by Rhea Watson
It could have lasted a matter of minutes or hours—I had no idea.
But he ate her.
Every last part of that soul passed through his laughing mouth, crunched between his gnarled teeth. When he licked the remnants of her essence from the stone table, I slumped in my chair, exhausted, horrified, weighed down by immeasurable grief.
Because there would be no afterlife for that poor girl. No Heaven. No Hell. Just—nothingness, rotting away inside this monster’s belly until he too met a gruesome end.
And as he flopped back into his seat, his smile beyond wicked, I vowed that there would most certainly be a gruesome end.
One way or another, he would feel her pain.
What I wouldn’t do for my scythe—
“Did you know gods can retire?”
Somehow it didn’t surprise me that he sounded like nothing horrific had just happened. “W-what?”
“I didn’t,” Charon mused, picking at something—soul?—between his teeth, “but Hades did. Went off with his little wife when Lucifer offered to buy him out—take over his domain. Too many souls going to Hell these days, apparently, and he needed the real estate.”
I blinked back at him, still numb with anger, with shock.
“At first, that fallen angel let me stay on, the spoiled prick,” he continued with a sigh. The god wove his hands together and set them on his slightly rounded belly. “I maintained my post—escorted souls and all that. But then he realized I was, well, skimming from our supply.”
“You were eating them,” I clarified tersely. No sense in mincing words anymore, not after what I’d just witnessed. Charon shrugged, unfazed by my tone.
“Yes, and ol’ Satan doesn’t like to share his toys. He banished me from his realm, put a price on my head… I had to go. Had to ward up, as it were.” Charon lurched forward, on his feet so suddenly that I jumped, and his palms slammed onto the table where that poor soul had met her end. “But I’m hungry, Hazel, fucking ravenous. And once you’ve had soul, you can’t just go back to burgers and fries, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I sneered, fighting the quiver behind my words. “You’re despicable. Those people deserve an afterlife—”
“Humans are nothing but sheep,” he bellowed, the landscape around us shuddering, the chandelier swinging. A few of its candles extinguished, and one of the skulls fell and shattered as soon as it hit the table. “They are but livestock for the rest of us!”
A barbed and sudden pain stabbed between my eyes, and I folded over, gritting through the agony as the world around us quaked. It dissipated, but not until everything stopped shaking. Flashes of light danced behind my lids, and with a heavy heart I straightened, forced back into this absurd conversation, and found Charon leering at me.
He enjoyed my suffering.
Got off on it, just like he did with the souls.
Ugh.
“What’s he got to do with it?” I demanded, nodding toward the silent bystander at Charon’s side, to the man riddled with carvings who had haunted me and the pack for weeks. Those terrible yellow eyes narrowed, and Charon floated back down into his chair in a flourish of black robes. His chuckles hissed across my skin and made the candles tremble.
“Who—Richard?” The god shook his head and snorted. “Richard is a warlock. He killed a member of his coven… The gravest sin, eh, boy?”
Through the blood, I caught the clench of Richard’s jaw, and he turned away without a word.
At least he had the decency to appear somewhat ashamed of all this.
“You see, with the bounty still active, I can’t go out there and hunt for myself, and no demon would fetch souls for me,” Charon remarked, sounding bored again as he picked at his nails. “None of them want to get on Lucy’s bad side, so Richard acquires all my meals. He too is a wanted man, and my wards grant him immeasurable protection. Symbiotic parasites, we two.”
“Warlocks can’t go on the celestial plane…” I pressed my lips together, realization hitting like a freight train. “But all the runes on him, the blood magic, gives him access—”
Charon met my deduction with a round of sarcastic slow claps.
“Yes, yes, well done.” His pale forked tongue flicked out, a serpent tasting the air, and he fixed that yellow gaze squarely on me. “I’m afraid despite his prolonged life, bolstered by magic, the work takes a lot out of him. My warlock has an expiry date…” Charon’s mouth warped into a cruel smile. “But reapers don’t.”
29
Declan
What was a reaper without her scythe?
