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She was pushing me back on the bed, muttering about all the blood and telling Bunny he needed to wait until we’d rested up.
Wait for what?
But she was already burrowing beneath my shirt and scent marking me again and the question died in my mind.
I swallowed, holding her close with one hand, the other trailing up to my neck. I fingered the bump, touch sticky with the blood from the wound I’d made cutting away the muzzle.
The ticking timer on my death clock.
One handed, and where she couldn’t see, I fought with a blood smeared phone screen to send the text I didn’t want to.
Me: When did you last reset it?
I didn’t expect a response right away—or at all—but one came, anyway.
Knox: five days.
I stared at that. Something caught in my throat.
Twodays left?
But if that was all I had, I wouldn’t let him take her from me. He couldn’t. His leverage was gone.
I had two days left to live, and I was going to spend them with her.
Deep breath.
I had to pull it together.
For her.
“It’s gonna be fine, you know?” she said, glancing up and giving me a crooked half smile. “I’ll talk to him.”
There was nothing to talk about.
She just didn’t know that yet.
“He’s gonna come around,” she whispered, soft palms running up and down my abdomen, making my eyelids heavy as the swamp of fatigue crept in. “And we’re all gonna be a pack.”
I shut my eyes, letting her breaths calm the feral edges that had almost devoured me entirely.
Knox had been right about one thing.
She didn’t know who I was.
What I was.
And I’d just proven to Knox that, without the shadow of a doubt, I hadn’t changed at all. The kind of Alpha that, when offered power, had held it over another—when offered a claim I had no right to, had taken it, anyway.
Last time, itshouldhave meant my death.
This time, it would.
FORTY-ONE
KNOX
The jittery click of the lighter sounded as the flame flickered to life before my eyes.
