Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death)

by Sabol, Suzanne M.

  “I’m sorry,” Jade uttered.

  “Why? It’s not your fault,” I said, flat, emotionless.

  We both sat quiet, watching the ship fly away on screen.

  “What are you going to do?” Jade asked.

  “Other than show this to the Pack tonight? I don’t know,” I murmured.

  She got up, shoving off the arm of the sofa and went to the television.

  “What do you think? Pinocchio or Sleeping Beauty?”

  “Sleeping Beauty. That scene at Pleasure Island gives me the creeps,” I said, curling up in the corner against the armrest, letting the stack of manila file folders fall to the floor. The damage was already done.

  Chapter 21

  The air was thick, moist like a sauna as I stepped out of my car. Bugs skimmed the tall grass around me as I trudged through it. I swayed between cars, advancing through the tall grass to get to the clearing. In jeans and a white tank top, I was sweating already and I’d only been out of the car for a couple of minutes. I hated July. I hated summer. I hated the fucking woods. I fucking hated Jackson.

  I carried the large bundle of papers Jade had given me under my arm. My sweat from the summer heat seeped into the manila folders, making them damp and disgusting. My gun was in the cross-reach holster strapped to my back and my bowie knife sheathed on my bare bicep. You don’t go into a pack of werewolves unarmed, especially when one has taken out a contract on your life. You just don’t.

  I still didn’t know what I was going to do or say. Jackson had broken Pack law but Dean would make the final decision. I knew in my gut Jackson needed to die. He wouldn’t stop until he was Gaoh. And he damned well wouldn’t stop until I was dead. I wasn’t okay with either.

  Tag waited for me at the other end of the line of cars. He smiled when he saw me.

  “So you get to be escort tonight?” I asked. He fell in behind me a step and a half back.

  “It’s my pleasure,” he said, maintaining the distance and acknowledging my dominance.

  It wasn’t creepin’ me out any more that he walked a step and a half behind. I was Pack and I was dominant.

  “How does it look so far?”

  “Everyone’s there. But there’s a tension in the air I don’t like.” The clearing was filled with Pack as we entered and Tag shut down, the light from his eyes was gone leaving only the wolf before we could discuss his concerns further. Dean, Jackson, and Kurt were in the center, elevated slightly by the natural rise in the landscape. Jackson was talking, oblivious that neither Dean nor Kurt appeared entertained.

  Tag elbowed his way through the crowd ahead of me, clearing a path. As he broke through the circle of Pack members, Dean’s eyes rested on me and his whole demeanor changed. His shoulders relaxed as his face softened. The thin line that his lips had been loosened, releasing the pressure from his full rounded mouth.

  Warm . . . safe . . . home . . . Ours, she purred through my mind.

  I weaved through the Pack until I was in the center with the others, leaving Tag behind among the crowd. Jackson rolled his eyes as I approached and folded his arms over his chest in protest. I ignored him and his petulant behavior, turning my face up to the moon.

  The silver orb was beautiful in its waning gibbous stage, bright and partially hidden as it disappeared into the next cycle. Tonight would be the last mandated Manit until the waxing of the next moon. Clouds rolled by, thick with the possibility of rain as they blocked all but a sliver of the moon’s light. A storm was brewing.

  I turned back to meet Dean’s Caribbean blue eyes, fighting the smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. This was serious, and I had to act that way. No grinning like a love-sick fool. Those eyes had frightened me once when I thought Dean was a right bastard of a Gaoh. Now, I felt those eyes pulse low in my body like he belonged there. Filled with need and belonging, I pulsed in a place I’d avoided for so long after Danny’s death. Now, I couldn’t remember why.

  “Did you find it?” Dean gruffed.

  I shivered at the tone in his voice. His stance, his body language, and the stern authority in his glare were all stiff with tension.

  “I did.” My voice sounded deep and husky as I spoke, as I tried to ignore the need burning between my thighs.

  “Then we’ll start,” he boomed out over the crowd.

  I turned to face the Pack and a hush fell over them to the point I could hear the distant hum of a generator miles away.

