“Watch all you want,” I snapped. “I’m not hiding anything.”
A low rumble came across the line that sounded suspiciously like a snarl. “You’re out of your league, Remy. What I’m doing is for the betterment of all packs.”
“All packs?” I echoed. “You’re taking packs. You’re manipulating and forcing them to submit to you.”
“I’m offering them a leader, just as I’m offering you a choice,” he hissed. “These packs have no Alpha.”
“Because of you!” I roared, losing my patience. “You did this. You killed dozens of innocent men!”
“Men who would have seen us all ruined,” he answered coldly. “Last chance, Remington. Join me. Ally yourself and your pack with me and I’ll let you keep your life and your mate.”
“Let me?” I repeated incredulously.
“I’ll even throw in a bonus,” he went on, clearly not getting just how past too far he was pushing me. “Those missing girls you’re so worried about? I’ll release them to their families. I believe one of them is especially important to your sister, yes?”
My eyes cut to Katy.
She covered her mouth as tears filled her eyes. Her whole body trembled.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about the missing girls?” I replied evenly.
“And I thought you might be reasonable,” Damien fired back. “But you’re just as bullheaded as your father.”
“You’re admitting to kidnapping. You took children,” I said quietly. “Do you even realize what that means? How completely fucked up that is?”
“Who are you going to tell?” Damien demanded with a harsh laugh. “The Council? They’re dead. Your allies? I’ve already taken half of them as my own. I was offering you a peaceful way out. Now I think I’ll enjoy ripping your pack apart.”
Katy blindly reached out, grabbing for my free hand.
“I’ll happily send your bitch and her mother back to Long Mesa,” Damien said happily. “After hearing that Preston kid talking to Trace … Well, they have some fairly creative ways they want to welcome them home.”
I screwed my eyes shut, thankful as hell I had gotten rid of Preston when I found him twitching and begging in the dirt after the bomb.
“Don’t worry, though,” Damien finished, clearly loving this. “I’ll save a spot in my house, and my bed, for your mother. And your sister will be well taken care of by my men.”
Everything in me slowly settled, like the dust and smoke after the bomb went off. There was a deafening sort of quiet that came in those moments after. When we looked around the piles of rubble and bodies and realized what we needed to do.
That calm swept through me now. Knowing your purpose, your path, no matter how twisted it might be, often brought a sense of peace.
And I knew my path.
“You’re going to die,” I told Damien quietly. “I’m going to stop you from hurting anyone else I love ever again. From hurting any other innocent.”
“You’re welcome to try,” he said with a laugh.
I smiled into the phone. “I’ll see you soon.”
29
Remy
The phone slipped from my fingers after I had hung up, clattering back into the cupholder. I wasn’t sure if I was pissed off or shocked as hell, but either way, the volatile cocktail of emotions simmering in my blood made me want to shift and run until my muscles gave out.
“Remy.” Katy gasped my name, her pale face wet with tears that ran unchecked down her cheeks. She blindly reached for me, her fingers curling into the cotton of my shirt.
“Breathe, Katy,” I said softly, turning in my seat and giving her my full attention. She was seconds away from a full blown panic attack. I could see her pulse fluttering in her throat. “Look at me. Katy!”
She jerked when I snapped her name, the wolf in her recognizing me as her Alpha. Her dark eyes, full of confusion and heartache, pierced mine.
“Breathe with me, Katy,” I went on, softening my tone. “You’re having a panic attack.”
It took us several minutes for Katy to get her breathing under control.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, her broken voice trembling as hard as she was. “I just … Maren …”
“I know,” I said, reaching over and pulling her into a hug. “I know.”
I smoothed a hand over her hair as she shuddered.
“Remy, we have to … we can’t …”
I pulled her away from me so I could see her eyes.
The raw, conflicted expression haunting her eyes was killing me.
“Katy.”
“You can’t do it,” she forced out between chattering teeth and thin lips.
I frowned. “What?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, twin tears slipping through before she opened her eyes once more. “I love Maren. Maren is my life.”
My heart twisted and writhed, a broken organ in my chest as all the air was punched from my lungs.
“But Maren would never want you to trade her for the pack,” Katy finished, burying her face in her hands. “I get it, okay? I get it. I was too reckless before, and I see that. We have to be smarter than him. We can’t give him the pack.”
“I’m not giving him shit, Katy,” I told her. “Except maybe a casket, and even then, I’m okay with just burying his body for the worms to feed on.”
She hiccuped a breath.
“But now we know where Maren is,” I added, fire igniting and burning in my chest. “He has her, probably in New York. That means when I beat him, we can go get her. We’re not leaving her. Maren’s one of us.”
She sucked in a deep breath and nodded, squaring her shoulders as she lifted her chin a notch.
It took everything in me to hide a smile as she pulled herself together.
Katy-fire, was what Mom had called it when we were kids. That look Katy would get when she was about to dig her heels in and push the boundaries of what being stubborn meant.
It became a running joke in the family that Katy-fire was about to come out.
Katy wasn’t the girl who recklessly ran into the woods and almost got herself kidnapped at gunpoint. She wasn’t my little sister who needed to be protected.
She was my friend, my ally.
This was the woman I picked to be part of my council.
“What now?” she asked, tossing her red hair over her shoulder, eyes narrowed in defiance of anything that would stand in our way.
“Now you and Ryder figure out how fast we can move people into these houses. I’m going home to tell Dante and Rhodes what’s going on. We need to alert the other packs that are with us that Norwood is gunning for them. Now we get ready for war.”
By the time I finished my last phone call, the sun had set and night was creeping into the world. I glanced at the clock and winced.
I never made it back to the hospital, but I had talked to Mom and Dad a few times. I filled them in on Damien’s call, listened to Dad curse like a sailor on crack until Mom finally calmed him down. His first surgery was scheduled for two days from now. The doctor hoped that would give his arm enough time to heal along with the rest of his bruises and the concussion.