And this is why Jadick didn’t tell me.

  He marches over to where my mother stands and yanks the blade free from its sleeve. Then he walks back to where Kari waits beside Marilyn. He leans in, and before any of us know what’s coming, he slits Kari’s throat wide open.

  Marilyn screams.

  Jadick grunts.

  Kari’s wolf falls limp in his arms.

  Blood pours from her wound. Angry, thick, red-black blood that doesn’t just leak from her opened body; it coats her instantly.

  Jadick steps back, letting Kari fall unceremoniously to the ground.

  Marilyn reaches for her, but my mother is already there, yanking her back.

  Fury and shock root me where I stand.

  “I am your alpha now,” Jadick announces to the crowd. “And like my father, I will rule with strength and power. An eye for an eye—that is the Black Moon way.”

  Her throat for his. That’s what he means.

  The crowd understands.

  They go wild for it.

  The alpha bond—which I never felt for Kari—washes over me. It’s not so much a bond as a leash. A way for him to bend us if he chooses. And the crowd seems drunk with it now. As I watch them all cheer his victory, my stomach rolls with the sick realization Kari was right. I’ve allied myself with the devil. It can’t be helped, though. All the angels are gone.

  CHAPTER 19

  I don’t know when the Jades arrive or where they were hiding during the carnage. It’s like, one second we’re alone with the frenzied pack while Jadick performs his hostile takeover, and the next, Jade security is everywhere. Lorenz leads a team of at least thirty, and they waste no time surrounding the crowd then driving them back. I listen as he gives orders for people to return to their homes, their businesses, their lives.

  “Your new alpha will make a statement once things are put in order at the alpha house,” he assures people.

  I watch as they obey him, struck by how strange it is to imagine returning to normalcy. How easily they walk off and do exactly that.

  I have nothing normal to return to. Not ever.

  My gaze lands on Kari, who lies bleeding on the pavement. Alone.

  Nearby, Marilyn has been pulled to her feet. She isn’t restrained, but it’s clear she’s not free either. My mother escorts her toward the house where Jadick has already headed as well. Gregario walks at his side, head bent as he listens to his master. Burnett is lining the old guard up by the door, including Guy and Lenny, making them kneel, ready to pledge loyalty and submission to their new alpha.

  The space on my right is wide open. Across the yard, nothing but trees. For a second, I feel the urge to flee into them.

  No one’s watching me.

  In the chaos, I’ve been forgotten.

  But somewhere in that house is Levi. He’s all that matters now.

  “You okay?”

  I startle at the sound of Frankie’s voice and then look up as she grips my shoulders, shaking me loose of my harried thoughts.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Just… what the hell.”

  “Get inside,” she says grimly.

  “Is Tripp—”

  “He’s fine. You need to get inside before Jadick forgets to uphold his end of your deal,” she says pointedly.

  Nodding, I start for the door, but when I reach Kari, my feet won’t go any farther. She looks up at me, her eyes glassy. She’s weak with blood loss.

  We don’t speak.

  I try to find words for what I feel, but there are none.

  “Mac.”

  Jadick calls my name, and I let that be distraction enough to move me. Kari watches me go. I feel her hot gaze burning holes in my back as I leave her behind and take my place beside her brother.

  My face feels strange. Tingly almost. It takes me a moment to realize I’m fighting the urge to cry. Kari was someone I moved heaven and Earth to save once. Now, I’ve left her to die, and even though she might deserve it, I hate that I’m doing it.

  I hate her.

  Mostly, I hate myself.

  Lenny and Guy don’t say a word to me as I pass them on the front steps. If Levi weren’t such a priority, I’d make time to stop and request their heads on a platter. But that will have to wait.

  When I reach Jadick, my shoulders are stiff, but my eyes are dry.

  “Where’s Levi?” I ask.

  “We’re waiting on the house to be cleared, and then we’ll go have a look,” he says.

  I shove past him and through the open front door.

  “Mac,” Jadick calls sharply behind me.