Crouched over the universe’s most powerful weapon, I studied every detail, all of it reminding me of Hazel. From the slight curvature in the yew staff up to the beautiful bow of the blade, the symbols etched into the star-forged metal mysterious and ancient, elusive and lovely.
But without a reaper to use the most dangerous weapon around, what was it? Just a stick with a hook on top?
And what was Hazel without it? Could she defend herself? Before Knox had disappeared to find Alexander, we had all felt it—a pulse of pain in our backs, a sign that our mate was suffering. Through marking her, we had cemented the bond, played right into fate’s hands, and now we were paying for our failure to protect her. Every flicker of agony that we suffered here would have been amplified tenfold for Hazel, and that fucking killed me.
Most recently, a sharpness jolted between my eyes, up the center of my skull. Gunnar had felt it too, prowling around the bloody portal, grimacing through it while I gritted my teeth so hard, I swore they were on the verge of cracking.
Frustration rippled through the pack bond. It had taken us—them—so long to realize that Hazel was perfect. Witty, kind, intelligent—breathtaking beyond measure. My alpha and beta had shared an intense physical attraction to her from that very first moment, same as me, and yet they fought it to the bitter end. Then we had one blissful week together, all of us fucking and eating and laughing and talking, and then…
And then that thing took her away.
My frustration turned ragged, harsh, stabbing through the pack’s shared bond so suddenly that Gunnar stopped his frantic circling of the portal. His eyes settled on me, curious yet understanding, but I continued to stare down at the scythe, jaw clenched, all the muscles involved positively aching. Because Knox had left me in charge of the scythe, arguably the most important thing in Hazel’s world—outside of us, hopefully—and I wasn’t going to let it out of my sight.
Wasn’t going to let some demonic cut-up fuck materialize in front of me and whisk it away somehow or summon it with his own brand of warped magic.
A teeny, tiny part of me also thought that if I stared hard enough, picturing her beauty, those soulful brown eyes, her full mouth, the sharp angles of her cheeks—maybe she would reappear. Maybe the scythe’s power would sense our bond and, I don’t know, fly her back here.
Nothing yet, but I’d keep trying until someone said otherwise.
Because, really, we had nothing else going for us. The portal was dead. Our territory was still warded up, and the only way inside was with a weapon none of us could touch if we wanted to keep our hands. Hazel’s pain shuddered through me, through all of us, like a fading echo—and that was a fucking tease. We could feel her.
But we couldn’t touch her.
Couldn’t help her.
Can’t save her.
I glared up at my forehead like I was glowering at the little voice who dared utter such a depressing thought. We would save her.
Somehow.
Alexander, maybe, would know a way to—
Knox reappeared in the middle of the unlined road suddenly, a reaper at his heels. In the human realm, the day had started, trucks ambling up the street, a few garage doors open. Sunshine warmed the otherwise chilled landscape, golden beams trickling through the celestial plane to stop my breath from fogging in front of me.
Life carried on as it always did—like our world as we knew it hadn’t crumble
d to pieces in a second.
Gunnar ceased his stalking as soon as our alpha appeared, still in his human form, his mouth set and his black eyes furious. Seconds later, two other hellhounds arrived as hounds, the larger one radiating alpha energy, both looking to their master for guidance.
“Fan out,” Alexander ordered, waving halfheartedly around the industrial park. “See if you can find a scent.”
I glanced toward Gunnar, who folded his lean arms and scowled. Surely, they could smell that fuck already—like a rotted corpse, the ground stained with human blood. But the hellhounds did as they were told, burly and muscular, every step powerful.
Reminiscent of my old packs, actually. Typical hellhounds, the sort that wouldn’t fit in with our pack. Three months ago, just the sight of them would have sent me cowering straight to Knox, my sole protector in a lifetime of pain and misery. I would have then hid behind him, waited for the threat to pass. Today, I stayed crouched over Hazel’s scythe, heartbeat elevating just a touch when the unfamiliar alpha sniffed in my direction.
