Haley looked up at me with tears in her eyes, her own smile bold and beautiful as ever.
“We’re with you, Gray,” she said. “All the fucking way.”
Forty-One
RONAN
Fucking hell, I hated the cold. Hated the waiting. Hated standing around in balls-deep snow with my thumb up my ass, counting down for the signal from the witches on the other side of the hill.
But once that signal came—the night sky lighting up with a fireball of bright orange attack magic— you bet your ass I wanted nothing more than to go back to that waiting. Back to the part before all hell broke loose.
But going back wasn’t an option. Not tonight.
“Ronan!” Ash shouted. “On your left!”
Heeding the warning, I spun around fast, swinging my sword for all it was worth. The Darkwinter soldier bearing down on me caught it in the face, dropping like a bag of wet sand. I had no idea whether he was dead or just wounded, and no time to check. I was already on the move.
Seven days to the hour of Gray’s meeting, after some of the most grueling magical, combat, and strategic training we’d ever endured, here we were, converging on a cemetery in the middle of the damn forest like a virus attacking its host.
Ten witches had comprised the first wave, slipping through the snow-covered forest from our makeshift basecamp on light feet, getting into position to launch the spell that would alert the whole forest to our presence. For the rest of us, there would be no sneak attacks, no quiet infiltration. Our best chance, we’d decided, was a full-on blitzkrieg.
Motion on my right, and Beaumont blurred into view, tearing out the throat of a hunter who’d had his sights set on Haley. She and Gray stood back to back a few feet ahead of me, channeling each other’s magic to fight through a cluster of Darkwinter guards who looked like they’d just been caught with their dicks in their hands. Hell, for all I know, theyhadbeen standing out here, pulling off a big old circle-jerk, no idea what was coming for them. It wasn’t every day your secret cemetery hideout got invaded by a bunch of pissed off, kickass, magic-toting broomstick riders.
One of them opened his mouth to shout something, but he didn’t get the chance. Gray lit ‘em all up like firecrackers.
That’s my girl.
“Lansky!” I shouted, spotting three more hunters ahead, charging toward two more witches fighting on the east side of the cemetery. “Twelve o’clock! Take those motherfuckers out!”
Lansky, who’d remained in his human form for just this purpose, raised his weapon and took aim, squeezing off three rounds. The hunters dropped out of sight, off the fucking planet.
Elena and Emilio were in full-on wolf mode, and now they charged ahead, barreling into a group of hunters and taking them down like bowling pins.
The snowmelt ran red with their blood.
I crept up behind an unsuspecting hunter trying to get the drop on Lansky, carving a fresh path to his kidney. Ahead of me, Jael lit up one of the dark fae with his own brand of fae magic—a golden orb that surrounded his prey and squeezed the life right out of him. Apparently, that particular spell only worked on other fae, but it was a neat trick, and more effective for him than swinging a sword.
On the other side of the cemetery, Sunshine and Sparkle had staked out their own live buffet, devouring any hunter or Darkwinter snack in their path.
I never thought I’d be so grateful to roll with a pair of hellhounds.
“Heads up, hellspawn!” Beaumont blurred past me again, and I followed his path, teaming up with him on two more dark fae. One of them got a good jab in, slicing my forearm down to the fucking bone, but I repaid him in kind.
“Nothing says thanks like a sword to the throat, dickhole.” I watched him gurgle and choke on his last breath, then I spit on his corpse.
“Alright?” Beaumont asked, glancing at the blood soaking through my jacket sleeve. Looked like he was wearing the same amount, but the blood spilled down the front of his clothing wasn’t his.
“I’ll live.” I took a deep breath, shaking off the pain. That was one good thing about the cold—shit went numb a whole lot faster.
Fae-glamoured or not, everything about the cemetery was absolutely real: headstones jutting out of the ground at odd angles, just waiting to catch someone in the shins. Short, wrought-iron gating buried in the snow like caltrops, eager to tear through the soles of our feet. Crypts looming up out of the frosty mist, providing the perfect cover for a hunter damn near pissing himself at the chance to jump out and knife one of us.
Despite the odds, we persisted.
Side-by-side, with a combination of magic, speed, bloodlust, and brute force, my crew and I—no, fuck that. Myfamilyand I—we fought our way through three dozen guards, a combination of Darkwinter Knights and hunter pricks just like the ones we’d taken down in the warehouse back at the Cape. The brutal cold, slippery conditions, and fake-cemetery obstacle course made tonight’s assault a hell of a lot more challenging, and I was pretty sure we’d all be getting stitched, bandaged, and dosed up later.
But somehow, we survived it. We always fucking survived it. Gray, Darius, Emilio, Asher, and I—hell, even Liam, wherever his spooky ass was at the moment—we made sure of it. After everything we’d already been through, there was no way we were letting anyone onthisfrozen wasteland take us down.
“We clear?” I asked Ash, catching up with him after icing one last fae guard.
