Beta

by Reine, SM

  “Why don’t you just kill Melchior?” Deirdre asked. “Better yet, if he’s a shifter, why don’t you compel him to kill himself? Just say the word and he’s gone.” She snapped her fingers.

  Stark’s shoulders tightened. He strode down the stairs onto the dance floor.

  He can’t compel Melchior, she realized.

  Just like he couldn’t compel Deirdre.

  Could that mean that they were the same breed?

  She turned to look up at the stairs where Melchior was still standing, up by the third floor. There was no resemblance between them. She didn’t have any scales. But he’d said that he could smell fire in her blood.

  And they’d set a fire just by kissing.

  —XI—

  It was easy to recognize the moment that the lethe left Deirdre’s system.

  She used to come off her highs slowly, over the course of multiple days. Now it was like running face first into Everton Stark’s fist. One moment, her body was still burning with the heat from Melchior’s incendiary kiss. The next moment, she was cold, hungry, and regretful.

  Deeply regretful.

  Deirdre had acted like an idiot in front of the Winter Court.

  Worse, she’d been an idiot in front of Stark.

  Thankfully, he’d banished her to her bedroom—her cell, if she were being honest with herself—once they’d returned from Original Sin, so she hadn’t had an opportunity to look stupid in front of anyone else. She’d only been able to bounce off her walls, literally and metaphorically, waiting for the frenetic energy to fade so that she could sleep.

  The withdrawal hit before she could pass out.

  Its sudden blow was agonizing. Her marrow vibrated. Her heart pounded. Cold sweat washed over her again and again, as though a bitter ocean were lapping at her. “Oh my gods,” she groaned, flopping into bed, burrowing under her pillow.

  It was probably a sign of how sick she felt that she thought her bed still smelled like Gage.

  He hadn’t slept in that room in over a month. There was no way the paper-like sheets and lumpy mattress could have retained the musk of his sweat. Yet Deirdre felt engulfed in his odor.

  It wasn’t comforting. It was a cruel reminder of what she had done.

  She turned on the news in an attempt to distract herself, jacking it up to maximum volume. Deirdre hoped that the noise would drown out all the ugliness in her head.

  It didn’t work.

  Her thoughts swirled with dark images: her would-be assassin, Colin Burgh, ripping the head off of a woman in Montreal; Gage’s fur smoldering in the oven underneath the asylum; Dr. Landsmore’s skull fragments exploding all over January Lazar’s shoes.

  So much violence. So much more pain than any one woman should have been expected to endure.

  It had been easy to ignore it when she had still been high, easy to forget why she was there, easy to forget everything that Stark had done to her.

  She couldn’t forget now.

  Reality was harsh after being high on lethe for so long.

  Deirdre’s door swung open. She knew without needing to see that Everton Stark had entered the room. His presence was as immense as the dragon’s, in a way, and even angrier than usual. He had seemed unusually furious when they left Original Sin. And that said a lot, considering he was usually smoldering with bitter emotion.

  He turned muted the television and set the remote control down.

  “What was that?” Stark asked, biting out the words.

  Deirdre looked at him from under her arm. Her head was throbbing too much to want to lift it further. The sight of the barrel-chested man standing by her dresser made sick anger surge within her.

  She was still wearing Niamh’s costume. It hadn’t occurred to her to change out of it when she’d been pacing her room like the caged animal that she wasn’t. She had brazenly entered a club with all that skin bared earlier, even pressed that skin against a dragon, and she hadn’t minded. Now she was nauseatingly self-conscious of her exposed legs and midriff.

  Deirdre buried her head under the pillow again.

  “You’re going to have to get more specific than that.” Her voice was muffled by the pillow. “Are you talking about the news? Or what happened in Original Sin? Give me a hint.”

  “I gave you rules, Tombs. You don’t argue with me in front of the sidhe.”

  “And I didn’t,” she said.

  “You don’t make me look weak.”

  “I set fire to a club,” Deirdre said. “Whatever statement that makes, it’s not ‘hey, look at me, my Alpha is so weak.’”

