A few members of the crowd shifted to four legs, as if the bloodshed had flipped a switch they were helpless to control. They didn’t interfere, but neither did they assume their human guises. Somehow that made it worse. The animalistic quality of the battle was amplified by their snarls of eagerness or bays of support until the lawn became an arena, and Lethe’s fight for her life a spectator sport.
“Grier,” Hood whispered, barely an exhale. “Hold it together.”
I wanted to punch something. I wanted to take my dagger and ram it between Argus’s eyes then spit in them and watch as his soul extinguished.
“You said that out loud.” Eva blinked up at me. “You’re almost as scary as Mom.”
“Thanks.” I accepted it for the compliment it was and vowed one day to gain control of my mouth.
The stairs leading up into my head loomed in the forefront of my mind, an easy escape within reach. I could take those steps, cozy up in my safe corner, and forget all about this nastiness until it ended. But I was part of this pack, and I strived to follow its rules, even when I didn’t agree with them. I owed it to my friends, and to their daughter, to witness the cost of leadership.
Cletus, who had been watching our backs, tapped me on the left shoulder. I whirled in that direction to find a rangy blondish gwyllgi sneaking up behind us. Her eyes gleamed with malice where they locked on Eva, and saliva dripped from her open jaws.
Eva, who was Lethe’s daughter.
Eva, who was Lethe’s heir.
Eva, who would be a threat to Argus’s claim if he managed to defeat Lethe.
This guy really wasn’t taking any chances.
This ace in the hole must have been what put that ugly smile on Argus’s face.
“Savannah?” I reached for my bond with the city. “Can you handle that for me?”
The ground beneath the stalking gwyllgi turned the consistency of quicksand and mired the beast up to her knees.
“You can still come after Eva, if you want.” I watched her struggle and sink lower. “You’ll have to chew off your own legs to do it, though. Sucks, huh?”
The thrashing gwyllgi bayed a haunting note that her packmates lifted into song. It chilled my blood, but I couldn’t let them distract me.
With Linus by my side, Cletus watching my back, and the city roused to wakefulness, I returned my attention to Lethe.
Just that fast, she had snapped the long bones in Argus’s forelegs. His butt waggled in the air in a mockery of a puppy asking to play, but no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t regain his feet. The match was over. Point to Lethe. Except she didn’t stop there.
In the past, she had shown her challengers mercy, and it almost always blew up in her face.
Tonight, she didn’t shift back onto two legs, she didn’t try to make peace, and she didn’t dole out a second chance.
Teeth flashing, she ripped out Argus’s throat, gnawing until her muzzle gleamed with his blood and his spine shone through the ravaged flesh. The threat vibrating up the back of her throat promised vengeance on swift wings to the next gwyllgi foolish enough to think themselves worthy of her title.
Neither did she walk off and give the others a chance to revive him. She stood over Argus and waited for his eyes to cloud and his soul to flee, just as I had wanted to do.
Only then did she change back and address the pack, and I cringed at the crimson smearing her mouth. She didn’t wipe it away, didn’t attempt to humanize herself at all, and it was terrifying.
“Anyone who came with Argus has five minutes to get off my property.” Her gaze bored into Bo and Ty, who had shifted when things got heated, and they slinked away with their tails between their legs. “After that, I will challenge you. I will win. You will die.” Her annoyance transferred onto her pack. “As for the rest of you, you belonged to my mother, to Atlanta, and you chose me and Savannah.”
Hood stood statue-still, and I wondered what he read into her speech that I hadn’t grasped yet.
“For anyone whose allegiance has changed, Mom came down for the wedding. Feel free to follow her home.” She turned a slow circle, making eye contact with all those remaining. “For anyone who thinks they can or should run this pack, or who has a brother or cousin or uncle you want to see as alpha, get the fuck off my lawn.”
The tension bled out of Hood, and he dropped my hand so he could lean around me, take Eva’s tiny fingers in his, and join Lethe in the ring made by the gwyllgi.
“We are not true gwyllgi, and neither are we wargs.” Lethe’s hands balled at her sides. “Argus called me out because there are necromancers I consider pack. Who was he—or any of you—to judge who I call family?” Her voice cracked, but not with any soft emotion. Rage scorched the words as they left her tongue. “Grier Woolworth saved my child’s life, and there was a cost. I am happy to pay it, and if that means we become a pack of five, so be it. Traitors will not be tolerated in our ranks.”
A few members of her pack turned and left, and it hurt her. I could see it, but I doubt anyone who hadn’t eaten five gallons of ice cream in a single sitting with her could read the cues as well as me.
“For those who want to stay, who want to belong to the Savannah gwyllgi pack, you will submit to truth testing by Grier. You will answer a battery of questions, and if you fail one—just one—you’re gone. End of story. You can challenge me, and that’s cool with me. I really do not care at this point.” She rested her hand on Eva’s shoulder. “This is my child, my heir. No matter how many kids we have after her, she will inherit this pack when I step down for as long as she can hold it. If you can’t live with that, if you can’t obey her, then you need to go. Right now.”
