watched us walk to the exit unobstructed.
“And be sure to take out the trash,” Kat called back to them.
The five of us walked outside in silence, headed for the pack awaiting us down the street. To say our meeting hadn’t gone according to plan was an understatement and a half. To say I wasn’t scared to death of the consequences would have been an outright lie.
Chapter Five
The ride home was quiet and tense, and I’d never been so happy to escape a car in my life—even more so than the night I’d first met Merc. Knox was lost somewhere in his thoughts as he drove. Kat and Brunton were dutifully ignoring each other on opposite sides of the back seat, using the man-bear as a buffer for their brewing whatever the hell it was. Brunton’s attempt to check on her had been dismissed with a quick “I'm fine,” and they hadn’t spoken since.
And I sat in silence, doing all I could to process the implications of what had just happened.
Knox pulled into the driveway at the mansion and parked. Seconds later, we all jumped out of the SUV and headed for the house, the silence still hanging over us. At least until Brunton dared to break it.
“How’s your leg?” he asked as Kat strode to the door in front of the group, a slight limp in her gait still notable. She stopped and turned to face him, mischief in her eyes, but something else swimming in their depths. Something I couldn’t quite place. Something I feared wasn’t good.
“How’s your swimming?” she replied. Brunton looked at her curiously until he realized what she was referencing—the time she had tried to drown him in the former vampire king’s pool. Apparently, she wasn’t ready to forgive him for what had gone down just yet. “I hope it’s improved since last time…”
He gritted his teeth, or bit his tongue, or did something that allowed him to keep whatever comment was itching to escape inside where it couldn’t do any further damage.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said in his defense. Those sharp blue eyes of hers cut to me.
“Maybe,” she said, her tone a bit too brusque for my liking. “Or maybe not.” A sly smile crept across her face. “Either way, it would probably be best to avoid water while I’m around for the foreseeable future, Brunton.”
She opened the security door to the breezeway, then the entrance to the mansion, heading straight up the stairs, her limp barely noticeable. Merc passed her on his way down, and his eyes narrowed as he took in her disheveled state. Then he searched for me in the midst of the bodies crowding the foyer.
“Am I to take it that your meeting did not go as planned?” he asked as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“You could say that,” I replied, casting a wary glance at Knox. “It seems Mack was expecting us.”
“The fey king armed him with his ability to control wolves,” Knox added.
The muscles in Merc’s jaw feathered. “Tell me everything.”
So we did. The good, the bad, and the ugly. As we neared the end, it looked as though he were ready to storm out into the sun, bring Mack back from the dead, then kill him all over again.
“How did you get away?” he asked, his voice too calm to go unnoticed.
“I figured out a way to tether Brunton and Knox to me so Mack couldn’t control them—”
“And then I killed him.”
Knox’s wolves went rigid at the news. None of them, aside from Brunton, had known that until that moment. Their expressions were a mixture of confusion and suspicion except for three: Jagger, Brunton, and Foust all shared the same look of concern. The one I wanted to ignore but couldn’t. We knew all too well how hard Knox had tried to avoid this fate—the one he’d escaped to start a new life in Alaska. The life I had totally upended. And though I hadn’t been the one to kill Mack and put Knox in his current position, I felt partially responsible. I was the reason he had returned to New York, after all.
Merc took a moment before speaking, choosing his words carefully. “The pack is now yours, I assume?”
“Basically.”
“Then we can consider the matter resolved.”
“Yeah. We can.”
It was Merc’s turn to nod in understanding.
Knox turned to leave. “If we’re all done here, I need to go wash Mack off me.”
I caught his arm and studied his tired eyes, the black circles beneath them, and the tension in his mouth. Knox was exhausted and stressed, and not letting on to either issue. Not wanting to call him out in front of Merc or his boys, I pulled him down and kissed him, then let him go.