by Rhea Watson
“If I had to guess,” I said softly after reminding myself of who he was, what he was in the grand scheme of things, “I think you want safety for your pack and security for its future. Food, a bed, respect… the freedom to come and go as you please.” Knox spared me a glance, barely looking over his broad shoulder in my direction, a shoulder I battled the urge to touch, to rest my hand on so he could feel that I meant what I said. “I’m sorry you’re in this position. Really. I am. From the bottom of my heart. I think it’s foul how your kind came to be, and walking through Fenix’s kennels was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever experienced.
“But my feelings, your feelings, our indignation—it doesn’t change anything. Those running this world are more powerful than me and you. We’re just a piece in the machine, easily replaced when it becomes faulty or makes too much noise. And if we fail the trials…” I finally did touch him, grabbing at his arm hard enough for him to shrug me off and give me his full attention, even if the brunt of his black stare made me want to shrivel up and hide under the bench. “If we fail, you’re gone. Can you really afford to let Declan go to another pack where they’ll attack him, put him at the bottom again because of his size—scar him even more than they’ve scarred you? Do you think he can survive that? And Gunnar… Do you want to see him in a pack where nobody appreciates him, where he’s bored and aggravated, his talents wasted? I certainly don’t. That would destroy me.”
It wasn’t the snide comments that would bring me to my breaking point—it would be watching this pack disintegrate.
“They’re good at this,” I pressed on. “Gunnar and Declan may have been forced into this life, but they are exceptional hellhounds—we both know it. You wouldn’t tolerate them if they were any less, and they wouldn’t have sailed through my field training otherwise. They’re good. They could be great. And they actually seem to like reaping. Declan connects with frightened souls with nothing more than a look. Gunnar will never lose a soul, no matter how slippery they think they are.” Everything around me blurred—Knox, the park, the dogs in the run—eyes suddenly stinging with tears—with passion. I let him see the shimmer but wouldn’t let them fall. “They don’t deserve to be taken away from this life, or from you, or, frankly, from me. I don’t want to see that happen, and neither do you.”
Knox studied me a beat longer, then looked away, back straight and eyes unfocused as he surveyed the park in silence. At least he hadn’t snarled at me, sneered about circumstances we were equally powerless against.
At least he appeared to be mulling things over.
That was a start.
Mouth dry, I took a small sip of my latte, the sweetened coffee cooled just enough that it didn’t scorch my tongue. The spice concoction wasn’t anything new: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, a pinch of allspice. Humans had been baking fall treats with it since I was alive, long before even, but its popularity nowadays opened it up to ridicule.
I rather liked it.
There was nostalgia in the blend, memories of Mum’s homemade pies, Dad’s hot chocolates with a dash of cinnamon and cloves. It made me smile, the taste, the smell, and I’d hoped it might temper Knox this afternoon, but so far, his drink remained untouched.
“You know, I’ve tried to understand you, Knox,” I told him with a shake of my head and a frown. “I’ve tried to get to know you—”
“Have you?” His patronizing laugh brought the heat back to my face, and I rolled my shoulders, once again preparing for a bout with him.
“Well, you aren’t exactly an open book.”
The hellhound shot to his feet so abruptly that the bench’s thin wood panels literally bounced back into place without his massive body weighing them down. I gripped the metal armrest instinctively, latte jostling around inside the cup, my frown deepening when he looked over his shoulder at me—only barely, mind you.
“You want to know me?” he asked, growling out every word so low that I had to strain to hear him. “Quid pro quo, reaper. You first. Try to give instead of take.”
I rolled my eyes again; I knew I shouldn’t have let them watch Silence of the Lambs the other day. But fine. I wasn’t exactly an open book either, but if someone asked about my life, the life before this, I had nothing to hide. So, shouldering my purse, I stood, then jogged after him when he strolled toward the gravel path. His pace was slow, leisurely, like he was waiting for me to fall in line, but those long legs carried him a great deal farther than five of my steps would have.