Gunnar had already taken a few steps toward the garage, positioning himself squarely between me and the other hounds. Affection threaded through our bond from my end—until I realized he was probably guarding the scythe, not me.
Because he knew I didn’t need his protection anymore.
“So, you say he took her through this?”
Pretty militant-looking, this reaper, with his blond hair slicked back and up, styled like the Superman guy from that one movie. I had seen plenty of his type over the years, striding through the kennel like he owned the place, peering down his nose at packs through those horrible black bars—no better than the dirt off the soles of his pristine loafers, hellhounds. The reaper who had taken my old pack on long before I found Knox and Gunnar erred more toward Hazel: kind, thoughtful, devoted to the job. It was the pack who had disowned me, not him.
With his fitted black suit and cold blue eyes, Alexander probably wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of me, let alone allowed me to live on his grounds and serve him.
“He trapped her in a cage,” Knox said stiffly, his tone suggesting their interactions so far hadn’t been pleasant. Subdued fury simmered through our bond as he stalked after Alexander. “It was like a ward in nature… Sprang up from the ground and she couldn’t cross through it, couldn’t use her magic. Couldn’t even summon her scythe after it had her.”
Pausing at the outer circle of the portal, Alexander finally glanced to the scythe at my feet. He tipped his head to the side, observing the weapon for a moment, then poked at the bloody sigils with the base of his obnoxious scythe, its staff thick and rigid, its blade jagged. A weapon for war, making Hazel’s seem so soft, so powerfully feminine by contrast.
I much preferred hers.
It didn’t need to boast.
It just did the job when called upon.
When nothing happened after Alexander’s cautious prodding, he nudged at the portal with his foot—just the toe of his shoes, which he then examined with a grimace.
Like he was worried he’d scuffed them, that the blood might stain the leather.
Gunnar exhaled sharply, annoyed.
“Huh,” the reaper muttered. We all waited with bated breath for more, but when Alexander shrugged one shoulder and turned away from the last place we had seen our mate, Knox lost it.
“Huh?” he snarled, his huge hands in fists, looming over an already tall reaper by a few menacing inches. “Is that all you have to say?”
“What would you like me to say?” Alexander positioned his scythe defensively in front of him, his face calm, his tone bored. “From what you’ve told me, a demon bested a reaper today—and that’s her own fault. I mean, she lost her scythe, for fuck’s sake. Am I supposed to pity her?”
Rage pounded through the pack bond, snarls and growls rising from the three of us. Gunnar had started to pace back and forth again, prowling about like he was assessing the best angle to get at Alexander’s throat. Knox, as always, remained a block of unreadable muscle, imposing in every way that counted, his fury detonating like a bomb under the surface.
To his credit, Alexander seemed to realize he’d said something stupid. His little half-smile fell away, his body stiffening, and his hand tightened noticeably around the scythe. He glanced between the three of us, indifferent in the way his eyes swept over me. I might have been crouching, but I shook with raw anger, and if he got near me, I’d rip his fucking face off.
This wasn’t Hazel’s fault.
It was our fault, if anything. We hadn’t protected her—we hadn’t fought hard enough for our mate.
“No matter,” Alexander said with a sniff, readjusting his suit like he had actually done something to rumple it. “I’m sure she’ll figure it out… Or I suppose you’ll be getting a new master soon. It really makes no difference to me.” His bright blue gaze slid over to me, then down to the weapon at my feet. “Perhaps I should take that… for safekeeping.”
Another burst of rage thrummed through the bond as Knox shook his head. “It isn’t yours.”
With a dismissive little chuckle, Alexander stalked toward me, eyes on the prize. “No, but I’m the only one here who can potentially handle it. Can’t just leave it lying around, can we?”
Gunnar was in his face in three long strides, but a jagged scythe to the throat had him begrudgingly moving aside. Our alpha trailed after the reaper, no doubt biding his time, weighing all the possibilities before acting—a classic Knox move, the reason he was better than any alpha out there.
“Insolent bunch, this pack,” Alexander muttered, his upper lip curling as he studied each one of us. “Really… What the fuck has Hazel been doing with you?”