  “You don’t touch or kiss the sidhe,” Stark said.

  That was the real sticking point. That was why he was angry.

  Because Deirdre had kissed Melchior.

  “Dragons aren’t sidhe,” she said. It felt stupid to say it. Of course dragons weren’t sidhe; dragons shouldn’t have even existed. She had never even heard of a dragon shifter before.

  The last word was barely out of her mouth when Deirdre found her back flat on the floor. The bed was on top of her.

  Stark had flipped it in a rage, and sent her flying along with it.

  She only had a disorienting moment to realize that she’d been thrown when Stark wrenched the bed off of her and hurled it into the wall. It crashed into concrete.

  Stark’s hands clamped down on her shoulders, dragging Deirdre to her feet.

  The sudden change in orientation made her feel sick. She couldn’t fight back against him. She couldn’t even make herself show signs of submission.

  Her mouth opened, and vomit spilled out.

  Stark jerked back. It was too late to escape, though—Deirdre had already gotten sick all over his flannel shirt. He held her at arm’s length, disgust twisting his mouth. “I knew that last dose was too high.”

  “I hope you brought more.” Deirdre choked on bile and coughed wetly. There hadn’t been much in her system, but the taste of Niamh’s protein shake was worse coming back up than it had been going down. “It feels like I’m dying.”

  “Why in every one of the Nether Worlds should I waste more lethe on the likes of you?”

  Fear spiked through Deirdre’s empty stomach. He wouldn’t leave her like that, would he? “You’re the one who got me started on it in the first place.”

  He propped her against the wall before pulling out another cube of lethe. “You’re lucky I’m merciful.”

  She wrenched it out of his fingers.

  Without thinking, she inserted the lethe through the intake bracelet.

  A single dose wasn’t enough to make her high again. But as soon as it filled her veins, she felt better. The throb of her headache was less desperate. She didn’t feel nauseous anymore.

  Stark ripped his soiled flannel shirt off and hurled it at Deirdre. It struck the floor beside her with a damp slap. She didn’t even flinch. “It’s your fault,” Deirdre rasped, wiping the back of her hand over her mouth. “I wouldn’t have barfed on you if you hadn’t grabbed me like that.”

  “I wouldn’t have grabbed you like that if you had obeyed me!”

  So they were back to that.

  That was the same stupid crap he’d been pulling on her since the day she joined his pack. It was nothing new. It was almost pleasantly normal—the expected behavior after too much unexpected kindness from Stark, or at least, what he considered to be kindness. He’d practically wrapped Dr. Landsmore in a bow for her.

  At least she knew where she stood when he treated her like dirt.

  “Whatever, boss.” She was so tired. Everything hurt. Still, she winced at him, one eye shut against the sliver of daylight coming through her boarded window. “Melchior was going to kill me. I didn’t have a lot of options to distract him. I’d have screwed the guy on the dance floor if it meant preventing him from shooting me with that.”

  She pointed at the triple-barreled revolver sitting on her dresser. It gleamed in the darkness of the room, threatening yet seductive.

  “
I wouldn’t have let Melchior kill you,” Stark said.

  “Really?” It was hard not to feel skeptical when he’d just thrown her out of bed and sent the frame along with her.

  “He took Rhiannon from me. He gets nothing else.”

  Deirdre’s annoyance faded a fraction. She glared at his vomit-drenched shirt at her feet. “I didn’t know about her.”

  “Nobody knows, and that’s the way it needs to stay,” Stark said. “If you tell anyone—”

  “I wouldn’t.” Deirdre could tell when a secret would get her maimed. Just because shifters could heal most injuries didn’t mean Stark couldn’t get creative about permanently disfiguring Deirdre, and he surely would if she flapped her mouth about something so personal.

  But even if he didn’t threaten her with death or worse, Deirdre wouldn’t have used Stark’s tragedy against him.

  She had lost her father in Genesis. Stark knew about that, too.

  It was a strangely intimate thing, knowing one another’s most painful secrets.

  “Is this whole vendetta against Rylie Gresham really because of your wife?” Deirdre asked.

