Beta

by Reine, SM

  She stepped up to the edge of the cliff. When she moved, the hard edge of the sword scraped lightly against her back.

  Deirdre gazed at the werewolf sanctuary far below. Somewhere down there, Rylie Gresham was living her life, making decisions that influenced all gaeans, letting other people die while she relaxed with her family in paradise.

  “Your ride’s ready.”

  Deirdre turned to see Trevin, the sidhe guard, waiting for her near the trail.

  Her heart leaped. She swallowed hard. “Where am I going?”

  “Up to you,” Trevin said. “But Rylie’s said that it’s time for you to leave now, with her apologies.”

  “Because I left my cottage without permission?”

  He shrugged. “You get it, don’t you?”

  “I get it,” Deirdre said. “It’s crap, but I get it.”

  “Rylie did say that she’s sorry.”

  Even when Rylie was “punishing” Deirdre, she was kind about it.

  “I want to go back to Montreal,” Deirdre said. “Collect some of my stuff. And then I’ll go into hiding on my own.” She felt her lips moving, heard the words coming out of her, but she was too numb to register any of them.

  “You’re the boss.” Trevin gestured to the trail, stepping back so that she could walk ahead of him. She knew where the airstrip was. He didn’t need to lead the way.

  The air vibrated when Deirdre walked too close to Trevin. He exuded the smell of wildflowers. Even when he wasn’t casting a spell, he was drenched with seelie magic.

  Deirdre was fairly certain that even one of the sidhe wouldn’t stand a chance against the Ethereal Blade. If she wanted to, and if she was fast enough, she could kill Trevin. She could return to the sanctuary and force Rylie to give her answers.

  It would be a bloodbath.

  That thought kept Deirdre’s arms relaxed at her sides. She didn’t reach for the sword.

  She didn’t want to start a fight that could only have a very ugly finish.

  Trevin followed her up the trail. His feet didn’t make a sound on the dirt, but she could hear the faintest hum from where he stood behind her, as though quiet music were constantly playing around him. The hum made Deirdre think of people dancing around a maypole, the laughter of children, smiles and celebration—the warm, joyous opposite to the much colder unseelie of the Winter Court.

  He was standing at her back, so he must have been able to see the sword. At the very least, he had to realize Deirdre was walking stiffly.

  But Trevin didn’t say anything.

  The private jet was waiting at the airstrip, and he walked Deirdre up to the stairs.

  “Montreal,” he called up to the pilot standing in the doorway. Then he turned to Deirdre. “Here are the rest of the possessions the OPA confiscated when arresting you. Rylie wanted to make sure you noticed that your silver ammunition is still in the Ruger, so be careful.”

  Deirdre took the bundle from him gingerly. She would be very cautious with her guns until she could inspect them herself.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “There are a couple of werewolves on the plane who will make sure you get home safely. I’m staying with Rylie, so this is goodbye.”

  Deirdre wasn’t at all sad. “Goodbye.”

  “Safe flight, Deirdre.”

  “Thanks, Trevin,” she said.

  The fact that she managed to smile made her feel sick.

  She got on the airplane. The tan leather seats were familiar now, as were the tinted windows, the bar, the short carpet. The werewolves seated near the front smiled in greeting at the sight of Deirdre, then resumed their conversation in low voices.

  She sat stiffly in one of the chairs closest to the door. The sword pressed into her spine.

  The flight attendant approached. Deirdre tensed, hands clenching into fists on her lap.

  “Can I get you something to eat or drink?” the flight attendant asked.

  Hunger gnawed at Deirdre’s stomach. Had she eaten anything since leaving the asylum? She couldn’t even remember. Food had seemed so unimportant at the time. But now the idea of eating made her nauseous. “Just water. Thanks.”

  “I’ll fetch that for you. In the meantime, get buckled, please. We’ll be in the air very soon.”

  Deirdre buckled.

  The sunlight and fresh air cut off as the door closed.