A few more backed away and headed into the house, I assumed to pack their things.
Eva did her best not to cry as her friends left, but her bottom lip quivered until she bit it.
“This is your last chance. You are either loyal to me, my family, and my vision, or you need to hit the road. You have an hour to get off my property and twenty-four hours to leave my city. After that, if you show up unannounced or uninvited, you will be killed on sight.”
No one else so much as breathed, the remaining pack one third the size it had been this morning.
Lethe nodded, and the others relaxed. “Go say your goodbyes if you have any.”
“What about the carving station? And the cakes? You said there would be lots and lots of it.” A boy of six or seven pushed his way to the front. “Do we still get to eat even though some of the grownups were bad?”
“What kind of alpha would I be if I promised cake and didn’t deliver?” She crossed to him and ruffled the messy waves of his dark-brown hair. “We’ll go down in small groups this time.” She tweaked his nose. “Since you were brave enough to ask, you can be the leader in the first group.”
“Can Eva come too?” He shot her a shy smile. “She helps me reach stuff when I’m too short because she’s tall.”
“Eva?” Lethe checked with her daughter. “How does that sound?”
“Sure,” she said, the word brittle enough to break. “I’d like that.”
The boy took Eva’s hand and tugged on her, but she shooed him ahead. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Lethe named off two adults whom she trusted, and they started picking kids to round out their group.
The others entered the den to wait their turn, but none of them carried the hostile energy Argus and his pack had brought with them. Maybe this final purge was exactly what the pack needed, for Lethe’s sake as well as Eva’s.
Once Lethe, Hood, Eva, Linus, and I were alone, Lethe rubbed her face with the heels of her palms.
“I’m sorry, Mommy.” Eva wouldn’t look at Lethe. “I…”
“The only thing you should apologize for is being so ridiculously adorable in that dress. Do you know how distracting you were with all those pearls and flowers in your hair? It was like trying to ignore a fashion show in progress.”
“This was my fault,”
Eva tried again, firmer this time. “These bad people came here because of me.”
“None of this has anything to do with you,” she reassured her daughter. “They used you as an excuse to do what they wanted.”
“They used me too,” I chimed in, when it became obvious Eva didn’t believe Lethe. “They made the grownups think a bad man who hurt me once a long time ago wanted to hurt me again, but it was a dirty trick to get at your mom through me.” I slanted Lethe a glance. “All this just to steal your pack?”
Argus had killed Javier, burned down Mr. Laurent’s shop, and terrorized me.
Those crimes, the non-pack offenses, specifically those involving me, would have earned him a permanent vacation to Atramentous.
“Dominants often outgrow their birth pack,” Hood explained, keeping it simple for Eva’s sake. “If there’s no hope of winning a challenge against their current alpha, or of them attaining a high rank, they’ll leave home and start their own pack.”
“Unless they’re too lazy or too stupid to fend for themselves.” Lethe vibrated with her slow-cooling fury. “Then they look for a pack who has everything they want for themselves, and they try to take it from the people who made it what it is at the cost of those people’s lives.”
Eva soaked in what her mother was telling her, but she kept her chin angled away from Argus’s corpse.
“We live in a beautiful house on more land than we know what to do with, in an area where there are no gwyllgi packs and few warg packs to cause us trouble.” She kissed Eva on the forehead. “We’ve also got Aunt Grier and Uncle Linus in our corner. Argus thought if he took over the pack, he could command their loyalty too. He thought he could control Grier through us, and the Society through Grier, and that means he would control the entire city and everyone who lived here.”
The spit dried from my mouth, and golden spots winked like fireflies in my vision. “I missed that part.”
“As talkative as he was on two legs,” she scoffed, “he was worse on four.”
“Did he mention Volkov?”
Muscle bulged in her jaw as she grinded her teeth. “They made a trade.”
All the almost right but not quite clues clicked into a terrifying pattern in my mind. “For information.”
She nudged Eva off to join the boy and the others eager to head down to the reception.
“Argus was fixated on the Atlanta pack, but he had zero chance of usurping our family. He studied up on me after I broke with them, looking for an opening, and that led him to you. He sniffed around until he hit pay dirt on your history with Volkov then pulled strings with a vampire he knew in Texas to get the introduction to Volkov.”
It fit with what we knew about the vampire-with-unicorn regrets.
“That’s why none of the items were mine, or Volkov’s. Argus was using knockoffs to knock me off my game. He knew paired with the wedding stress we would latch onto Volkov and miss any small mistakes he made.” Another mystery resolved itself as I considered what Argus might have given Volkov in exchange for his cooperation. “Volkov fed him information about me, and Argus forged the amnesty papers to get Volkov sprung.”
