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Fiona

I don’t care what Henry says. I am doing this. I am avenging my family. My mother, father, and brother. All of them have fallen in the attempt to lead this pack. And what has the pack ever done for us? Besides continue to provide wealth and all its trappings and treat us like wolf royalty and create a mystery around our lineage that it doesn’t really deserve and generally worship us like tragic gods…

“Take the collar off me,” I tell him.

“Fiona, I…”

“Take it off me,” I repeat calmly. “Now. I need my wolf form. Hiding me away won’t work. You’re leaving me like a sitting duck for these people. They don’t even have to silver me themselves because you’ve done it for them.”

He pauses, and I think he’s going to give me another one of his indulgent puppy reasons as to why I can’t be trusted with my own fucking animal.

He surprises me when he lets his breath out in a long, slow exhale. “You’re right,” he says. “But one thing is different this time, alright?”

“What’s that?”

“This time,” he says. “We hunt together.”

I look at him with some suspicion. What if he’s trying to trick me? I don’t want to be taken back to some semblance of safety that never existed. I don’t want to be appeased by him in some fake fucking pretend hunt that won’t finish with the blood of my enemies. I want to end what has to be ended.

“I am going to take their lives,” I tell him. “And you will not stop me.”

“No,” he says. “I will not. I will aid you.”

For the first time since this whole thing began, I feel a true glimmer of hope. It comes to me in this darkest hour wearing the skin of a mate who might finally understand that the most feminine part of me is not my soft submission, it is my murderous rage.

Henry looks at me with what I almost dare believe is real understanding.

“I know it doesn’t feel safe right now,” he says.

“Right. As demonstrated by my brother’s dying body being deposited outside the safehouse.”

“They obviously have their resources as well. It’s easier to be evil than it is to be good. People attempting to be good follow rules and try to minimize damage, but those who care for nothing but chaos have free rein to do as they please. So yes, we’ve been caught on the back foot twice now, but Rick is alive, and so are you, and these men who have spent decades engineering your downfall while trying to retain control of the blood that flows in your veins are about to meet their ends.”

I nod. I like what he is saying. I really thought he’d try to talk me out of it. Thank god he seems to be in agreement.

“The one thing I don’t get,” I say. “Why didn’t they just try to mate me themselves?”

“They did. Christian. His father is part of the cabal. That was considered a good bloodline. He was supposed to give you pups, but he wasn’t interested.”

“No. He really wasn’t,” I snort. It’s easier to look at that painful part of my past now with some detachment. I used to feel Christian’s disinterest in mating me as some kind of failure on my part. Now I see I was never what or who he was made for. He was part of the same plan that I was. Some old men trying to use us like puppets to breed a new generation of sanctioned shifters.

“So they got rid of him and then they tried to get Rick to give you to the next best choice. But Rick fell for our plan to get you sent to Russia…”

“Wait. It was your plan to send me to fucking Russia?”

“Russia doesn’t exist. Well, Russia does,” he corrects himself. “But where you were supposed to go doesn’t. I knew they’d be sending you off somewhere.”

I frown, confused at this fucking timeline.

“But we weren’t even together then. Why would you care?”

“I care because for better or worse, the Swale family matters. Rick matters. You matter. I knew you were being traded around and I didn’t want that for you. So yes, I had a plan for you before we knew we were meant to be mates.”

I don’t know how to feel about that. I’ve been a pawn for a long time, and in some sense, I’m a pawn in Henry’s game too. It’s just that he’s ended up being my Fated Mate. God, I still hate the phrase even though I’ve come to accept it.

Henry is still talking, explaining how it all worked.