  His hands balled into fists. “I almost found them. Ten years ago, before Genesis, I had tracked Melchior to Ukraine. He had abducted my wife and daughters, and attempted to hide them where he thought I wouldn’t be able to find them. He was wrong. I can find anyone anywhere.”

  She completely believed that. “Why’d he want them?”

  “Dragons want treasure. Not money. Treasure. Melchior was always a dragon at heart, even before Genesis gave him the ability to shapeshift. He didn’t want Rhiannon until I did. To take her from me once we had a family together—it was the greatest treasure a monster like him could steal, and the greatest revenge he could enact upon me.” His shoulders trembled with fury. “Melchior never forgave me for the operation we failed to complete in Bahrain.”

  “When you were in the Marines together,” she prompted.

  He didn’t give her more information than that. He only nodded.

  “And then Genesis happened,” Deirdre said.

  “Genesis happened. Yes.”

  Most of the anger had faded from Stark now. She recognized the grief in his eyes.

  She carried that same grief with her. Many people did.

  Everyone had been hurt by Genesis.

  Stark snapped out of his gloom. He seemed to see Deirdre’s room anew—the gun on the dresser, the bed he’d thrown, Deirdre leaning against the wall feeling too weak to move.

  “I was reborn far from Ukraine, and far from Melchior. I found him again within weeks, but he said that Rhiannon and my daughters hadn’t come back with him.” Stark dragged Deirdre’s bed away from the wall. One of the metal legs had gotten bent when he’d thrown it.

  “Do you believe him?” Deirdre asked.

  “He wouldn’t have been able to resist rubbing Rhiannon in my face if he knew where she was,” Stark said.

  He dropped Deirdre’s bed back into place where it was, popping the metal leg straight again. There was a permanent indentation where it had been bent. Then he dumped the mattress and sheets back onto the frame.

  Deirdre took two wobbling steps toward the bed before tripping over Niamh’s boots. Her ankle twisted. She sat down hard on the edge of the mattress.

  The small hit of lethe had been enough to stave off the worst of the pain, but she still felt like hell.

  “You won’t kiss Melchior again,” Stark said. “I’d consider it an act of disloyalty greater than anything else you could do.”

  She highly doubted that. He still didn’t know about Deirdre’s relationship with Rylie, after all.

  Deirdre massaged her temples. “Come on, wasn’t the kissing thing a little funny? I tried to bite his tongue out.”

  “Provoking Melchior when he could kill you so easily—and when he would relish the opportunity to kill my Beta—is as far from funny as I can imagine.”

  He just didn’t have a sense of humor, obviously. “I’m not going to make out with any dragons in the future, especially Melchior.” At least, not without notifying the fire department first, Deirdre added silently. She lifted three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  He growled. “You were never a scout.”

  “Was too. I became a junior and everything, with the little green vest. Sold a lot of cookies.”

  “You’re a frustrating person, Deirdre Tombs,” Stark said.

  “Why? Got a problem with the scouts?”

  “I have a problem with you. I can’t stay angry at you.”

  That sounded a lot like a compliment. In fact, it almost sounded like he actually liked her.

  First he let her get vengeance against Dr. Landsmore. Then he shared his history with his wife and Melchior with her. Now he was showing signs of actual fondness toward Deirdre.

  She didn’t know what to think about that. Any of it.

  He was evil. She was a traitor. Her job was to stop him, not make friends with him.

  It was easier to just change the subject.

  “Did we get what we wanted last night, at least?” she asked, unzipping Niamh’s boots and peeling them off of her legs. She tossed them to the wall by Stark’s soiled shirt.

  Stark took a cell phone out of his back pocket and pulled up a map. “Yes. The coordinates for the Infernal Blade are centered on an empty patch of forest near Northgate.”

  She took the phone to look at it. He’d centered the map on the coordinates, but there was nothing for miles other than trees, rivers, and trails. “Our legendary sword is buried somewhere in the Appalachians? That’s…random.”

  “Niamh is downloading more detailed GPS photos. We’ll have a better idea of what we’re facing soon.”