  She was tense as the airplane taxied. Deirdre expected the werewolves to rip her apart for stealing the sword at any moment.

  The engines roared, the wheels lifted off the tarmac, and they were soon in the air.

  —XVI—

  For a half an hour, it seemed like the flight was going to be uneventful.

  Deirdre sipped from a water bottle and watched the clouds drift past. Turbulence made the small plane jitter, and glass clinked within the flight attendant’s station. But it was all normal. Quiet. The werewolf guards didn’t even try to talk to her.

  Then the airplane began to descend.

  The werewolves exchanged looks. “Alicia?” asked the male.

  He must have been speaking to the flight attendant because she emerged from her station and glanced out the window. “We’re nowhere near Quebec. I’ll see what’s going on.”

  She rapped her knuckles on the door to the cockpit, then tried to open the handle. It was locked.

  Alicia knocked louder. “Captain?”

  Prickles spread over Deirdre’s flesh.

  They must have realized she’d taken the Ethereal Blade. Now the OPA would be en route to arrest her, and this time, Rylie surely wouldn’t have Deirdre released from custody. She would really be taken away forever.

  Except that Deirdre still had a weapon that could kill anything.

  She rolled her shoulders and shifted her hips, contracting her belly so that the makeshift strap holding the sword against her back loosened. It shifted against her spine. The hilt tipped an inch to the right, where it would be easier for her to grab.

  There was no way Deirdre would let the OPA take her this time.

  Now the two werewolf guards had gotten up to try to open the cockpit door. They shook it and pounded their fists against it and tried to force the handle open.

  The lever broke off in Alicia’s hand.

  “Oh no,” she said, showing it to the guards.

  They were descending faster now. They’d dropped below the clouds, and Deirdre’s head felt thick at the sudden change in altitude. She swallowed. Her ears wouldn’t pop. They were moving too quickly.

  Fields swelled underneath them—vast farmland with no city in sight.

  They weren’t heading for an airport.

  Deirdre got out of her seat.

  “We’d better buckle up in our seats,” Alicia said, glancing nervously at the seatbelt sign. It hadn’t illuminated. That switch was in the cockpit with the captain.

  Deirdre forced a laugh. “What’s the point? We can heal anything.”

  “It’s policy,” Alicia said.

  But Deirdre didn’t move. If the werewolf guards attacked her, the seatbelt would slow her reaction time by a second or two—enough time to make the difference between life and death.

  “I’ll stay right here. Thanks.” Deirdre kept a hand braced on the bulkhead just above the window, watching as the plane banked, tipping toward an empty highway.

  They were going to land on the road.

  The whole plane shuddered with turbulence. It was hard enough to make her reconsider the seatbelt. The werewolves both sat down.

  The floor bucked under Deirdre. Her stomach rose into her throat, acid bile stinging the back of her tongue.

  She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  The road was so close. It was getting bigger—and fast.

  Alicia clicked her seatbelt just in time for the wheels to connect with the pavement.

  It wasn’t an easy landing. They bounced twice, and the jerk threw Deirdre to her knees on the carpet. Her palms planted on the outer ring of Rylie’s political
seal.

  The brakes roared. The fist of the G-forces pressed against Deirdre.

  For a panicked instant, she was convinced the plane would flip. Even shifters probably wouldn’t survive that—and it would hurt if they did.

  But then everything stopped.

  The engines went silent. There was no noise in the cabin except for the hiss of the air blowing through the vents.

  “There better be a damn good reason for this,” the male guard said. He unbuckled and shoved out of his seat, striding toward the cockpit door.

  As Deirdre got to her knees, he raised his fist to knock again.

  The door swung open before he could.

  The jet’s captain stepped out, lifted a small sidearm, and shot the werewolf in the heart.

  Alicia screamed. The captain aimed at her and fired again. Then he shot the second werewolf guard, too. The foul tang of silver filled the air as both bodies dropped to the floor.

  He was armed with a small-caliber gun no bigger than Deirdre’s Ruger, but he didn’t need much stopping power when he had silver and good aim.

