by Hettie Ivers
The constant beep of the various hospital monitoring devices taunted me, forcing me to lean closer in order to hear her better as I prepared to take in whatever painkiller-induced critical life advice she would dispense next. She didn’t even smell like my mom anymore. Her scent was masked by hospital disinfectant. And by the many medications in her system that had failed to make her well again.
“Remember when I told you before how I tried to save my sister? How I thought I could defend her from the world and protect her from her own worst demons, but I couldn’t? How I couldn’t save her from herself?”
“I remember it, Ma.”
“If those Salvatellas ever come for you, you just run, understand? Even if it means leaving your brother behind someday. Promise me you’ll let Raul go and run forever and never look back.”
“Ma, don’t talk like that,” I reared back and leveled her with a reproachful frown, baffled as to how she could say such a thing. “You taught me that we never abandon family. We stick by one another no matter what—through thick and thin, good times and bad.”
“Milena, this isn’t the same. Promise me you’ll always put your own safety before Raul’s after I’m gone? Because if the Salvatellas ever do find you, it’ll mean they’ve found him first. And baby, it’ll be too late for you to save him from himself then.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“So … ah … what’d I miss?” I asked, doing my best not to wince or to reveal how truly terrified I was to hear her answer as I sat cross-legged on the edge of Alex’s bed next to Bethany.
“You mean after I found out my best friend and her new boyfriend’s entire family turned into giant killer wolves? Not much.”
“God, I’m sorry, Bethy. It all happened so fast. I was still trying to digest everything myself.”
She waved me off with a nervous titter. “Yeah … look, I get it. I’m not mad. I’m just …” She shook her head and gave me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Let’s see, what’d you miss? Well, um, once you ‘poofed’ into thin air, Alcaeus went berserk and killed most of Gabe’s men after Alex stopped him from killing Raul.”
“Alex stopped Alcaeus from killing Raul?”
“Well”—Bethany shrugged—“Remy and Lessa helped, so it was a team effort, I guess. But mostly it was Alex who managed to subdue him. Your boy Alcaeus basically went apeshit after his crazy cleaning lady ate it and—”
“Lupe wasn’t crazy.”
Bethany threw her palm up. “I watched the woman incinerate the Argentinian hottie with the weird eyes, start a hurricane situation indoors, and skewer you with a machete. Call it what you will; I’m going with crazy.”
“Her name was Lupe. And she didn’t … skewer me on purpose.”
“Fine. Shit went down and blood and bodies went flying until there weren’t any of Gabe’s men left for anger-management case to dismember.”
“Fuck.”
“Then Alcaeus just stopped. It was moments before your unconscious body ‘poofed’ back into the room—right into Alex’s arms, by the way.”
“I rematerialized in Alex’s arms?”
“Sure did. Would’ve been super-romantic, too, if there hadn’t been so many dead bodies and scattered guts littering the room.”
“Crap. I’m sorry, Bethany.”
She didn’t look at me, but focused on the far bedroom wall as she recounted, “Then that hot doctor, Kai, showed up looking confused as hell and rubbing the side of his neck as Alcaeus was collecting the body of his cleaning la—Lupe—off the floor and carrying her away.”
Kai’s mating mark—he must’ve been palpating the spot where it’d once been. I released a sigh of relief and hoped to God this meant that Kai was truly a free man now.
“Dr. Kai started to try and say something, but Lessa socked him with some wicked magic punch that sent him flying across the banquet hall. She screamed that it was all his fault and left the room sobbing.” Bethany rolled her eyes. “Your future sister-in-law is high drama, by the way. Alex and Raul were busy checking your injuries and trying to revive you, and I … I think I kinda went into shock after that.”
Fuck. “God, I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to get dragged into this—for you to see any of that.”
She nodded, staring down at her hands in her lap. “Remy wrapped a blanket around me, and carried me to another room. I think he got me some food. And wine. We talked about things.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “So sorry.”
“Remy—he’s really nice.”
