She’s shifting mid-charge. I won’t be fast enough.
My hand flies for the dagger at my spine. Before my fingers close on it, a shadow fills the doorway behind her, enormous. I catch it as a streak of dark fur, a flash of white teeth, then it hits Vanessa at full speed. It lifts her off the concrete, driving her into the back wall before her shift can finish. Bone cracks, wet and final. Vanessa makes one strangled noise and goes limp.
The wolf doesn’t stop. Its jaws close on her throat and pull, the room going red in one hot arc that slaps the concrete. I can’t move.
It releases the body. She slides down the wall, settling wrong, her head canted at an angle her shoulders were never built for. For one full beat, my lungs refuse to work.
It turns. Gold eyes find mine over the body, the wolf broad and dark, its head held low. It pads to Vanessa, sniffs once at her face, then lifts its head while the air around it bends.
The shift comes fast, too fast, ripping through him in seconds. Fur draws back. Bone resets. The man rising out of it stands naked, breathing hard, blood smeared across his mouth and streaked down the front of his chest. He stares down at the body a long moment, then he lifts his eyes to me.
The breath leaves me in a rush. He came for us. Vanessa’s down, Ethan’s breathing, the worst of it is behind me. Everylocked muscle in my body lets go at once, and I open my mouth to thank the man standing over her.
“I told you not yet.”
My blood runs cold.
I trusted Derek because Grayson trusted him.
“Derek?” Maybe this is a misunderstanding. Maybe I heard wrong.
He smiles. He has not stopped smiling since the shift came off him.
“I don’t want you to die yet, Miranda.”
“What?”
“I want Grayson to see you die.” His eyes hold mine, calm as a lake. “It would not be the same if he found a body. He has to walk into a room with you in it and watch the light go out behind your eyes. So you live until he gets here.”
“What?” My brain is short-circuiting for a moment. I know how much Grayson loves Derek. He is all he has left of his brother. This betrayal will kill him.
If it doesn’t kill me and Ethan first.
“He doesn’t know where I am.” I breathe slowly.
“He will.” Derek tilts his head. “It will take him some time. He’ll track my scent and yours.” The fear that goes through me is cold and bright and oddly useful. It steadies my hands at my sides.
“Why are you doing this?”
His eyes flicks once to Ethan’s small body on the concrete behind me. Ethan has not stirred. His chest is rising in shallow, regular movements that mean the sedative is still in him, but the dose is wearing off. I can hear the change in his breathing. Derek does not seem to be focused on it.
“It’s not personal, Miranda. I want you to know that. I don’t hate you. I have nothing against you.”
“You just killed Grayson’s ex-wife and you are telling me you want him to watch me die, but it’s not personal?” I stare at him.
“It is not personal to you.” His mouth pulls. “I would have left you alone if you’d picked any other man. But the Wolfe brothers don’t get to keep mates. That’s the rule I made the night I buried my own. Everything’s handed to them while the rest of us claw for scraps. I’m not watching another door open for him with you behind it.”
“I thought you were Gabriel’s friend.”
Something flashes through his eyes. The smile slips. For one beat, I see the man Grayson told me about, the one he grew up next to, the best friend of his older brother, the boy who used to come to his house for Sunday dinners. The grief that comes through is so naked I cannot look away from it.
“I was his friend. I loved him as my own blood. I would have died for him.” His voice has gone rough. “Right up until I learned the Council approved his mate because Leon Ramirez is his adopted father, and they refused mine because she was nothing to anyone with rank.”
“That is not true. The Council—”
“Don’t speak about things you don’t understand.” His eyes sharpen. “I lost the woman I loved because my alpha did not pick up a phone for her. Then I watched Gabriel get his woman. Then I watched you walk into Grayson’s house and start raising Gabriel’s nephew as if he were your own son. We all grew up together, but they got what they wanted, and the woman I loved had to die.”
The pain in his voice is unmistakable, but I refuse to feel sorry for this man. “Your grudge, it was with Gabriel and Grayson? Why did you drag Ethan into it?”