  “I’m done waiting,” I tell him.

  The house is cool, raising goose bumps on my skin as I stride past the hollow foyer. Kari has removed every single piece of décor that once stood here. The marble statues, sculptures of Clemons’ in their wolf forms. But she apparently hasn’t made time to redecorate, so now, only blank walls and smooth granite floors remain. My footsteps echo as I march through it all.

  My instincts lead me right back to the room where they brought us before. It’s a glorified medical wing with single occupancy rooms furnished with hospital beds and all the machinery to monitor a patient you’ve drugged into unconsciousness.

  At least, that’s how they looked when I was here last.

  I find the room they stuck me in the last time and shove the door open.

  Empty.

  Across the hall, Levi’s old room is empty too.

  My heart pounds.

  I continue down the hall, pushing doors open and peering inside.

  Dark, empty spaces are all I find.

  At the end of the hall, I push through a door I’ve never used before. This area has always been restricted even when I used to visit Kari as a kid. Down the stairs I go, faster and faster. Part of me wants to slow down, to prolong the torture of discovering they’ve actually put Levi down here.

  It’s a dungeon.

  There’s no other word for it.

  Kari told me stories, but I always thought she exaggerated out of hatred for her father.

  Now, I see she wasn’t doing it justice at all.

  Bare cement walls surround me. Roughened cinderblocks coated in grime and spider webs. There’s no outer door sealing the cells. It’s unnecessary, I realize, because the prisoners will never be strong enough to escape anyway.

  Manacles are mounted to cell walls. Rusted iron with decades’ worth of blood and sweat and grime caked on that no one ever bothered to clean. Why would they? This place isn’t intended for health and comfort.

  One by one, I pass the empty row of cells.

  The last one is occupied, and if I didn’t know he was here, I might not recognize him. Bloodshot eyes are barely visible around his swollen lids. His hair and body is covered in dried blood, dirt, and whatever else this place has coated him in. I nearly gag at the stench of sweat and feces permeating the air and step closer, my gaze roaming over him.

  His leg is sliced open in a dozen places. Nothing too deep. Just enough to bleed him. His chest is worse, though. The cuts aren’t clean. They are jagged, open wounds that ooze yellow.

  Worse, they look days old. Which means he isn’t healing.

  What I smell is sickness. And whatever chemical they’ve given to mute his healing.

  “Levi,” I breathe, my hands gripping the cold iron bars.

  He looks back at me, haunted and hollow.

  “You can’t fool me again,” he says flatly.

  My heart breaks as I realize he thinks I’m an illusion. Kari used me against him. Another reason she let me leave in the first place. Rage makes me tremble as I think of all she’s done to him here.

  I hope she bleeds out on the front lawn.

  I hope she’s already dead.

  “Levi, it’s really me,” I say, voice cracking.

  He turns away, staring blankly at the wall instead of at me.

  I want to scream. Instead, I fumble with the lock. My strength is nowhere near recovered enough to break through it. Looking around wildly for some kind of key, I see only cinderblocks stained in blood. My vision blurs with it.

  I choke back a sob, my helplessness threatening to suffocate me now.

  To get this far only to come up short—it’s maddening.

  “Here, let me.”

  Hands reach past me for the lock. Jadick steps in to help me do the thing I know he must loathe. I don’t look at him, though. I look at the deadbolt. A key slides into the mechanism and twists. The click of the lock springing free sends a jolt through me. My body wakes up. My brain shuts down.

  Shoving Jadick aside, I fling the door open and rush inside, dropping beside Levi as if we’re racing against time. We are. We always have been.

  “Levi,” I say, tears streaming down my cheeks.

  He looks at me, still unsure.

  I press my hand to his bruised cheek.

  “You’re real?” he asks in childlike wonder. The hope is unmistakable in his haunted brown eyes, and I snatch it, holding onto the feeling for us both.

  “I’m real,” I breathe, and to prove it, I press my lips to his.