  “Amelia,” Dean called.

  Amelia came to my side with an easy grace I wished I possessed. Her silver eyes bore into me and she smiled, knowing what I was thinking. Amelia was the Pack’s justice, their Utu. She heard complaints and issued out punishments for formal Pack offenses. She was an unbiased party with a unique power to read the minds of her Pack as part of enacting justice. That aspect of her freaked me the fuck out. I had too many secrets to hide for Amelia to be rooting around in my head.

  Amelia inclined her head at me with a question in her silver eyes. I was prepared to answer her unspoken question. I’d never been surer in my life that Jackson was dirty, and I let that feeling permeate from me and cloud over everything else in my mind.

  Sighing with relief and what sounded like sadness, she read my mind and my sincerity. Amelia turned to her Gaoh, her white hair shimmering in the flickering moonlight shining through the clouds. Her penetrating silver eyes gleamed in contrast against her dark chocolate skin.

  “I am at your service, Gaoh,” she said in her neutral, light soprano.

  Dean turned the full weight of his heated gaze and authority on me and nodded.

  I guess it’s show time.

  You can present your case to me, Amelia sang clear as a bell through my mind. I hated when she did that. I didn’t like people in my head. There were already too many people up there. That other voice growled a warning at the intrusion and I felt Amelia back off and leave my mind, like an iron curtain dropping.

  “Okay.” I sighed, ignoring the wide-eyed surprise making her silver, pupil-less eyes bright. I handed the manila folders to her. “I’ve evidence that Jackson’s been embezzling funds from Trevelyan Dean Construction in the amount of $90,000, probably more over the past 18 months.”

  My heart raced and my stomach churned with anticipation as I turned my attention from Dean to Jackson. The bastard’s eyes narrowed on me and a snarl curled his lips. Rounding his shoulders, he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet.

  Dean had already heard about the 90K. The next bit of information would set the entire Pack in motion.

  “I have further evidence that some of that money was used to hire the Strays currently killing in our territory,” I said, shifting my focus back to Dean.

  Naked aggression turned his olive eyes blue. The tension in his shoulders hardened to granite and he balled his hands into tight fists at his sides.

  Jackson moved before I had time to breathe. Leaping at me in a streak of quickness that made distinguishing his movements or limbs impossible, he reached for my throat. I took a quick, stumbling step back and fumbled for my gun.

  Kurt came out of nowhere, slamming into Jackson midair. The two men fell to the ground in a tumble of arms and legs.

  “This is ridiculous!” Jackson screamed. “You aren’t going to take her word over mine?” He growled as Kurt pinned him with his more solid bulk and a strength I’d never seen in him. I had my gun clenched in my hands, holding it in a tight grip as I caught Jackson’s forehead in my sights.

  Dean knelt down, speaking in Jackson’s ear so that only the four of us could hear him.

  “If you brought those strays here,” he whispered as his voice trembled with rage, “I’ll kill you myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Gaoh,” Amelia whispered, keeping her voice low so the rest of the Pack wouldn’t hear her. “If
he has done these things, he will be punished. However, he has only threatened the well-being of a friend of the Pack. His crime does not justify death.” Her voice, cool and impartial, yet still managed to show her deference to Dean.

  “But she is Eithina,” Niyati shouted from the crowd.

  “She has not been declared so by our Gaoh. She holds no status here and no official ranking in our Pack,” Amelia reiterated, turning her silver eyes to Jackson. “Did you do these things?”

  A shrewd little smile crept across Jackson’s face, like he thought he had us all just where he wanted us. He could answer honestly and not face the penalty of death. Neither Dean nor I wanted to face the issue of Eithina and he knew it. To boot, Patrick and his Colony wouldn’t touch Jackson and risk alienating the Pack. Dean was bound as Gaoh to protect Jackson. That was the real bitch of it.

  “Yes, I did,” he said, bold as you please with that shrewd smirk still lingering on his thin lips.

  There was a collective gasp from the crowd as his confession traveled through the thick, humid air.

