Miranda.
I hit the door, and it splinters off its frame. My heart is slamming against my ribs, my blood roaring loudly enough to drown out everything, and the second I’m through, the room stops me cold.
Vanessa is crumpled at the base of the back wall, her neck twisted too far, her open eyes fixed on nothing.
A small, unconscious wolf on the ground. His chest is moving, and that fills me with relief.
Miranda pinned on her back beneath an enormous dark wolf, his jaws inches from her throat, blood running freely down the right side of his face from an eye that is no longer there.
“GET OFF MY MATE.”
I am not aware of closing the distance. I am across the room, hitting him with my full weight. Derek goes off her in a tangle of fur and limbs, slamming into the opposite wall.
I drop to my knees next to Miranda. Her chest is moving. Her breathing is wet.
“Look at me. Sweetheart. Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine, and there is a small twitch of her mouth that tries to be a smile and does not make it. I cannot tell what color her shirt is supposed to be. Her hand reaches sideways across the concrete toward Ethan. The boy makes a small sound, curling toward her until her fingers close around his front paw.
Coach has come into the room behind me. I hear his sharp inhale at the sight on the floor. He moves past us toward the wolf slumped against the wall.
Derek shifts back. He pushes himself up with his arm, one hand pressed over the ruin of his right eye, blood running down between his fingers and his bare chest heaving. He looks at me, then at Coach, and his easy half-smile pulls into place even through the pain.
“She attacked me.” His voice is rough but level. “I was helping her. She got the knife into me before I could stop her. I had to defend myself.”
“Like you helped Annie?”
Derek goes very still. I see the half-second where he calculates whether to deny it and the half-second after that where he understands that I already know.
Coach’s voice cuts across the room. “I know everything, Derek. I found Elisabeth.”
Derek’s smile fades into rage. “You desecrated her grave? You bastard!”
“I didn’t desecrate it. She will get a proper burial.” Even in this moment, Coach isn’t trying to hurt Derek’s already wounded heart. “But you killed Annie. And your best friend.”
Derek’s chest is heaving. “He had it coming. Annie was just collateral.”
“Coach, I need a healer!” I snap out. “Forget him. Miranda can’t breathe.”
“She’s not going to survive.” Derek laughs. “Don’t blame me. Blame your precious adoptive father. Blame his favoritism!”
Derek tilts his head back against the wall. The blood on his chin is drying. When he speaks, his voice has lost the careful pleasantness it has worn since the day he came home.
“I could have lived with them rejecting Elisabeth,” he says, “if Gabriel had also gotten a rejection.”
The wolf inside me is pacing in tight, angry circles.
“If you had pulled the strings for Elisabeth, Coach, the same as you pulled them for Gabriel, she would have lived. You chose your son and your favorite, and you left mine to die alone.”
“That’s not what happened.”
I can hear howling in the distance. Help has arrived, but it’s too late.
“There were no strings to pull, Derek. There never were.” Coach’s voice doesn’t lift. “Elisabeth was denied because she couldn’t have survived the mark. Not with my help, not with the whole Council behind her. She was always going to die from it.”
Derek stares at him. Then he laughs, a small broken sound with no humor in it. “You’re lying.”
“They never told you the real reason. They never tell anyone.” Coach holds his eye. “I’m not lying, son.”