I nodded. “He is.”
“You’re not going to community college in the fall, are you?” It was a statement more than a question. I didn’t need to answer. She knew. “You think you’ll still go to law school eventually?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. I really didn’t. School suddenly seemed too trivial a concern to even ponder.
“Are you coming back to Santa Cruz? With Alex?”
I couldn’t answer that for certain either, but I had a hunch it wasn’t happening anytime soon. “Don’t think so, Bethy.”
She nodded. “Guess that means I’ll have to go back and oversee the remaining renovations to your house for you, huh?” she teased with a weak smile. “So … um, Remy said that—well, he said that if I wanted it, he could make it so that I didn’t remember any of the supernatural stuff that’s happened in the last few days.” Her blue eyes were hopeful. Imploring. I felt my heart breaking as I forced a smile on my lips and bobbed my head.
“Milano, you know I couldn’t be more proud of you for how you handled all of this, right? And—and you know I love you no matter what species you are.” I couldn’t meet her eyes anymore without crying, so I stared at her fingers as she twisted them in her lap. “But I don’t … don’t know how I can go home and pretend that none of this ever happened. Don’t know how I can attend UC Davis in the fall like a normal freshman who doesn’t know that werewolves exist.”
“I understand,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.
“I just—I don’t know how to un-see the things I’ve seen in the past forty-eight hours. How to erase the image of that machete going through your heart and out your back, or the sight of a man catching fire from the inside and basically melting right in front of me.”
“I know. I know. It’s okay, Bethy. It’s better this way. Remy was right to suggest it,” I told her.
And it was. Better for her. I knew that she was safer not knowing, not having anything to do with the world that I was part of now. But knowing it was the right thing to put distance between myself and my best friend didn’t make it any easier for my selfish heart to handle.
I sensed Alex’s nearness before he announced his presence for Bethany’s sake by rapping lightly on the open bedroom doorframe. I turned to find him leaning against said frame, his immense size filling the entrance, looking as effortlessly, obnoxiously good-looking as always.
And then he smiled at me. I was a goner. Mine. All mine.
“Sorry to intrude, Bethany,” he said, his eyes and smile on me, “but my princess’s emotions were calling to me. I couldn’t stay away.”
Bethany made a retching sound next to me.
“Did you just … knock before entering your own bedroom?” I asked, placing my hand to my chest.
“Not at all, baby.” He straightened and sauntered toward us. “I knocked as I was entering. Our bedroom.”
A bright blush and a goofy, slaphappy grin overtook my face at his words. “Holy Mother, you’re practically housebroken.”
“That sounds awful.” He shuddered and attempted a mock disgusted face, but ultimately couldn’t stop beaming at me as he came to a stop in front of where Bethany and I were sitting on the bed.
“O-kay, then.” Bethany shot up from the bed like it was on fire. “No offense, but I’m saving my first threesome for sophomore year,” she called over her shoulder to us as she headed for the door, “so I’ll just be on my way.”
She turned and s
miled at me from the doorway, before narrowing her eyes at the back of Alex’s head. “Knock her up and you and I will go to blows, Senhor Sexy Pants,” she threatened. “Don’t think for a minute that I’m at all intimidated now by your supernatural … shapeshifting werewolf-warlock … Alpha … whatever status, because—”
“Close the door on your way out and steer clear of the gardens please, Bethany,” Alex said in his Alpha tone of dismissal, never taking his smiling eyes off of me.
The door slammed shut, and we were alone at last.
Moments passed while I gazed up at Alex’s beautiful, happy face.
“Hi.” Smooth.
“Hi,” he echoed with a chuckle. “So”—he cleared his throat—“there’s this rumor going around that you’re hopelessly, madly in love with me, and that you want to spend eternity with me.”
“What?” I squeaked. “Who said that?”
He squinted and scratched the back of his head. “I believe the rumor originated in the banquet hall …”
“Eternity? With you?”
He bit his luscious lower lip and nodded, looking one hundred percent sexy bastard. Annnd I was blushing again.