Maybe this would be the end of it. Maybe now that Volkov was free, he would want to stay that way. Yeah. Right. And maybe I would finally talk to Hank about investing in that mechadrabull calf.
“The plan was brilliant.” A low growl built in her chest. “He made us look left while he struck right.”
“Volkov must have laid it out for him.” I hated being the resident expert, but he had made me that way. “Gwyllgi throw down challenges to your face, not sneak up behind you, right? Vampires are the sly ones, and this was one slick move.”
“Nothing he did violated protocol for a challenge, but yeah. It skirted several lines. I think that’s why he made such a production of it, really stuck to his talking points, to keep his people engaged, distracted.”
“How can anyone look at a man willing to stoop that low and think he would make a great alpha?” Seriously, it made my brain hurt. “I don’t understand. It boggles my mind how easily hatred is seeded in dark hearts.”
“That’s gwyllgi for you.” Lethe tried for a grin. “You just thought Society politics were bonkers.”
“All politics are bonkers,” I admitted, “and we’re bonkers for assuming leadership roles.”
“It’s like the bonkers leading the bonkers.”
The mention of roles had me switching gears from potentate to bride. “Are you coming back down?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said solemnly, “but I’ve lost my appetite.”
“I don’t believe that, and you’re not setting a proper example for your daughter if you let this fester.”
“These people lived with me, ate with me, played and fought with me, and all the while they plotted my child’s death. Argus never would have let her live. She was too critical to the success of his campaign. He had to cleanse the pack, and he would have started with her as soon as he put me down.” She tipped her head back, let her eyes close. “I don’t know how to come back from that. How to trust anyone who’s left. They came to me, ready to hamstring me back when they thought I had unlawfully killed a challenger. Remember? Why did I think taking them under my wing was a good idea?”
“We truth test them, just like you said. All of them. Every single one. Anyone who claims they want to stay but lies to me can kiss this pack goodbye. Savannah would be willing to bury them alive for you if it comes down to it.” The city had a real thing for entombment. “We will make your daughter safe by strengthening the pack, and that starts with you putting on a brave face and then stuffing it with food.”
“Okay,” she grumbled, caving to my logic. “I’ll eat one cake, but then I’m coming home.”
Lethe and I were missing the bottom halves of our dresses, and blood crusted us from head to toe. I had lost my shoes along the way, and Lethe had stabbed someone in the eye with her stiletto heel at some point, so we had to walk barefoot.
There would be a lot of photo manipulation happening in our wedding album. A lot. A whole lot. Tons.
“Do you remember how many cakes we ordered?” I looped my arm through hers, winked at Linus, my blood-speckled husband, then started down the hill. “You’re going to eat one slice from each, or I’m going to shove them down your throat after you terrorized that poor baker for months on end.”
“If that’s what you feel you need to do, I won’t stop you. Tonight is your night, and you get to do what you want.” She grinned, and it was lighter. “It could be like one of those timed hotdog-eating contests.”
“They dunk their buns in water,” I reminded her. “Can you imagine a waterlogged cake?”
An involuntary shudder rippled through my limbs as I envisioned such waste.
“I have a pretty great imagination when it comes to food, yes, but no.” She put on a brave face. “I would rather you dunked it in milk if I start flagging.”
Linus fell in step with me halfway down the hill, and Hood flanked Lethe.
“This will definitely go down as the wedding of the century,” I told him, threading our fingers. “Your mom should be thrilled.”
“It will be the talk of the Society.” He brought my hand to his mouth for a kiss. “That’s for certain.”
Craning her neck to see around me, Lethe caught Linus’s eye and grinned, her teeth pink and face streaked from her kill. “Welcome to the family, Mr. Woolworth.”
Mr. Woolworth.
Linus was Mr. Woolworth.
My husband.
Life, however messy, just didn’t get any better than this.
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Hadley is losing time, and her shadow refuses to shed light on the gaps in her memory. How can she guard her city if she can't remember where she goes or what she does when she ought to be sleeping? Will Atlanta need a new protector--from her?
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About the Author
USA Today best-selling author Hailey Edwards writes about questionable applications of otherwise perfectly good magic, the transformative power of love, the family you choose for yourself, and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily all at once. That could get messy.
www.HaileyEdwards.net
Also by Hailey Edwards
The Foundling
Bayou Born #1
Bone Driven #2
Death Knell #3
Rise Against #4
End Game #5
The Beginner’s Guide to Necromancy
How to Save an Undead Life #1
How to Claim an Undead Soul #2
How to Break an Undead Heart #3
How to Dance an Undead Waltz #4
How to Live an Undead Lie #5
How to Wake an Undead City #6
The Epilogues
How to Kiss an Undead Bride #7
How to Kiss an Undead Bride Page 18