  Dean, as if in slow motion, slammed his fist into Jackson’s face with so much force I heard the bones crunch beneath the strike of Dean’s fist. Jackson’s head snapped to the left and bounced off the ground with a sickening thud. Jackson turned on his side and spit out the mouthful of blood but that damned smirk never left his face.

  This wouldn’t end. He’d be punished but nothing would really change. Jackson would kill me some dark night or these Strays would get me in the next couple of days. Either way, it had to end here. I couldn’t take anymore. No more games.

  I ran my hand through my sweat-dampened hair.

  Challenge him, Amelia whispered through my mind. Her gentle, warm voice filled my head, the voice of Justice for the Pack. I glared over at Amelia. She remained stoic and neutral, avoiding eye contact as if nothing was happening. My breath rose and fell in heavy pants as I thought about the daunting prospect of fighting Jackson, of killing Jackson.

  I couldn’t take him. The more likely scenario was he’d kill me right here in front of everyone but I had to try. That slim chance of survival was the only way to protect Dean, Tag, Kurt, and Jade from Jackson’s plotting. I didn’t have a choice.

  “I challenge you,” I grumbled, almost a whisper on the wind.

  A hush fell over the clearing and spread out into the forest. The crickets whose song I hadn’t noticed before had even fallen silent.

  A satisfied smile crested Jackson’s face.

  Dean was next to me in the blink of an eye, clutching my bicep in his hand. He jerked me to him, pressing his muscular chest against me as he escorted me away from the gathering.

  “What are you doing?” he asked through clenched teeth. “Kurt or someone else can challenge him!”

  “I’m afraid not,” Amelia said in her soft, ethereal tone. “The challenge has been made, Gaoh. It is the law.”

  Dean growled at her, low and threatening in his throat.

  “I can’t let someone else put their life in danger for me.” I met those Caribbean blue eyes for a long, breathless moment. I wanted him to see me. All of me. “This is my fight. I have to finish it.”

  He cupped his hands around my face, engulfing my cheeks in his warm hands. He brought his forehead down to rest against mine. Taking a deep inhale of my scent, he closed his eyes as his body went rigid, riddled with tension.

  “Amelia, the fight must be fair,” Dean said, his thumb stroking gentle lines across my cheekbone. I heard the pleading in his voice and felt my stomach tighten. Reaching up, I rested my hand tentatively on his forearm, an instinct I couldn’t avoid any longer. His muscles tightened at the contact and just as suddenly relaxed under my fingertips.

  Ours. Mine. Home.

  “Yes, Gaoh. She will be permitted to keep her knife, and Jackson will remain in human form,” Amelia said behind me.

  For the first time since I’d met her, I heard the quiver of emotion behind her words. Her voice was filled with the concern and compassion of a mother soothing a hurt child. She cared for Dean.

  “You are such a stubborn woman,” he growled in an even softer tone.

  “You have no idea,” I joked.

  He dropped his hands from my face, his fingers trailing hot lines down my arms as a rush of his power burned through my body like an electric blanket, making my skin tingle with it. He took a solid step back, putting distance between us. Holding out his hand in front of me, I placed my gun into it without question. He was one of the few people I’d trust with my gun. I removed my cross-draw holster, placing it in his other hand. If I was going to fight for my life, I wanted freedom of movement. Damn it, if I was going to fight, I wanted to be comfortable.

  “I’ll want that back in one piece. It was a special order,” I said.

  His lips curved up in the corners seeming almost sad.

  I shook out my arms, feeling the muscles loosen and my fingertips tingle as I moved. Kurt stood like a brick wall in front of Jackson, holding the snarling man back. The muscles in Kurt’s back flexed as he held Jackson, exerting very little effort. I realized as I watched that Kurt was much stronger now than the first time I’d seen him fight Jackson for Beta. Now, observing him, he probably could have won. I didn’t want to take that chance, though. He was happy, Jade was happy, and I wanted them to remain that way.

  I drew my knife from its sheath. The weapon felt good, like it belonged in my grip. I smiled at him, curving my lips into a malicious grin as my very own monster settled over me. My emotions were gone. The serenity of death settled over me, quiet and quick.