“Well, what do you want to know?” The little rocks crunched underfoot, and I slipped one hand in my pocket, ignoring the sudden outburst of barking dogs, their owners shouting for them to calm down.
“How did it feel to die?” He said it so casually, examining the trees—the first batch of non-cedars he would have seen, the last of the pack to leave our forested territory. I swallowed hard, throat dry again, and then chugged down half my latte to compensate. The sweetness that I usually enjoyed curdled in my belly.
“It… It felt like nothing,” I told him as we followed the path’s gentle curve deeper into the park, a pair of joggers zipping by us on the grass. “And, I guess, it felt like everything too. It happened so suddenly… They bombed us. I was in France for the war—”
“The Second World War?”
“Yes. I was an army nurse. We had a small camp set up for wounded soldiers, and the Luftwaffe did an air strike in retaliation for an English one… It was over before I even realized what had happened.” I didn’t remember my reaper, but I was told after, when I had accepted my scythe, that there were thousands scattered across Europe for the war. Reapers and their hellhounds, rounding up the millions who had died. A vague, fuzzy memory of the angel Peter remained, somewhere deep in my mind, along with the sensation of a frigid hand on my shoulder as we approached him and the gate. After that, nothing. Then paradise. Then—longing.
“Did you have a mate?” Knox asked, moving on without pressing for any of the gory details. I arched an eyebrow up at him.
“This isn’t quid pro quo, Clarice,” I insisted. “I’m supposed to ask a question now.”
We paused at a fork in the path. Left would take us to the outskirts of the park, to smaller paths that opened here and there to the sidewalk and the rest of Lunadell, surrounded by wilting fall flowers and hip-high stone walls. Knox turned right, herding me with his huge frame toward the playground, the tennis court, the kiddy pool.
He also straight-up ignored my comment, and I sensed this wasn’t going to be a back-and-forth at all. But maybe I owed him something more than that. He was right, after all. Reapers took, took, took from their hellhounds. I could give.
Maybe this was his way of connecting with me.
So, fine.
“I had a fiancé,” I told him after a group of women in spandex power-walked by us, chatting and laughing, a few pumping five-pound weights with each dramatic swing of their arms. “Royce. We grew up together… He lived just down the street. Sweet man. A good man. He was drafted when the war started, and I joined the nursing corps on the off chance that we could be together over there. He survived, I didn’t. Death… let me reap him a few years ago when he finally died.”
“Did you love him?”
I shrugged, studying the smattering of dead leaves hanging off a maple. “I thought I did.”
“And do you think you love Declan? Gunnar?”
A little bump in the path caught me by surprise, but I stumbled more over the question than anything. Was that what this was all about? Rooting out my intentions with his packmates? I bit the insides of my cheeks as heat bloomed in my chest.
“I don’t know.” Might as well be honest. Knox’s whole stern, silent, sexy brooding schtick had always suggested that he could sniff out lies anyway. “I care very deeply for them… for all of you.”
There was no cool chuckle this time, but a deep, barreling laugh that scattered a handful of pigeons pecking around a garbage can up ahead. I stopped, every
inch of me wound tight as Knox laughed in earnest for the first time in… Well, it was the first time I had seen this genuine amusement before, and it hurt.
It hurt that he still didn’t believe me, that he could just guffaw away my feelings like they didn’t matter, like they weren’t real.
“Don’t be like that,” I snapped as he wiped under his eyes, his tanned skin flushed beneath all that rough facial hair, his mouth stretched so wide it might just fall off his face.
“Like what?” he asked through his tapering snickers. We had come to a standstill, and this time, when a cluster of joggers blitzed by us, one slowed to shoot us a glare over her shoulder—like we were the biggest assholes alive for just standing there. I stared back, unfazed, then shifted my fury to Knox.