“Okay, okay,” I conceded with a smile and a dramatic sigh of resignation, “may-be that rumor is partly true.” Swallowing my residual abandonment fears, I wrinkled up my nose and asked, “But can we take that eternity thing one day at a time?”
“We can take it one fucking minute at a time, princess.”
* * *
Maribel was canonized by the majority of the pack for her exceptional brilliance and heroism in defeating Nuriel Salvatella, fixing my flawed blood inheritance, and selflessly finding a way to release her beloved mate from their mating bond so that he might live on—and love on—without her.
Most seemed to overlook the fact that Kai was miserable with the result—beyond devastated by his unprecedented mating bond loss, and mourning the death of Maribel all over again, as well as the death of Lupe.
Even more shocking, everyone somehow dismissed Kaleb’s murder—and the unexplained murders of several other Reinoso soldiers—as mere tragic accidents. It was as if their deaths were attributed to some other mad killing spree wholly unrelated to Saint Maribel.
Naturally, no one lobbied harder for Maribel’s sainthood than Lessa.
For obvious reasons, Alcaeus was loath to embrace Lessa’s popular point of view. Neither was he comforted by Lessa’s rationalization that Maribel had gifted Lupe—or Benedita, as we now knew her given name to be—the one thing that Alcaeus knew Lupe had hoped and prayed for since the day Lupe had first arrived at the Reinoso compound at age sixteen: freedom from an eternity bound to the soul of the “mate” who had murdered her parents.
Even knowing that it was what Lupe had desperately wanted and had agreed to, I couldn’t say that I was comforted by Lessa’s rationalization either.
Nothing and no one seemed capable of comforting Alcaeus after Lupe’s death. Not even Jussara, who had officially committed to remaining with the Reinoso pack—and was fast becoming one of my closest friends in Morumbi.
Four months after Lupe’s passing, Alcaeus announced that he and Kai were going out on their own for a while—with or without Alex’s blessing. Lessa referred to this as “pulling an 1822”—a reference that finally clicked for me once I’d begun studying Brazil’s history and learned that 1822 was the year Brazil declared its independence from Portugal.
Because Alex had never been able to command Alcaeus, Alex was unable to forbid his departure. And as Jussara explained it to me, by taking Kai and a small band of soldiers with him, Alcaeus would be able to stay away from the pack much longer, because he would be traveling with his own “pack.” Jussara said that it didn’t mean Alcaeus was leaving the Reinoso pack for good, just that he was declaring temporary, albeit indefinite, freedom—and letting it be known to all that he would come back when he wanted to, not necessarily when Alex commanded it.
Alex didn’t seem inclined to force either Alcaeus or Kai to remain in Morumbi, given recent events—and the fact that the Salvatella pack was essentially demanding Alcaeus’s head as restitution for the death of Nuriel at Lupe’s hand, along with the other Salvatella soldiers that Alcaeus had killed. Alex and Alcaeus agreed it would be best for the sake of the rest of the pack to draw any potential enemy attacks aimed at Alcaeus away from the compound.
Although I knew I would miss their presence in Morumbi, I whole-heartedly endorsed Alcaeus and Kai’s departure once I learned that aside from distracting enemy fire, they intended to travel abroad and continue Kaleb’s most important mission of hunting the Rogue. In fact, I assured them that I had every intention of hunting rogue werewolves myself, and the fabled Rogue in particular, once I’d learned how to control and wield my new supernatural abilities.
After my near-death—or rather, temporary-death—encounter with Maribel, everyone had pressed me for details about what had transpired in my brief time with the perfect saint who had so generously rescued me from my awful ricochet defect. And while I’d never been a good liar, I was beginning to master the art of omission. Because I told everyone in the Reinoso pack who would listen all about how Maribel’s spirit had stressed to me the importance of destroying the Rogue werewolf above all else. I let them know that she had convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no way we could ever allow such an abomination to live—should it come to pass.
It was true, after all.
