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It was almost hard to explain, the way I felt when I saw Lelani and smelled the acrid scent of the flare being lit. I didn’t think at all—I just moved. I moved before I even realized I was moving.
Cole didn’t stop me. He didn’t try to keep me from putting myself in harm’s way, which was both new and gratifying in its own way.
I didn’t have much time to think about all that before I made contact with Lelani. I slammed into her full-force, taking her down in a flurry of fabric and limbs and asphalt from the ground beneath us. I felt the stone and grime scrape and tear at my skin as I rolled over and pinned Lelani against the pavement.
She laughed as I pressed my arm against her throat, doing my best to keep her in place in case she decided to shift into her lycan form. Her eyes glittered with that taunting grin. “Oh, I bet you couldn’t wait to do that,” she choked out. “I can see it in your face.”
“What are you doing?” I snarled. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because,” she coughed out as two pops sounded from behind me.
I lost focus, head whipping around to see what was happening. People in the crowd were shifting and snarling at guests while other people spilled out of the building as gas flooded out the doors. Even from my considerable distance, the gas burned my nose and brought tears to my eyes.
The tables turned on me as Lelani used my distracted glance away to grab onto my arm and force me down to the ground in her place. “You and your precious pack.” she mocked. “So self-righteous, so stupid, so sure of yourselves. And where has all of that egalitarianism gotten you? Where has all that weakness put you?”
She closed her hands around my throat, pressing her thumbs against my windpipe as she smiled down maliciously at me.
My heart started to race, pounding loudly in my ears and painfully in my temples. I tried and failed to pry her hands off my throat before realizing that if she was using both hands to try and choke me, that meant she’d released the flare.
My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton as I did my best to seek out the still-hissing flare. I found it and reached for it, barely grasping it in my hand with my fingertips before bringing it up to Lelani’s face.
She screamed, releasing me and scrambling away from me as her hair caught fire. I stumbled up to my feet as she wailed and patted the flames out, leaving her with one side of hair more than six inches shorter than the other side.
“You bitch,” she snarled.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said as I threw the dying flare behind me. I chanced a quick look to see if I could find Cole, and I watched him vanish into the smoky interior of the building. My heart felt a little more at ease, knowing that Cole was going after Noah and the other children.
Lelani crouched in front of me, her lips curled back from her teeth in an ugly snarl.
I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I knew that whatever it was, she had betrayed us, and it didn’t take much of a leap to guess who had her wrapped around his little finger.
“So, how often do you do Curt’s dirty work?” I asked her. “What did he promise you in exchange?”
“He doesn’t need to offer me anything in exchange. I don’t need my loyalty to be bought,” she spat. “And don’t talk about Alpha Curt like you know him. You’re disgusting garbage at best. I’m just happy I get the chance to rip your throat out for him.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said, feeling the warm trickle of blood start to run from my elbows, down my forearm, off the tip of my index finger. It was a strange thing, to smell the metallic quality of my own blood. To smell the subtle markers that matched Cole’s scent. “He and I have a bit of a…complicated relationship, you know.”
She tried to master her expression, but I saw the briefest moment of something flash across her face. Hurt.
She loved him.
Or at least, she had been manipulated into believing she did.
“You’re delusional,” she sneered. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No?” I asked. “You so certain about that?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “He would never want someone like you. A filthy pretender. A half-breed.”
If I could keep her talking, I was almost sure I could figure out some way to apprehend her. Maybe I could figure out how to question her. Maybe even undo the conditioning she’d been subjected to in Curt’s so-called pack.
But I wouldn’t be able to do anything like that if she shifted. I’d only be able to protect myself, maybe hold her down. But she couldn’t shift if I kept talking to her. If I made her paranoid enough that she needed to get me to say more about what I knew.
I shrugged casually. “I mean, he did offer to call off the war if I mated with him, but what do I know?”
“You’re lying,” she hissed.
“Why would I? What reason could I possibly have to lie to you? If anything, I’m putting my neck and everything important to me on the line to warn you that your poor excuse for an alpha is blowing smoke up your ass. What did he tell you?”
