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Not that it mattered right now. I was in no state of mind to pretend everything was okay. Everything was definitely not okay.
“M-Mercy,” I
stammered. “I went to get her skull for Beau, and… her grave was empty.” Beau, being Beau Cain, a man who had done me a pretty massive favor, but like all his other favors it came with a steep price tag.
“Someone took her head?”
I shuddered. “No.”
“I don’t understand.” He’d moved his hands to my shoulders, rubbing the bare skin on my arms. I was completely covered in goose bumps and no matter what Wilder did I couldn’t shake them.
“She’s alive.”
He stopped rubbing my arms.
For a moment, he was so still the only motion I saw was the wind ruffling his dark blond hair. “Sorry, what?”
Now that I’d said it out loud, it seemed to remind me she was still out there, and even though I hadn’t heard her chase me, that didn’t mean she wasn’t making her way here as we spoke. Something had brought her back, after all.
If Mercy McQueen had returned from the dead, she had a little more than haunting on her mind.
Chapter Two
“Genie, slow down.”
I had all but dragged Wilder behind me as I hauled ass into my uncle Callum’s mansion. We’d bypassed the rowdy noises coming from The Den, because I knew perfectly well the werewolf king wouldn’t be there.
Sure enough, we found him settled in behind his expansive wooden desk, a small banker’s lamp the only thing illuminating the room, while he filled out some paperwork by hand. I slammed the office door behind me, getting his attention.
“Eugenia, I was wondering when I’d see you.”
In my haste to get the dirty business of digging up Mercy, I had bypassed the appropriate polite greeting I owed him as my king. Family or not, there were rules to be followed. I automatically dipped into a quick bow, knowing it would be easier to do things this way than to tell him it wasn’t important.
I didn’t have that kind of breath to waste tonight.
“Beheading,” I blurted. “Beheading is supposed to kill anything.”
He lifted an eyebrow, the only indication of confusion he would allow. His handsome face rarely changed its countenance, as he tried to always look completely impassive.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” To his credit, he didn’t look at Wilder for clarification. If he was going to seek and explanation, he would get it from me. That was how the hierarchy worked. I was an Alpha. I had my own pack. Wilder, while he was genetically primed to be an Alpha, and had spent time in Shreveport at an apprentice to their Alpha, had since tied himself to me, meaning he accepted that I outranked him. Callum would always look to me before Wilder. Gender didn’t matter here.
“Mercy is alive.”
“No, she certainly is not.” He seemed almost offended that I would suggest it.
“Yes. She. Fucking. Is.” I knew I should have tried to keep my temper in check, but I just couldn’t. Not now. Not with her potentially coming for all of us.
“Eugenia.” He made my name sound flat and empty, a magical intonation usually reserved for parents who were trying to keep their shit together. Callum wasn’t my father, but he was the closest thing I had to one, and I know he loved me as if I were his own daughter.
Which was probably the only reason he wasn’t throttling me right now.
“Look, I’m sorry, but you weren’t there, you didn’t see what I saw.”
“And what, precisely, is that?”
“Mercy is alive. She’s alive. Not a ghost, not a figment of my imagination. A living breathing woman who I could see and smell and hear.”
A few different emotions seemed to flicker over his face all at the same time, and I knew he was trying to decide which direction to take this in next.