However, I told no one—not even Alex—about Maribel’s dire prediction that she might be reincarnated as the Rogue. As Maribel herself had professed, she wouldn’t be herself anymore if she were reincarnated. She wouldn’t remember. She wouldn’t know who she’d been before or what she’d done in a previous lifetime.
But I would.
Maribel had resorted to extraordinary, evil measures for the sake of severing her mate connection to Kai. She’d gone so far as to murder all of the best seers and necromancers—essentially obliterating any chance of anyone recognizing her for who she’d previously been the next lifetime around.
This was what she’d wanted. It would be by her own nefarious design, not mine, when none of her former allies recognized her reincarnated form for its former “perfection” and came to her aid as the Rogue.
My whole life I had been kept in the dark “for the sake of my own good,” allowing Maribel to rob me blind of all I’d held dear before I’d even learned the score. I wasn’t going to be the one in the dark anymore.
Maribel wanted me to end her twice? So be it. This wasn’t about seeking revenge; it was about me delivering justice and doing the right thing.
The Rogue game was on. And I was running the chessboard now.
EPILOGUE
~ Avery ~
They said Bigfoot wasn’t real. Neither was the Boogeyman.
Werewolves. They were supposed to be myth as well.
They weren’t.
I’d watched one claw my beloved fiancé’s chest open in broad daylight. I’d witnessed it murder my best friend and dismember her husband before any of us had time or thought to reach for the rifle that lay just inside our camping tent.
And I’d felt the cruelest burn of defeat I’d ever known deep in my abdomen as the unholy, monstrous animal shuddered and climaxed between my battered thighs while I bled out from the gash its teeth had made in my throat.
A normal person might’ve prayed for death as their body lay broken in the dirt, violated by an unnatural, beastly aberration.
I’d never aspired to be normal.
My life didn’t flash before my eyes as I fought for my final breaths. All I saw was that Rock River AR-15 rifle in my mind’s eye. Even as I felt my heart stopping, my very essence draining, my spirit disconnecting from the pain radiating throughout my damaged being—I wanted that rifle above all else.
My fourth foster mother had often told me I was too stubborn for my own good. She’d thought to beat that stubbornness out of me. She’d failed. I
was the kid who took a blow and came back swinging with both fists. Every single time.
That I couldn’t get back up now was inconceivable. That I’d never exact revenge on that wolfman creature who had just taken from me everything I valued most in life was beyond enraging. The farther I drifted up and away from my body, the more unthinkable it all was.
I was dead?
Fuck me. There was something beyond after all. Because I was dead yet still part of something bigger. It should’ve reassured me.
It didn’t. I wasn’t done swinging. I wanted back inside of my broken body. Already I missed the pain that said I was still alive, the agony that meant I hadn’t stopped fighting.
I wasn’t ready to be this orb of light floating through the ether, farther and farther away from the smell of fresh blood mixed with earth where my body would soon begin its inevitable process of decomposition.
If only I could get back up one last time. If I could wrap my fingers around that rifle …
Other light orbs surrounded me, some unknown, some achingly familiar. Their energy pulled me farther away from where I wanted to be. I felt Marcus next to me, pulling at my soul strings, his gentle spirit telling me not to be afraid to move on.
Marcus was the love of my life. He was everything I’d ever wanted. We could be together for eternity now, safe from the pain and strife that had always followed me.
I’d lived a very full thirty-two years. I’d beaten every single odd that had been stacked against me since birth. I’d proven every self-serving foster parent, hypocritical social worker, and naysayer wrong and made more of myself than any of them had made of their own sorry lives.
And I wasn’t done. I still imagined the sensation of my fists clenching, my body readying for battle. I’d never quit anything before. I didn’t know how.
Marcus was tugging harder now, urging me to surrender to the inevitable and let go … to leave the world of the living behind and be with him in whatever spirit realm lay beyond for us. I sensed my best friend Sloane’s spirit circling and embracing me, reassuring me that everything would be fine.