  “Dragons,” Deirdre said. “We’re facing dragons.”

  “Dragon, singular. He’s the only one we have to worry about. And obviously he won’t be wherever the Infernal Blade is, or else he surely would have already retrieved it on his own.” Stark gave a low growl. “Thank the gods that he hasn’t.”

  “You can’t compel Melchior, can you?” Deirdre asked. She didn’t really expect him to concede that particular weakness, so she pushed on. “What else is different about a dragon shifter? Is he more like a werewolf or a swanmay?”

  “Neither,” Stark said. “But he isn’t vulnerable to silver. There’s no known way to kill Melchior.” His mouth twisted with disgust. “I’ve tried.”

  The beginnings of excitement drained from Deirdre. She was susceptible to silver. Even if she was immune to Stark’s compulsion, she couldn’t have been a dragon like Melchior. “Oh.”

  Stark slammed a fist into the wall. The sudden noise made Deirdre jump.

  “The Infernal Blade will fix everything,” Stark whispered, eyes bright with anger, fixed intently upon Deirdre. “I’ll be able to kill Melchior. I’ll get revenge against Rylie Gresham for bringing Genesis upon us all. And when I find my wife, I’ll be able to save her.”

  Deirdre stared at him, unable to speak.

  She felt strangely…pitying. Almost sympathetic.

  Almost like she didn’t hate Stark at all anymore.

  A change in the picture on the TV caught Deirdre’s eye over Stark’s shoulder. January Lazar’s report was now showing the inside of St. Griffith’s itself. Deirdre hadn’t expected them to get actual airtime on the news, considering Rylie’s tight hold on the networks.

  Deirdre stood on unsteady legs to grab the remote control and unmute the TV.

  “It’s obvious now that the state-run schools are a nightmare for the children imprisoned there,” January narrated as the camera swept over the shackles, the torture devices, the stained floors. “The only question that remains is what we can do about the abuses of power by the Office of Preternatural Affairs.”

  The video of St. Griffith’s cut back to January at the news desk.

  “Since editing this report, almost thirty of the students from St. Griffith’s Boarding School have been reported missing,
” January said. “The Office of Preternatural Affairs has released a statement claiming that they have nothing to do with the disappearances, but—”

  Stark took the remote control from Deirdre and turned the TV off.

  A slow sense of unease rolled through Deirdre. “What could the OPA have done to those kids? They would say something if they’d sent them to another school, right?”

  “We’re leaving to retrieve the sword soon,” Stark said.

  The fact that he didn’t answer her question told her enough.

  He moved toward the door.

  Deirdre darted into his path, planting her hands on either side of the doorway to bar his exit. He could have easily pushed her aside. He wasn’t much taller than her, but he was at least twice as broad, and far stronger. Yet he stopped an inch away.

  Moving so quickly made her feel nauseous again. But that was probably because of the news report, not because of the withdrawal.

  “Last night, we let a hundred kids loose from St. Griffith’s. After that, you got the coordinates for the Infernal Blade from Jaycee Hardwick. And now I hear that the kids are missing,” Deirdre said.

  “And?” Stark prompted.

  “And the unseelie sidhe are known for abducting werewolves,” Deirdre said. “How many of those gaean students would have been werewolves? It’s a pretty good portion of the population, right? Does about thirty out of a hundred sound right to you?”

  Stark surveyed her with cool dispassion. “Why wouldn’t those thirty children have been at Rylie Gresham’s sanctuary if they were werewolves?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not. The question isn’t rhetorical. Why wouldn’t Rylie Gresham have taken thirty werewolf children as her own?” He didn’t wait for her to come up with an answer. “Those children weren’t allowed to live at the sanctuary. I don’t know why, but they weren’t. The sidhe wanted me to release them.”

  “So that they could be kidnapped by the Winter Court?” Anger and shame chilled her to the core.

  She had thought that Stark was trying to free the children for their sake—because the school had been abusing them. Or maybe she’d thought that he’d freed them for her sake, since he knew it was something that she’d want to do.