  The pilot’s aim was very good.

  Deirdre hid behind one of the seats, jerking the Ethereal Blade out of her makeshift scabbard. The sheath caught on her shirt, so the naked blade came free in her hand. She felt the faintest brush of its cutting edge on her scapula.

  “Drop the gun!” she shouted to the captain, clutching the Ethereal Blade’s hilt in both hands.

  Another gunshot.

  She cried out, expecting to feel the bullet punching through the seat to kill her.

  But the pilot hadn’t shot her.

  A fourth body thudded to the floor of the airplane.

  Deirdre peered around the edge of the seat to see the captain sprawled on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood, the gun inches from his hand. His eyes were blank, pupils dilated, chest sinking as one final breath left his body.

  He’d shot the other three shifters and then committed suicide.

  Something heavy banged into the other side of the airplane’s exterior door—a door where nobody had any right to be.

  The door wrenched away from the bulkhead, exposing cornfields and blue sky beyond.

  And Everton Stark swung into the airplane.

  “Tombs,” he said. His eyes focused on the sword. “Tombs.”

  Deirdre was furious to see him. She was furious, and frustrated, and miserable, and yet somehow…relieved.

  The grateful warmth that unfolded inside of her was sickly and foreign. She was actually happy to see him—this man who had allowed her to avenge all of her youthful grudges upon Dr. Landsmore and liberate the students at St. Griffith’s.

  “Stark,” she said faintly.

  He crossed the airplane in two steps, seized her by the shirt, and kissed her hard.

  Deirdre’s eyes went wide. She stared at Stark from half an inch away, too stunned to know how to react.

  His lips were dry. His beard itched against her chin. He tasted of blood and wilderness and the monsters that haunted the darkest nights of the new moon. It was fierce and angry and desperate, as though he hadn’t been certain he would see her again, and Stark blamed her for every moment of fear.

  What the hell?

  She tried to pull back, but Stark’s hands seized her wrists. His fingers dug into the tender skin on her inner arm, squeezing so tightly that her muscles spasmed and she almost had to release the sword. The blade shivered beside them, severing the tension with its razor-sharp blade.

  He was distracted. Really distracted. Deirdre could have plunged the sword into his heart and he never would have been able to react in time.

  But she didn’t.

  If she was going to be honest with herself, she didn’t even want to.

  He had given her so much. She owed him everything.

  Maybe she even owed him this.

  Deirdre let the Ethereal Blade fall to her side. His hands slid up her shoulders, nearly crushing her bones with the force of it.

  And then Stark shoved her away and delivered a swift right hook to her jaw.

  Deirdre slammed into the bulkhead. She almost dropped the Ethereal Blade—almost. But instinct kept her hanging onto it.

  She gaped at him.

  Hatred filled Stark’s eyes. Hatred and disgust.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he repeated. “And never touch me again.”

  The first night that Deirdre spent with Gage, he had wrapped his arms around her as she cried in her sleep. It hadn’t been a conscious choice. He hadn’t even been awake. That was just the kind of person Gage had been.

  Even trapped in the darkest pits of depression, he had reached out to her to offer comfort.

  Deirdre would have loved a chance to know Gage better. She wished that they had gotten more than one lousy night of passion together. She wanted to know more about the boy who had come from a family of berserkers, yet had grown to become a man with such empathy. He had been a beautiful, aching soul.

  But that wasn’t ever going to happen.

  He was gone.

  And now Deirdre was being dragged through cornfields by the wrist by a very different man who showed no sign of similar empathy. It felt like Stark’s hand was going to rip her arm right out of the socket. After the way that he’d looked at her, he was probably considering it.

  “Faster, Tombs!” Stark shouted.

  Black helicopters buzzed overhead, so low that the wind from their rotors shook the crops like a hurricane. They were OPA vehicles coming to find out why Rylie Gresham’s private jet had made an unscheduled landing.

  What was Rylie going to think when they found those bodies in the airplane?