“You can’t have the scythe,” I said firmly, hating the way her name sounded coming out of his mouth. “It’s hers.”
Wearing a patronizing smile, Alexander marched toward me totally unfazed. “Stand aside, hellhound.”
Knox shifted, morphing from fearsome man to snarling hound in an instant, and I followed immediately after. Hackles raised, I stood over the scythe and bared my teeth, my message clear, my fear a distant memory.
But nothing about me seemed to put Alexander off; he kept coming, despite Knox and Gunnar closing in behind him, the sounds of his baying hounds echoing through the plane after they undoubtedly heard our war cries. I snapped my teeth at him, crouched protectively over Hazel’s most prized possession, refusing to yield—
Until he clocked me across the face, using his scythe’s rigid staff to knock me off my feet. The blow fell harder than any I’d suffered before, and I went down with a yelp, toppling head over heels twice before sprawling in a furry heap. A loud whine screeched between my ears, and when I rolled onto my side, the world was just a little off-kilter.
A storm of black charged for Alexander, Knox’s guttural howl making the nearby van windows rattle, and Gunnar blitzed toward the reaper like a missile. Alexander’s two joined the fray, snapping at heels and feet, bullying their way between their master and my packmates. Blinking hard, I struggled to my feet, wishing adrenaline would dull the pain in my temple where the staff had landed.
But I could endure pain. I’d proven that time and time again. Teeth bared, I charged forward and fell in line beside Gunnar, barking and lunging at the other pair of enormous hellhounds.
“Fuck!” Alexander reeled back suddenly, stumbling away from the skirmish and shaking his hand. He hissed, examining the seared red flesh with wide, furious eyes.
Apparently even reapers couldn’t touch a scythe that didn’t belong to them. Triumph pulsed through our bond, and we closed ranks around Hazel’s scythe, the three of us backing over it as Alexander’s pack withdrew, looking to him for further instruction.
The reaper scowled at us, his face pale, his hand stained like a bad sunburn.
“Useless, all of you,” he spat, pointing his scythe at us. “There will be consequences for your disobedience.”
Dry amu
sement trembled through our bond; sure, blame your fuckup on us, you dick.
“And your fucking reaper deserves whatever she gets,” he added, and all the humor died, replaced again by a swift and deadly venom. If we could get him away from his scythe, that prick wouldn’t leave the industrial park with his head.
Knox prowled a few paces toward Alexander, stilling when the reaper lunged forward with his scythe, stabbing it into the space between them. Two feet closer and that blade would have plunged right into Knox’s chest.
“Be seeing you all very soon,” Alexander hissed before vanishing from sight. Thick with tension, the air around us fell silent, deadly, two packs of hellhounds squaring off. We outnumbered them, but they were here on their master’s orders; would they follow through?
The alpha’s red eyes swept over us, his hackles lowering, that great square head of his a near match for Knox. The hound at his side glanced up, his muscular body tensed, waiting. Gunnar and I padded forward, the scythe still within reach, but stopped when the alpha exhaled, his nostrils flaring, the breath long and loud.
And—resigned?
Fuck that guy. I could almost hear it, almost feel it rolling off the hellhound pair in resentful waves. The alpha huffed again, this time at Knox, the sound specific and pointed, then disappeared, his beta following shortly after.
Knox was on me the second they were gone, nosing at my face, snuffling around my ears, searching for an injury. If there was one, it was deep inside. Not a drop of blood hit the ground, and I was ready for more.
“I’m fine,” I insisted after I shifted back, the heat of the change steaming the air around us. I stayed on my knees, letting my alpha continue his inspection until he was satisfied that nothing was broken. The welt on the side of my head stung like nobody’s business, but that would pass.
Gunnar shifted beside me, then crouched and inspected my left while Knox finished off at the right.
“Are you sure, Dec?” he asked, brushing my hair away from the tender skin around my temple. His keen eyes narrowed, both of us coated in a sweaty sheen as he scrutinized whatever Alexander had left there. “That was a solid hit.”
