“I’ll buy a blanket.”
“Walk away, and we won’t hunt you down. Consider it a parting gift.”
“Lethe has polluted her ranks with necromancers, and she bends to Society law. That can’t be allowed.” A growl rumbled in his throat. “You bought her favor with her daughter’s life, but that child is an abomination. It can’t be allowed to live.”
His cold delivery turned my heart into an arctic wasteland and the blood in my veins to ice water.
Eva had found the ring. Eva had been gifted the shoes and the clutch. Eva had been a target all along.
Not because of me, as we assumed, but because of her mother.
“That child will be alpha one day.” I cut open a new wound on my palm, but I needn’t have bothered. Linus had noticed us chatting and come to join in. “You’re worm food.”
Moonlight glinted off his blade as he raised the scythe in a killing blow, but Lethe stilled his hand.
“You the coward who waited until I wasn’t home to attack?” she demanded. “Well?”
“Argus Hulbert,” he supplied. “We met once, before you settled on your current mate.”
Sweeping a critical eye over him, she tilted her head to one side. “That right?”
“I would be willing to call off my people if you agreed to be mine.” He wet his lips, and his smile glistened. “Think of it—a double wedding. How often do those come around?”
“Argus—you did say Argus, right?—I don’t remember you, I don’t know you, and I sure as hell am not going to leave my mate for you. Are you high right now? Frankly, it would explain a lot. You might want to run with that even if you’re not.”
The cool mask of the potentate shrouded Linus’s features when he asked Lethe, “Are you sure you don’t want me to handle this?”
“Yes,” Argus seethed, pricked by her dismissal. “Let the necromancer fight a fellow alpha for you. Show them I’m right.” His laughter boomed, its edge sharp enough to cut. “Perhaps he can doodle on his arm and turn himself into a gwyllgi. At least he’s willing to bleed to get what he wants. Can the same be said for you?”
Her name caught in my throat, but I didn’t call for her. I had seen this happen too many times to believe it would go any other way than her squaring off against him. It was the gwyllgi way, and my interference always came at a cost. To her.
The best thing I could do was stand here, bear witness, and pray to the goddess she won.
The peripheral fighting slowed and then stopped now that the alphas were squaring off, and their packs waited to see what would happen.
“Call off your pets,” Argus sneered. “Face me like a gwyllgi or die a traitor and a coward.”
“Guys?” Lethe asked us. “You mind taking a step back? You don’t want to be in the splash zone for this.”
Linus joined me on what was quickly becoming the sidelines, and Hood drifted over too. The fact they stood to either side of me, each holding one of my hands, told me how much they trusted me to keep out of it if things didn’t go Lethe’s way. I didn’t growl at them, but I thought about it.
“Choose your form.” Argus, recovering his bravado, swaggered up to Lethe. “It’s the least I can do before I take your place.”
“Teeth and claws,” she said without hesitation. “I wouldn’t want you to go crying about how I beat you on two legs and it wasn’t fair. I’ll save us both the headache and maul you on four. What’s left of you can go home and lick your wounds.”
“Are you sure you won’t mate me?” He lapped up the attention. “I like feisty women. It would be a shame to rip out your lovely throat.”
“You targeted my child. My child. What kind of pathetic asshat stoops so low?”
“Your child is unnatural—”
“Are you here to talk, or are you here to fight?”
Hands spread wide in a helpless gesture, as if to say he had given her every chance to avoid this as long as she agreed to forsake her mate. “Challenge it is.”
Cletus tapped my arm seconds before a small hand closed over Linus’s and my fingers.
Nervous sweat dampened Eva’s palm, but defiance blazed in her eyes. Lethe was right. This kid was dominant to the core. And she would be in so much trouble when her grandmother noticed she was missing.
“Go, Mommy!” Eva stood between us, unflinching. “You got this.”
Pride and love brightened Lethe’s eyes as she blew her daughter a kiss. “Love you too, Diva.”
“Behold the abomination.” Argus swept out his arm. “Look at her. She’s half necromancer or might as well be. No gwyllgi pup matures at that rate, not even the fae ones. A true alpha would have accepted her loss and—”
“A true alpha is willing to give her life for her pack. That little girl is my pack, and she is my baby. I would have given my life to save hers, and I’m blessed that I didn’t have to lose my girl because a coward took a potshot at stealing my heir from me when he couldn’t beat me.”
“Argus couldn’t have done this alone,” Linus murmured. “He had help.”
Proving gwyllgi hearing was superb, Lethe scanned the gathering. “Who betrayed me?”
Those items hadn’t delivered themselves to her property, and the only way a gwyllgi—or anyone else—could have left the ring for Eva to find without laying down a scent trail or so much as a whiff of magic used to conceal one, was if the scent itself already belonged.
“Step forward,” she demanded, “and I will banish you for your courage in admitting your cowardice.” No one in the crowd moved. “Let me uncover your betrayal for myself, and I will kill you where you stand.”
The enemy gwyllgi were unable to hold Lethe’s stare and bowed their heads. As much as I wished shame had done the trick, for buying into this nonsense about Eva, it was Lethe’s dominance, pure and simple, hammering them into submission.
“Thirty seconds.” Lethe pointed at Hood, her eyes on Argus, and Hood set the timer. “Starting now.”
Ty stepped forward so fast it was almost a jump, and he spun terror-filled eyes toward his mother.
That fear explained why she had attempted to foist him off on Linus for a night when this all started. She wanted an inside man to report our progress to her. Too bad she underestimated Linus’s lone-wolf tendencies.
Bo, the amazing cook with a smile for everyone, joined him, her chin jutted and shoulders back.
Thank the goddess, she hadn’t tried to take matters into her own hands and poison us all.
“Argus is my brother.” She clasped hands with her son to cover his trembling fingers. “He’s a good man, and a good leader. He upholds the old laws, the old ways. He is what this pack needs.”
Poor little Eva, trapped in the same idiotic pack protocol as her father and mother, didn’t cry over the betrayal. Worse, she withdrew so far into herself, she could have been a doll standing between Linus and me. The dampness in her palms dried, the skin cooled, almost as if she had ceased to exist.
Comfort would make her appear weak, and that was the last thing she could afford at a time like this.
“I obey the old laws,” Lethe said, the words slicing through the air. “I do not kill any who wish to leave. I do not kill any who air their grievances to or against me. I do not kill in challenge or in battle unless forced. Those are the mercies I have shown this pack, who were born of liars and cheaters. Those are the kindnesses I have shown you all, and this is how you repay me.” Her upper lip quivered. “Who else?”