“Don’t be glib when I’m being honest with you.” To his credit, the mirth dried up at that, and I resisted the urge to poke him, hard, in the middle of that broad chest—only because that wall of steel would probably break my finger in the process. If reaper bones could break, that is. No one had ever told me. “Don’t be an asshole when you’ve made literally no effort to know me, to let me in. I’ve tried so hard with you—”
“I’ve been an alpha without a pack all my life,” the hellhound stated, angling that enormous body toward me, closing the gap between us to a precarious foot. I stood taller and refused to be bullied by his size. His black gaze slithered down my face to my buttoned peacoat, to the latte caught in my death grip, then jumped back to lock with mine. “I was never violent enough to wrangle a pack. Never cruel enough, never crass enough. Never enough. Someone always cut in to take my would-be pack from me. I fought for them, but they chose a brute over me every time. I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember.”
He eased in closer, and just before our bodies could touch, he crouched down to meet my eyeline. A cool, soft breeze toyed with his black mane, mussed my white one enough that a few strands caressed his cheek. Not once did we break eye contact, even as my heart boomed between my ears, as my knees locked and threatened to buckle.
Knox smelled like pure man. Raw, untamed, a wild thing—a summer storm ripping across the ocean.
The rest of the world fell away around us.
“And now I have a pack to call my own,” he whispered, his breath warming my lips, that black stare verging on vulnerable. “I would kill for them. I would die for them. And you, reaper, Hazel, are trying to take them away just like all the others.”
A whoosh of air ripped out of me, awareness exploding like Fourth of July fireworks. This was it—his angle.
I was like every other alpha in Hell.
That was how he saw me.
My lips trembled. Only I wasn’t violent or crass. I was a woman, and his packmates desired me, connected with me, bonded to me in a way they simply couldn’t with Knox.
I swiped at the white flyways dancing between us, smoothing them back with all the rest as Knox straightened. Everything about him became hard again, the moment of softness gone, but my hand still found a way to his chest, settling over his heart, against his steely exterior.
“Knox…”
His gaze dropped to my hand, beneath which drummed a slow, steady heartbeat. Then, without a word, he pressed his over mine, engulfing it, and for a few precious seconds, we just stood there, frozen, hands together—until his fingers curled, and he peeled mine away from his chest by my thumb. He held it between us briefly, his skin like fire, before letting it fall. I jumped to, catching him by the wrist, unable to close my whole hand around it, and yanking hard, bearing down when he tried to twist away.
“I’m not trying to take them from you,” I told him fiercely. “You are this pack’s alpha, and I’m asking you—begging you—to expand your pack by one. To just… let me into it. That’s all. I’m not an alpha. I know that. I’m not your master.” I held firm, but keeping Knox in place was like trying to wrangle a snorting bull. “You don’t serve me or owe me allegiance. We’ve been chosen, whether you believe it or not, for a greater purpose: to help souls. That’s it. That’s all this is.”
He finally wrenched his arm away, half dragging me with him as he retreated with a snarl. “Pretty words, reaper.”
The hellhound made it one long stride before I was in front of him, barring his path, shoving my shoulder into this stubborn runaway train.
“Take my honesty as you will,” I snapped, eyes watering, latte trembling in hand. “It’s on you now. I’ve said my piece, and I won’t do it again.”
I fixed him with one last look—one that said I was done fighting for his acceptance. He could take me or leave me, but now he knew my feelings.
And he knew the consequences if all this failed.
Still shaking, I stalked down the path as fast as my feet could carry me, not stopping until I reached the children’s playground. Distantly, Knox’s heavy, consistent tread crunched over the gravel underfoot; he wasn’t exactly running to catch up. Ahead, children climbed the metal jungle gym, squealed down plastic slides, swung between thick rings. Parents hovered around the pebbly lot, seated on benches, standing at the wood stacks encasing the park’s perimeter. More out of habit than anything, I drifted off the beaten path, watching them from the obscured safety of two towering maples.
Knox joined me a few moments later, after I had downed the rest of my cold latte.
“You watch them often, don’t you?”
I shrugged, no longer in the mood for his quid pro quo bullshit.