  “I’m gonna to tear you limb from fuckin’ limb!” Jackson spat over Kurt’s shoulder, seething and frothing at the mouth. As he bounced up and down like a prizefighter, the gold, glimmering eyes of his wolf shined back at me.

  “You’ll have to do it in human form. No shifting,” Amelia reminded him with a pleased grin. It sounded a little to me like she was enjoying this. “If you shift, you forfeit the fight and your life.”

  “Does it matter?” Jackson snarled. “I’ll eat her heart before this night is over.”

  Dean growled, filling the night with his rough baritone vibrating with dominance.

  “We’ll see,” I snapped.

  I bent my knees in preparation and Kurt stepped out of the bastard’s way.

  Jackson bared his teeth at me in a fierce growl, curling his upper lip in a ferocious snarl. He moved quicker than lightning toward me, forgetting I was quick now, too. I darted out of his way, using his momentum against him, then tripped him. I planted my fist into his spine as he passed, shoving him face first into the dirt.

  He growled, making my stomach tighten. Every instinct I had screamed for me to RUN! I gripped the handle of my knife tighter, my fingers aching from the pressure. He caught my gaze and false bravado. I motioned, waving for him to come at me again. Yeah, I was stubborn. Stubborn and stupid.

  He charged, lunging forward, sweat dripped from his pasty pale skin. I slashed at him with the knife across the softer flesh of belly. The razor-sharp blade connected with skin, tearing through his flesh in gripping starts and stops as it sliced through the muscles across his stomach. A crimson line of blood oozed from his middle.

  His fist collided with my stomach like a wrecking ball as he growled. His blow lifted me from my feet then knocked me to my knees. Coughing up blood, I tried not to throw up as I doubled over in pain, gasping for air. I crouched on my hands and knees, still coughing when I raised my face.

  His hand was pressed against his stomach. Blood oozed from between his fingers, turning his light green T-shirt into a sticky brown mess.

  I smiled, feeling the first rush of adrenaline surge through my system like liquid fire.

  “You cut me, you BITCH!”

  I stood up on unst
eady legs, rolling my neck and shoulders.

  “Yep,” I said with a dangerous smile I knew didn’t reach my eyes. “Sure did.”

  He leapt at me again, barreling down on me like a freight train.

  I slashed at his neck with my knife hand. He darted out of the way and straight into my left hook. I caught his chin with my fist with all the strength I had, both preternatural and human. He stumbled back a step or two but didn’t fall.

  Damn it! He didn’t fall! That was a bad sign. I’d given him everything I had and he was still standing.

  I came at him again with the knife then slashed the blade across his chest. He grabbed my wrist, halting my knife hand inches from his skin. With his free hand, he grabbed my throat and squeezed, lifting me from the ground. His meaty hand wrapped around my neck, shoving his thumb and forefinger into the flesh underneath my chin.

  I met his eyes with a determined glare. In that moment, I didn’t care that he’d cut off my air. His eyes filled with satisfaction, and I couldn’t let that stand, couldn’t let him win.

  I was dizzy, lightheaded, and my throat burned under the pressure of his grip. My lungs flamed from oxygen deprivation and I gasped for air as I dug at his fingers around my neck.

  He squeezed tighter, crushing my esophagus.

  I glanced down to his right knee. So close to my left knee. Raising my leg, I kicked his knee as hard as I could, using his grip on me as leverage. His knee, the same knee, popped in a quick snap of flesh and bone.

  Jackson roared as his knee dislocated again.

  Yeah, I bet that fucking hurt.

  I swung my knee between his legs and slammed it up into his groin before he had a chance to recover. We collapsed to the ground hard in a heap. He landed on top of me with his hands still holding my wrist and neck, shoving me down to the ground.

  I writhed beneath him to get free, bucking and wiggling to get his heavy body off of me. Struggling for air, I panicked as my lungs burned from lack of oxygen. His body weight was crushing me and I thought I heard a distant sad howl over the night air but I was on the verge of losing consciousness and I couldn’t be sure.