  He makes a sound against my mouth. A groan and a gasp twisted together into startled clarity. In an instant, I’m snatched away. Hauled to my feet and then shoved against the bars.

  Jadick leans in, his face inches from my own. “You don’t kiss him anymore, Mac. Or did you forget?”

  “Let her go,” Levi roars.

  Except the roar is more of a plea.

  It breaks me. Or it would if I weren’t already broken.

  “Get your hands off me,” I nearly spit at him. “We had a deal.”

  “The deal is to free him,” Jadick says. “Nothing more. Or did you forget that too?”

  My stomach roils, and it’s tempting to vomit all over Jadick’s pretty shoes. But that wouldn’t help my case. Kicking his ass wouldn’t help either, and unfortunately for me, that’s not an option anyway.

  Footsteps interrupt us. Gregario and Lorenz appear.

  “Get him upstairs,” Jadick tells them. “Clean him up.”

  They file into the cell, and I immediately struggle against Jadick’s hold. But his hands are strong, and they don’t ease up. I’m pinned to the bars hard enough that the metal rod at my back sends pain through my spine.

  Over Jadick’s shoulder, I watch as the two Jades grab Levi under his arms and haul him up. He groans and tries to fight them, to get to me, but he’s too weak to make any progress.

  “Levi, it’s me,” Lorenz says. “I’m not going to hurt you. We’re going to help.”

  But Levi doesn’t care. Not while his tortured gaze is locked on the way Jadick’s restraining me. I watch as Lorenz and Gregario pull him down the hall. They don’t even have to subdue him. Within seconds, his strength wanes, and he stops struggling, his body limp with exhaustion.

  The two men all but carry him from the dungeon.

  “Jadick, don’t do this,” I whisper as they disappear upstairs with my mate.

  “You belong to me now, Mac. That was the deal.”

  “I don’t belong to anyone,” I growl.

  “If that’s true, you’ll understand why you must let him go now. Your part in this is finished. He’s free.”

  He’s not wrong. Dammit. But I can’t just walk away. Not without closure. Not without an explanation. Levi deserves that much.

  “He won’t feel free,” I say, “Not after he finds out what I’ve done.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  He’s not going to budge, I can see it. But I can’t let this go.

  “Give me tonight,” I say, hanging my head. “One last night. To explain. To say goodbye.” My cheeks burn with the agony the words cause me. And a shame I can’t explain even to myself.

  I expect him to refuse me. Instead, he says, “And what will you give me?”

  My head snaps up.

  Our eyes meet. In his gaze is pure triumph. Everything’s for sale. Even me.

  “What do you want?” I hear myself ask.

  No, Mac.

  The words whisper inside my head.

  I ignore them.

  “We’ll present ourselves to the pack tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll stand by my side. You’ll kiss me like you’ve promised. They’ll see our alliance. What I want from you is to make them believe it.”

  “Why wouldn’t they believe it?” I ask, confused.

  I expected him to demand sex. My body on a platter. He’s stared at it hungrily for long enough. But I should have known. It’s not that he doesn’t want me. But with Jadick, even sex takes a backseat to politics.

  It’s all about winning.

  Besides, once we’re married, I have a feeling my willingness will no longer factor in, anyway. He’ll take what he wants from me until there’s nothing left to give. And even then, he’ll find a way. Isn’t that what Crigger did with Marilyn?

  “Surely you’ve recognized by now what Levi has turned you into. You’re an inspiration, Mac. A symbol for true love. But you’re no actress. The truth of your feelings shines through as plain as the nose on your face. What I want from you is to convince them. When we stand together tomorrow, you will kiss me like you want me. You will put your hands on me like my body is the only one you desire. You will let me touch you like I own you. Like you want this alliance more than you want him.”

  “You want me to sell it.”