“Because you want young of your own,” Knox added. “You want a family.”
The playground suddenly blurred, and I blinked back my tears, the familiar hollow ache in my heart sharpening painfully. “I guess. I’ve never really thought about why I do it… I just do it. Reaping is the most fulfilling life I can imagine, but it can be… lonely.”
“Less lonely with a pack,” Knox mused, and when I looked up at him, I found a gentle smile on his lips as he too watched the children play. “Or, I imagine, anyway.”
“Yeah. It’s been really nice to have you all with me… even when you’re being an ass.”
The hellhound huffed a soft laugh, then finally risked a slurp of his pumpkin spice latte. His handsome face twisted through a grimace.
“Hazel… This drink is shit.”
In that moment, the hollowness in my chest lifted. A temporary respite, as usual, but welcome all the same.
I snorted and stole his latte for myself, which he surrendered a little too easily.
“Come on,” I said with a nod toward the path. “It’s after noon… I’ll buy you a whiskey instead.”
Shaded by the rustling canopy, Knox turned away from the whirling dervishes on the jungle gym, shadows playing across his features. “If you really want to hear my story, you’d better make it at least a double.”
I tossed my empty latte cup into a garbage can with a grin. “Deal…”
19
Knox
The Hazel of tonight was a far cry from the reaper of Sunday afternoon—the one who wore me down with words at the park, with but a simple touch of her hand to my wrist, and who had listened diligently to my life story at the bar after.
Back then, she had been a feminine thing, so soft and nurturing. Attentive. Kind. And not just with her words, but with her eyes too. I’d finally vomited up my depressing story onto the table between us, a tale that was nothing more than a series of failings and rejections, bounced from one pack to another until finally Fenix put me in a kennel alone with countless beatings along the way, and Hazel had simply listened. No pity. No judgment. She had just listened and kept my whiskey topped up, nodding here and there, smiling when appropriate, scowling the rest of the time.
That day, Hazel had been all that I’d needed her to be.
Something had shifted between us—even if my primary goal of freedom for the pack remained. Battling the rogue spirit together had changed the air around her and me, but talking, really letting it out, had made a world of difference.
Still feminine, yes, even with her shapeless black robe billowing around her, only hinting at the beautiful curves beneath. Compared to we three males, Hazel always possessed a womanly way about her that I had come to admire. But tonight, she was fierce too. Two sides of one coin, her many facets a secret pleasure to unravel. Strong, confident, focused, she strode along the quiet suburban sidewalk with a deep sense of purpose, the arched blade of her scythe glinting in the passing streetlamps.
I trotted behind her, in no hurry but not dawdling either. Gunnar and Declan had already reaped their first soul—and neither had shut up about it since. Supposedly it was a life-changing moment, that first reap, and a little tingle of excitement buzzed in my chest at the thought of finally experiencing it for myself.
And alongside this Hazel, at that. Stoic, determined, she looked every inch a warrior as we strode through the celestial plane. Quiet human houses passed by in my peripheral, single-level bungalows that had seen better days. Every so often, a car rumbled down the nearby streets. Suburban sprawl, Gunnar had dubbed it as we’d sat around the laptop, admiring the satellite photos of the neighborhood after Hazel had given us an address.
She hadn’t done so for the others—told them in advance where they were headed. While I’d no clue what type of soul awaited me at 786 Clemments Street, Hazel had at least shared the location with all of us beforehand. Seated on the couch in one of the studies, sandwiched between Gunnar and Declan while I’d prowled about behind, she had typed in the address when prompted by my beta, my pack taking great interest in tonight’s destination.
Two brief days had passed since our afternoon at the park, our evening at the bar. We hadn’t fucked, nowhere close to it, and yet the atmosphere inside our territory had also changed. For the better, Declan had mused, the young hellhound thrilled that we were all suddenly getting along. Hazel had been quiet these last two days—quiet but present, smiling more yet shy when the weight of the whole pack’s attention settled on her.