Page 66 of Fake It ’Til You Mate It

That’s new to me.

Max, too, it seems.

“But why Honey? Why did you involve her? Because you thought she could stop you in your attempts to take over Moonburow?”

Yeah, right. I didn’t even hear him that day! I remember a wolf saying something, but compared to Frannie’s confession and the fallout from the others, I never knew what Leo said.

“Because I knew she was your mate. You didn’t, but I did, and I made sure you stayed away from her… until those Luna-damn cupcakes! You went to her. What happened next? I sent Declan to try to catch her attention… witches don’t have fated mates. They can be one, but they don’t have one. If he flirted with her… if he made her his mate… you’d lose. Only she didn’t even notice. She gave him special food for you. She was trying to feed you! And when I told Declan that he needed to throw the cupcake away, he said he couldn’t. The damn fool was loyal to the Alpha. He didn’t want me to be Alpha. I had to kill him!”

Leo laughs. The joyless sound sends shivers down my spine. “I needed a tester for the poison anyway. I convinced Declan that the Alpha was going to meet him at the bakery after the pack meeting. So he could say thank you for the cupcake. But I took the cupcake, I poisoned it, and I held him down while he took a bite. He tried to fight, but a little wolfsbane stopped that. Besides, I’m supposed to be the Alpha. Of course I’d win. I hated to kill him, but I had no choice. He wasn’t loyal.”

Max’s jaw goes tight. “And Abigail? Was she loyal?”

Leo barks out a short laugh. “She thought we might be mates. I let her think so. Having a lawyer on my side… she was so damn scared all the time, but I did my best. I asked her to do one thing. Give the witch… the opossum… whatever… give her the tea. She did that. I thanked her just the way she liked, but do you know what she did? Made herself a cup! Dumb bitch drank the poison on her own because she felt bad for helping me kill the baker.”

Oh, Abigail… I know I should hate her for trying to kill me, but I… I get it. If she believed that Leo was her mate, she would do anything to make him happy. I would do anything—but I draw the line at murder.

“And last night? Were you trying to attack my mate on my territory?”

“Would it matter if I said ‘no’? I just wanted to look at her. A male can look, can’t he?”

Ew. No, thanks. And that, I’m pretty sure, was a lie.

“Hey. I have a question for you, Sheriff,” Leo says, his voice getting a little more snappish. Damn it. I think the quicksilver is wearing off. We won’t be able to trust what he says much longer, but that’s okay, I guess. We know most of what we need to know.

We know why Declan died.

We know what happened to Abigail.

So when Leo asks, “How did you know a wolf was involved?,” I’d kind of like to know the answer to that myself. Max said he knew… but how?

For a second there, I wasn’t sure that Max would answer. Shockingly, he does.

“The peppermint is what really made it obvious. Wolfsbane should’ve been enough to hide your scent when you were in the alley. But you wanted to make it heart. Only a wolf knows how bed peppermint extract stings.”

Leo curses under his breath. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to⁠—”

He clamps his mouth shut.

Max shakes him. “Who? Who told you to use peppermint? We know about Talia… who else helped you with this?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He spits at Max’s feet. Yeah… the quicksilver is done, isn’t it? “There are more of us than you know. Stop me. You can’t stop us all.”

Yeah. We’ll see about that.

We have our proof. A confession does it, and because Leo was feral enough that he did his big villain monologue in front of me, Max, Riordan, and the phone in Riordan’s pocket that he set to record as soon as this madness began earlier today, that should be good enough for now.

At least, that’s what I thought. Turns out, we weren’t quite done yet.

Riordan pulled out another injection, jabbing it into Leo’s neck. The second dose of quicksilver is more than enough to put the feral wolf under. He snarled the entire time the sedative does its stuff, eventually spitting and snapping his blunt human teeth before he collapsed on the dirt.

Max wasn’t taking any chances. He zip-tied Leo just in case the quicksilver failed. It wouldn’t trap him permanently, but it should hold a weakened shifter long enough to take him down—and out—again.

Once he was no longer a threat, Max threw back his head and howled.

It’s amazing, seeing a wolf’s cry pour out of his very human throat. He tapped into his wolf to make it, using so much of his power to send the howl out to every packmate in hearing distance.

It’s instinctive. If I ever needed proof that nothing Max did could ever have me playing dead, that does it. Because I didn’t. I didn’t wobble. I didn’t faint. I just stood in the clearing with him and his brother as dozens and dozens and dozens of wolf shifters come running toward us.