  “I want you to stick your tongue so far down my throat the rebellion forgets Levi ever pined for you. Or that you ever came to rescue him. I want you to kiss me like you kiss him.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The only person alive more disgusting than Jadick is me. My skin crawls with the emptiness of having my soul snatched away. No, not taken. Sold. I let it go willingly for the price of this—my hand on the brass knob of Levi’s door. One night with him. It’s all I’ll get. And it will never be enough. But it’s more than adequate for the destruction I’ll cause while I’m here. If I were a better person, I’d walk away. Let it end now. Before it begins. But I’m not better. I’m so much worse. My heart is blacker now than when I started. It will be blacker still tomorrow.

  I open the door.

  Levi looks up from where he sits on the edge of the bed; a large-four poster monstrosity that would have taken up my entire living room. But that house across town isn’t my home. It never was. The bloodshot eyes staring back at me from across this plush bedroom—that’s my home.

  And I’ve come to burn it down.

  The room is full of shadows, dark except for the muted afternoon light stealing in through the open blinds. A sea of soft gray carpet separates us, and where Levi sits, apparently trying to lace up an old pair of boots someone found for him, a single yellow ray of sunshine slants across his body—a teasing of happiness against the melancholy.

  It’s just the room, I tell myself.

  This room was sad before we got here. The third floor of the alpha house is reserved for guests that Crigger, when he was alive, would have rather avoided. And now Jadick has shoved us up here too, probably hoping to forget what we’ll do inside it tonight. Until tomorrow when he can blot it out with his own body.

  But I don’t let myself think about that. Instead, I focus on Levi.

  He’s showered in the hours since I’ve seen him. The hours I spent pacing downstairs until they let me come up.

  Now, the scent of soap drifts toward me. I inhale and feel strangely stronger than I did before. More steady in my own skin. He must feel the same because, at the sight of me, he stands and walks over, his untied boots dragging their laces behind them. His sweatpants are slung low on his hips, his abs drawing my gaze like a starving man to a meal.

  Up close, I see the bruising and cuts remain where the blood and grime has been washed clean from his face and neck. His eyes are wild—dark orbs that are entirely too small for the storm of emotions hiding inside them.

  When he reaches me, his roughened hand cups my cheek. “You’re real,” he says, brushing his thumb over my skin.

  It’s not a question, but the truth is, “No,” I am not real. Not for him. Not after tonight.

  I press my lips together, trying to hold back tears. The effort is futile, though. They stream in silent tracks down my cheeks. One after the other after the other. Soldiers lost to war. Defeated.

  Levi swipes at them with his thumb, and then suddenly, he’s grabbing me and crushing me against his chest, tightening his arms around my body, holding me closer than his own breaths.

  It’s too much. I lose it. Sobs wrack my body, shaking me until I can’t do anything but ride the wave of my own emotions. Pain, relief, loss, love. It’s all there, fighting to get out. Levi holds me, running his hands over my hair, soothing me with soft words.

  His embrace is gentle, his words tender. I haven’t seen this side of him in years, and it only makes my grief worse. This is what I’m losing. This is what I’ve given up.

  He’s alive, I remind myself.

  I still hate me.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have come.

  When my cries are spent and my knees are too weak to hold me up, Levi guides me toward the bed. We sit side by side, and he angles himself to face me. With strong hands, he smooths my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear.

  “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he says.

  Every single word breaks me down.

  “I never stopped fighting to get back here,” I tell him.

  “Tell me what happened,” he says. “Tell me everything.”

  But, of course, I don’t.

  “Tripp got me out and took me to the safe house,” I say instead. “A mall a few hours from here.”

  “In Wythe. I figured.”

  I hesitate. “Not Wythe. Green Hills. Apparently, you were fed wrong intel to protect the location.”

  His eyes darken. “Whose idea was that? Wait, let me guess. Jadick.”

  I don’t answer.

  He lets out a breath and then nods at me to keep going. “Then what?”

  “Jadick took charge.”

  His eyes darken. “Yeah, I figured that too.”

  “He beat Kari,” I say quietly. “Earlier today. Slit her throat on the front steps.”