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We reached the cross, crowded by rose bushes. The vines were barren right now, and thorns caught at the bottom of jeans as we stood around the grave. The flowers were obviously Karissa’s idea, but Shaw had been the one with dirt under his fingernails. Karissa was a fucking superhero in her own way; she was the only one who could coax some work ethic out of Shaw.
“It looks wild up here,” I said.
“Like Brennan.” Karissa balanced her candle carefully, then reached out and wove her arm through mine too, linking me with Liam on her other side.
It wasn’t how I’d meant the words, I didn’t know why we had to stand up to our knees in thorns, but I felt a rush of relief now she’d taken it that way.
“Like Brennan,” I agreed.
“I feel left out,” Shaw muttered, then he looped his arm through mine. The little fucker. But I just shook my head and let him be… Shaw.
The four of us stood over the empty grave. All I felt was cold, boiling rage when I looked at that damned stone cross, looped with thorns since the roses hadn’t bloomed yet. I should have buried my brother. I’d failed him.
But I couldn’t failthem,the siblings I had left. So I pushed all that anger down so that it boiled through my blood, and I just listened as they told their stories about Brennan.
Then Karissa twisted, looking up into my face. Expectant silence hung over us all.
“I have nothing to say.” I growled.
There was a door deep in the back of my mind, and all the memories of Brennan were shoved back in there. My pack needed me to protect them, and they had since the day he left. I hadn’t had time to grieve him then, and I didn’t have it now. When we found the blood-splattered, empty hotel room, Shaw had cried openly. Karissa had buried her face in his chest, the two of them sobbing together. The two of them felt all their pain so openly, wore it on their skin, in their damned faces that never hid a feeling.
I couldn’t imagine being so vulnerable.
“Stone,” Karissa said, and her voice was full of concern.
“Did you want to sing?” I didn’t know why she liked to sing a hymn—none of us had grown up going to church—but I’d sing a fucking song if it made her feel a little less sad.
She hesitated, then squeezed my arm. “Will you singYou Can Close Your Eyes?”
Christ. But she was looking up at me with a wet sheen in her eyes, and even though I fucked up the emotional side of things all the time, maybe this was one more way I needed to take care of my family. “Yeah, fine.”
I sang the words, distancing myself from the place where we were, barely hearing my deep voice rolling out the words. Karissa was sobbing by the end of the song. She and Shaw both pulled their arms away from mine as Shaw stood in front of her, pulling out a handkerchief—my fucking brother, who owned a handkerchief—and she wiped her eyes with it before he folded her into a hug.
I blew out Karissa’s candle before she set herself on fire, because she was waving it around haphazardly. She looked up at me with a dour expression, but I didn’t care.
Brennan was dead, and none of this would bring him back.
The bloodshed coming wasn’t going to raise any ghosts either, but seeing Nathan Longroad’s head explode into red mist was going to be fucking grand for my mental health.
When we were coming back down again, Karissa steered close to me and asked quietly, “What are you planning?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
Karissa glared at me with eyes that held a glint of the wolf, and Shaw said, “I want no part of this,” before walking ahead.
“Everyone’s arming up,” she said under her breath, glancing at Liam down the path. “Come on, Stone. You’re not going to solve anything by starting a war.”
“I’m not starting anything—I’m finishing it. I’m getting revenge for Brennan.”
“First of all, you’re stupid to think that’s going to be the end of it. And second of it all, why are you keeping secrets from me?”
“I don’t want you to have to lie to Liam. I’m just trying to protect him.” He couldn’t handle the truth of what would happen tomorrow.
“No, you aren’t.” She shook her head. “I want revenge as much as you do, Stone. But not war. Find a way to take Nathan out quietly.”
“He’s not the only one with blood on his hands.”
“And soon you’ll join him,” she snapped. “You’re going to invade their pack? How many people will die tomorrow that had nothing to do with Brennan’s death?”
