by S. M. Reine
She rolled onto her back to look at him. He looked as sad as he had before they’d had sex. “I’m a thousand times tougher than I pretend to be,” Deirdre said. “Nothing will break me down. I’m strong enough for the both of us if you let me be.”
“It’s not that easy,” Gage said.
“It could be.”
A shadow crossed his eyes. “You don’t understand.” He was staring past her, eyes glazed, as though seeing something that weren’t there. “Nothing is ever that easy.”
Deirdre realized that it was getting colder outside—no longer warm enough for her to be comfortable.
A chill crept over her bare flesh.
She’d felt that chill too often and too recently to mistake it for a change in the weather.
“Damn,” she whispered.
Deirdre scrambled for her clothes.
Her fear was only confirmed when Gage didn’t react to her movement. He kept staring at the bushes in front of him, even as she stuffed her legs back into her pants and tried to get her bra on again. Her fingers fumbled over the clasp.
Freezing water gushed out of the surrounding plants, splashing over her legs. Deirdre bit back a shriek.
The bushes shriveled and turned black. Vicious purple weeds thrust from the earth, coiling around Gage’s legs, smearing muck across his tanned skin.
“Get up, Gage!”
“I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her. “God, I’m so sorry.”
Bodies shifted in the courtyard behind her.
She needed her gun.
But Deirdre hadn’t gotten her boots back on yet, and the Ruger was still inside of them. She couldn’t even see her shoes. They were hidden under what looked like a foot of chilly sludge now. She plunged her hands into the water, squeezing her eyes shut as she searched for her pistol.
She found it. The Ruger dripped black water down her arms when she pulled it out, and Deirdre resisted the urge to try to wipe it off.
It’s not real. None of it’s real.
The water was climbing rapidly around her knees, slopping around Gage’s face as he remained immobile on the ground. He was going to be gone in seconds. He would vanish under the surface and drown, and Deirdre would never see him again.
She grabbed his arm. Pulled him to his feet.
“What is it?” Gage finally saw her.
“Gutterman,” Deirdre said.
And then the nightmare himself stepped from the bushes.
Everton Stark was right beside him.
Deirdre had the gun aimed at Gutterman in an instant, prepared to shoot. The trees were rotting now, and black bark plopped onto her shoulders, sliding down her bare back, leaving icy trails.
“What the hell is going on?” Deirdre demanded. Her whole body was trembling.
Stark glared at her for so long that she thought he had been overtaken by Gutterman’s thrall, too. But then he said, “Is this who you saw?”
He wasn’t speaking to Deirdre.
“That’s right,” Gutterman said. “That man tipped off Rylie Gresham at the grocery store.”
Deirdre almost dropped the Ruger.
“What?” she asked.
Gage covered his face with both of his hands, drawing in on himself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, over and over again, speaking to an illusion that only he could see.
“Lift the thrall from the man,” Stark said. And then he turned to Deirdre and said, “Put on your shirt.”
Deirdre clenched her jaw and obeyed, tugging it over her head.
She felt slightly less vulnerable once she was fully dressed, but only slightly. It was hard to feel strong when her bare feet were sinking into the mud and her body was turning into an icicle.
Gage shook his head as though clearing it. Once the thrall left him, it only took him a second to take in Deirdre, Gutterman, and Stark and realize how much trouble they were in.
He bristled, a low growl rolling through his chest.
Deirdre stepped in front of him. Trying to shield him from the others. “What are you doing here, Gutterman? I thought Stark killed you.”
The nightmare sneered, lip peeling back to expose yellow teeth and gums and a black, thrashing tongue. “You wish. They might have succeeded at killing me if I hadn’t had information they wanted, and what a shame that would have been.”
She gripped the Ruger in both hands. “Yeah, a big damn shame.”
“Are you sure, Gutterman?” Stark pressed. “Are you absolutely certain that Gage is the mole?”
“That’s right. Soon as he got a chance, he ducked into the office at the grocery store, called Rylie Gresham, and told her everything. I heard him. There’s no mistake.”
“Are you really going to believe some demon over us, Stark?” Deirdre asked. “After everything we’ve done together?”
“You’ve been good. I’ll give you that. But your boyfriend…” Stark shrugged dismissively. “I’m not surprised.” He lifted a folded piece of paper between them. Deirdre recognized the yellow sticky bookmark. “When I searched your bedroom, I found this.”
It was one of the pages that Deirdre had stolen from Stark’s room.
He thought that Gage had stolen it.
Stark advanced on them, cutting through the dripping rot from the trees. He was as vivid and terrifying as anything else in Deirdre’s vision. “The only question remaining is whether you’re a traitor too, Tombs.”
Gage shoved her aside. “No. I’m the only one.”
She whirled on him. “Gage!”
“No,” he said firmly. “I used you to get into Stark’s pack. I’m sorry, Deirdre, but it’s true. I’ve been aligned with Rylie all along.”
Deirdre gaped at him. She understood what he was trying to do—trying to clear her name even while confessing to his own guilt.
But Stark would kill him for it.
“Whose side are you on, Tombs? After everything we’ve done together.” Stark was so calm about it, so dry, almost as though the situation were funny.
Her mind spun with the impossibility of the situation. She’d die if she sided with Gage. More than that, Rylie wouldn’t have anyone left in Stark’s pack to fight against him.