  The sword was heavy in Deirdre’s free hand. So much heavier than when she’d pulled it from the table in the memorial.

  Rylie would be able to come to no conclusion other than the truth: Deirdre had truly defected.

  What was I thinking?

  “Faster!”

  Stark urged Deirdre on, and she ran as fast as she could, struggling to keep up with his preternatural speed. They blazed a path through the cornfields as searchlights began sweeping over the farm behind them.

  Deirdre darted across a dirt road. Engines roared somewhere in the distance as SUVs approached.

  She plunged into the next field with Stark.

  It was impossible to tell how long they were running. The world didn’t extend beyond Deirdre’s pounding heart, her heaving lungs, the beat of her feet against dirt, the slap of jagged leaves against her face. She glimpsed Stark in flashes through the stalks.

  He ran faster than Deirdre had ever thought possible, and she ran with him.

  At some point, the sound of helicopters faded. But they kept running long after the last of the engine growls faded. They ran and ran until they suddenly weren’t running anymore, and Stark was throwing open the storm cellar on a farmhouse, shoving her inside, and leaping in after her.

  He slammed the doors shut and shoved a broom through the handles.

  Deirdre stumbled down the stairs, staring around at the storm cellar. It was dusty and empty aside from a single table and the shelves of dusty canned goods along the walls.

  “What are we—?” she began.

  He cut her off with a gesture.

  Stark remained on the stairs, eyes turned to the ceiling, as though listening.

  Deirdre didn’t hear anything.

  That must have been the goal, because he finally came down the stairs to join her, extending a hand. “Give that sword to me,” Stark said.

  Deirdre lifted the Ethereal Blade between them, bicep trembling at the weight. She was hot all over. Hot and tired and filled with fear.

  This was it. This was her chance to kill Stark.

  Her lips still hurt from how hard he had kissed her.

  “Give it to me,” he said again. There was still no hint of compulsion in his voice.

  Deirdre turned the sword around and offered it to Stark hilt-first.


  He took it from her, and as soon as the white stone left her fingers, all her strength vanished. She was trembling. It felt like Deirdre was telling Rylie that she was going to leave their cause and join Stark’s for real—because she kind of had.

  Double agent. Liar. Betrayer.

  Omega.

  “The Ethereal Blade,” Stark said. “It’s real.”

  Deirdre sank into the chair beside the table, resting her forehead on her hands. “I’m as shocked as you are.”

  He didn’t look shocked, though. He looked fiercely triumphant. It was a look that should have scared Deirdre, but she couldn’t find the strength for it now that they had finally stopped running. “Where did you get this?” Stark asked. “How did you go from arrested by the OPA to possessing the Ethereal Blade?”

  Deirdre hadn’t made up a story to tell Stark about her time at the sanctuary. She hadn’t expected to see him so soon.

  She didn’t dare hesitate to answer his question, though.

  Kiss or not, he would surely kill her if she confessed to her alliance with Rylie Gresham. In fact, the kiss might mean he would kill her even faster.

  “They detained me at the sanctuary for questioning,” Deirdre said. “I escaped from the room where they were keeping me, and I found that sword while I was trying to get out of the sanctuary.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And they didn’t take it from you when you were arrested again?”

  “They didn’t even search me.” She swallowed hard. “They must have decided I was too risky to keep at the sanctuary, so as soon as they found me, they shoved me into that plane. They probably haven’t realized the sword is gone yet.”

  “That sounds ridiculous,” Stark said.

  He was right. It was ridiculous. But Deirdre gave him a level look, trying not to betray the lie with her expression. “I’ve got the sword and all of them are dead, so I don’t know what other proof you want. How did you know where to find me? And how’d you get to the pilot?”

  Stark set the Ethereal Blade on the table. It glimmered in the sunlight that radiated through the cracks in the storm cellar door. “There’s a radio in the farmhouse here that communicates with planes. It helps them coordinate with crop dusters. I used it to compel the pilot that was flying you.”