But if Caroline were mine—if I claimed her as part of my pack, the way that Callum had once made me a member of his—then that would complicate the situation—for Shay and for me. If he killed her, I’d have the right to call his actions into question, and even if the Senate ultimately ruled that he’d done nothing wrong in killing her, I’d be in position to bring up the fact that Shay had murdered her father—and why.
Shay wouldn’t want the Senate asking questions, not about that.
But if I claimed Caroline as my own, that would mean that a member of my pack had just killed a member of Shay’s. He’d still have the right to take blood for the blood she’d spilled. If he demanded Caroline’s life and I refused to hand her over, he’d have the option of taking her transgression out on me.
Beside me, Caroline didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. She didn’t even look at me.
She didn’t have to.
We’d fought side by side these past few days. She was Ali’s family, and that made her mine.
No matter the cost.
“She is.” I sounded sure. I sounded alpha. I may not have Marked Caroline. I may not have made it official—but she was mine, enough that the words would have smelled true.
“Very well,” Shay said. “And the old man? Is he yours as well?”
I turned to look at Jed and saw that he was holding on to his control by a thread. If they rushed him, if they threatened him, he might lose it. He might flash out.
I’d have to answer for that, too.
“He’s mine as well.”
The second the words were out of my mouth, Shay moved, quicker than my eyes could track him. By the time I’d processed the sound of gunfire, a bullet had already buried itself in Jed’s forehead.
Shay’s guards let go of the old man’s body and it crumpled to the ground.
Resilients might have been able to survive some things, but a bullet to the head wasn’t one of them. Jed had kept his control, right up to the end. He hadn’t fought back.
For me.
For Caroline.
And now he was dead.
Animal justice—an eye for an eye.
Caroline let out a cry that sounded more feral than anything I’d ever heard from a Were. She would have launched herself at Shay, attacked him all over again, but Lake caught her from behind. She held Caroline’s arms to the side, held her back.
I couldn’t think about Jed and the hole in his head. Not about the things he might have taught me, or what he already had.
I had to be the alpha.
I had to follow the old man’s example and keep my instincts in check.
Control.
“So we’re even,” I said, meeting Shay’s eyes. “Caroline took one of yours. You took one of mine.”
This hadn’t been the plan. When I’d claimed Caroline, I’d assumed that Shay would take her transgressions out on me. Not on the rest of the pack. Not on Jed.
“Even?” Shay closed the space between us, coming to stand right next to me, right next to Chase. “That,” he said, jerking his head toward Jed’s body, “was because she shot me. There’s still the matter of my second’s death to settle.”
Jed’s life in exchange for a wound that was nothing more than an inconvenience for Shay? That wasn’t an even exchange. It wasn’t even close, but if I brought the matter up before
the Senate, they would probably support Shay’s assertion that killing one of my pack’s human members was reasonable compensation for another Cedar Ridge human’s attack on the alpha of the Snake Bend Pack.
Jed was only human, and preserving hierarchy and inter-pack relations was worth more to most werewolves than human life.
“The death of a werewolf at the hands of a human.” Shay caught my gaze and held it. “That’s not a debt I’d like to pay. If I were you, I’d save myself some trouble and put a bullet in the girl myself.”
If I killed Caroline, Shay would end this—but he knew I wouldn’t do that. He was hoping I wouldn’t do it. I’d bet everything on the assumption that Shay wouldn’t want me to expose his past deeds to the Senate, but clearly, I’d overestimated
my hand.
He’d wanted me to overestimate my hand.
He’d laid a trap for me, and I’d walked straight into it.
And now Jed was dead, because of me.
“If Pack Justice demands blood,” I said, putting my body physically in front of the others’, “you’ll have mine.”
A few hours earlier, I’d been willing to sacrifice Sora for the greater good. What kind of person would I have been if I weren’t willing to sacrifice myself? Shay wanted a life in exchange for his second’s? Fine. He could damn well take mine. If I didn’t fight it—didn’t fight him—it wouldn’t constitute a challenge. Devon would inherit my pack once I was gone, and Shay wouldn’t be able to touch them.
Any of them.
Shay smiled again, like he’d known all along that I’d offer my life up to save theirs. But he made no move to hurt me. Instead, he made a tsking sound under his breath. “Didn’t Callum teach you anything about Pack Law, Bronwyn?”
He was calling me Bronwyn. The way Dev did. The way Callum did.
“You can’t trade a human’s life for a wolf’s,” Shay told me, violence creeping into the edge of his voice, reminding me that a human life was nothing to him. “And unfortunately, you aren’t a wolf.”
He wouldn’t accept my life for his second’s. For all I knew, maybe he couldn’t.
An eye for an eye.
One second, Shay’s gaze was boring into me, and the next, he had Chase on his back and on the ground.
You can’t trade a human’s life for a wolf’s.
No.
I couldn’t hang on to the here and now, couldn’t keep the rage from bleeding over everything—red, red, red.
This was what Shay wanted. He wanted me to attack him, wanted me to give him an excuse to kill me, one that would be absolutely and 100 percent above reproach in the other alphas’ eyes.
In Callum’s.
If I attacked Shay now, that would constitute a challenge. If I broke Pack Law and challenged him, if he killed me as a result of a direct challenge, he’d inherit my pack. And the Senate might actually let him keep it.
This was the plan, I thought. All along, this was his plan.
Shay wanted me to lose control. He was goading me, the way he had Caroline—and none of that mattered, because this was Chase.
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.