But Gage…
The decision was taken from her.
A scream of rage ripped out of Gage’s throat. His skin rippled as he began to go berserk.
Deirdre took a reflexive step back. “No!”
Stark spun her around and forced her to look at him. “If what he said is true, and you’re only a victim of your boyfriend’s sedition, prove it. Kill Gage.”
“What?” She gaped at him.
“He ruined my attempt to assassinate Rylie Gresham. I want him dead and I want you to kill him. If you don’t do it, I’ll have to believe you’re a traitor and kill you myself. Those are your options.”
Stark wasn’t even attempting to compel her. He was dangling the choice in front of her: Gage’s death by her hand, or his.
“Save yourself the effort,” Gutterman said. He was lurking in the far corner from the shapeshifting bear. He was smiling so broadly that every single one of his jagged teeth gleamed in the night. “Deirdre’s trash. Rip her head off.”
“Get out, demon,” Stark said.
Gutterman didn’t try to argue. He vanished into nothingness.
Just because she could no longer see him didn’t mean that he was gone. His thrall dangled over Deirdre, leaving his fear to suffuse every fiber of her being.
And Gage was writhing on the ground, already twice his size.
She lifted the Ruger halfheartedly.
Deirdre still had silver bullets. The same silver bullets that Rylie had given her.
The weight of a thousand regrets bore down on Deirdre. She wished that she hadn’t allowed Gage to make that phone call in the grocery store. She wished she’d left with Rylie earlier that day. Deirdre even regretted stealing the page and leaving it in her room.
All of it had spiraled down to this single, painful instant.
There were no excuses left.
“Do it,” Stark said, backing away to give them room.
He moved too far to the side. His motion drew Gage’s gaze, and the bear shot across the courtyard to slam into him.
Deirdre tracked Gage with the handgun and watched as Stark easily tossed him aside.
The berserker still wasn’t strong enough to kill Stark. He hadn’t been strong enough when he’d had Rylie’s help, and he definitely wasn’t strong enough on his own.
Gage rolled back onto his feet. His attention was on Deirdre now.
He’d said that he had no idea what he did as a bear anymore. He wasn’t like the other shifters who could keep their humanity throughout the change. When he went berserk, all rational thought vanished, replaced by the mindless rage of his animal.
But it looked like he recognized her.
“Gage,” Deirdre said.
She could still hear him in her mind.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
He jerked into motion again.
Gage pounded toward her, mouth open in a roar. There was no man left in him. No conscience to tell him that he was trying to kill the woman he’d just had sex with—someone that he considered a friend.
He was going to kill her, and once he realized what he’d done, he’d kill himself too.
Deirdre aimed the gun at his head. Shut her eyes.
And she squeezed the trigger.
The first bullet struck true, burying deep into his throat, but it wasn’t enough to take him down.
He slammed into Deirdre, crushing her to the wall. He bit down on her free arm. Immense pressure wrenched at her shoulder. He was going to rip it off.
“I’m sorry,” she groaned, pressing the Ruger to his skull.
She fired again and again.
Deirdre kept shooting until her magazine was empty.
Only then did Gage fall.
It seemed appropriate that it should start raining again when Gage died. It was cold on Deirdre’s skin, colder than the tears that tracked her cheeks, and the chill settled deep into her bones.
She didn’t know if it was actually raining or another of Gutterman’s illusions. She didn’t care anymore.
Gage was dead.
Deirdre kneeled beside his body, a hand resting over his furry, unmoving breast. There was no heartbeat, and without that, he wouldn’t shift back to his human form.
There would be no recognizable body to return to Rylie and the pack. They would have to mourn the animal that Gage had spent his entire life hating.
His fur was sticky with blood tinged silver. Silver rounds were soft—all the better for breaking apart in the shifter’s body. That was part of what made them so dangerous. It was hard to dig out all the fragments when much of it dissolved into the system. Deirdre wouldn’t be able to pull all of the bullets out of Gage’s flesh.
It was crazy to even think about doing it. Gage was dead. The silver wouldn’t hurt him now.
But she wanted him to hurt. If he were in pain, he’d be alive.
Had that been consciousness glinting in his eyes when he attacked her? Had he deliberately barreled toward Deirdre, knowing exactly what he was doing as he bit down on her with the full force of his jaws?
Had he forced her to kill him?
Deirdre heard Stark moving behind her. She knew it was Stark, but she didn’t turn to look at him. Let him break her neck or rip her apart or shoot her or—she didn’t care.
“You killed him,” Stark said.
Her grief twisted into rage, immediate and hot. She ripped handfuls of his fur from his pelt. The fur stuck to her bloodied fingers and palms.
Deirdre wasn’t going to succumb to Stark the way Gage had succumbed.
“He was a traitor. He lied to me,” she said in a low, hoarse voice. She couldn’t work up very much fervor. She didn’t need to anyway.
Her actions spoke for themselves.
The hands that lifted Deirdre from the ground were strangely gentle. Stark looked grim, but satisfied. “It’s better that he’s dead. Now there’s nothing between you and what comes next.”
“And what is that?” Deirdre asked dully, holstering her gun.
“Deirdre Tombs, you’re going to be my new Beta.”
War of the Alphas Book 2
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