Epilogue

EPILOGUE

REMY

A nother Alpha was dead.

I gently lowered the piece of plaster I had lifted off the man at my feet, setting it on the ground beside him.

“Shit,” I muttered, kneeling in the dirt and debris beside him.

I knew this Alpha.

Jack Carmichael had been the Alpha of the Elysian pack since before my dad took over Blackwater. I had seen him every year at the Summit since I was ten and started attending. He was one of our allies.

And he was dead.

My heart sank as I added his name to the list I was keeping in my head. Another pack I would have to call and inform their Alpha was gone.

I stood up, surveying the carnage and chaos around me. Only a few people moved in the wreckage. Most were buried underneath it.

It was only dumb fucking luck that Dante, Griffin, and I had stepped out of our meeting. We had been heading back when the building blew up.

“Remy!”

My head snapped up and I looked at where Griff was standing grimly.

“It’s Nero.”

Fuck .

Griffin glanced down at the body at his feet and slowly shook his head before meeting my gaze.

Everything in me wanted to scream. The pressure in my chest was ready to crack me open, but I knew I would bleed out if that happened.

I fisted my hands and nodded back, swallowing my emotions. I had to keep moving forward. Dad and Luke were somewhere in this.

I couldn’t lose them, too.

As soon as we realized the lodge had been blown to hell, Dante and I ran to the cabins. The panic that hit me when I realized Skye wasn’t there had been crippling. I’d torn the cabin apart before running outside, hoping she would be somewhere.

The only thing I had found was her necklace. The clasp was broken, but the sun caught the diamond chip in the star nestled against the moon just right. The flash of light drew my attention down and stopped my heart.

When Dante found me and told me Tate was missing, we grabbed one of the people who worked in the kitchens, a terrified guy who had been taking a smoke break when the bomb went off.

He mentioned seeing Skye and Tate. It would be hard for any guy not to notice the two of them together. He had seen them out here talking to a man before everything went to shit.

I knew my girl. The only reason she wasn’t currently by my side was if someone was keeping her from being there.

I sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the smells of burnt flesh and charred wood hovering in the air.

“Here!” Dante’s voice cut across the wreckage. “They’re here!”

I took off running, stumbling across broken stones and navigating spikes of rebar that protruded grotesquely from chunks of concrete. Glass crunched under my boots.

Griffin beat my to Dante by half a second, and when I looked down, my hands started to shake.

“Oh, God.”

Luke and Dad were together, but pinned by a massive beam. It looked like Luke had taken the brunt of it. His body was covering half of Dad’s. Almost like he had thrown himself in front of Dad when the world crashed down around them.

Dante’s eyes met mine for a brief second, and I could see the same fears I had reflected in his gaze. It took all three of us to lift the beam up that had them pinned.

By the time we lifted the thousand pound weight, more staff who hadn’t been inside had come from where they lived on the edge of the property to help. We managed to piece together a couple of crudely assembled stretchers to lift them up and out of the area.

Griffin led the others away to keep looking for survivors while I knelt beside dad, my fingers pressing against his throat until I found a pulse. Relief hit me hard and fast.

I glanced over at Dante and Luke.

Dante met my gaze. “He … I don’t know what to do. His pulse is weak.”

They needed to get out of here. We all did. Someone had deliberately set off a bomb in the middle of the Summit. They had chosen a time packed with scheduled meetings for maximum damage.

And maximum casualties.

I wiped a hand down my face. “Get a car,” I told Dante. Ours had been parked by the side of the lodge and was currently smashed under a slab of concrete and metal. “We need to get to the airstrip.”

“What about survivors?” he asked, but was already standing.

I exhaled as I straightened, my gaze cutting across the mess. “I don’t think we’ll find any others. We need to get out of here before someone realizes there are survivors. I’m pretty sure none of us were supposed to make it out of this alive. I’ll tell Griff we’re leaving. He may want to come with us.”

Dante gave me a grim nod and took off for the far parking lot.

I turned and started making my way back to Griffin. I made it four steps when a hand grabbed my ankle.

“Jesus,” I swore, looking down at the bruised and dusty hand underneath a small mountain of rubble.

“Help,” the weak voice called up to me. “Please … help.”

I bent and picked up the heaviest pieces holding the man down.

He blinked up at me, and realization slammed into me a second before rage filled my heart.

Preston fucking Loomis.

His eyes widened when he saw me. The bastard actually flinched away from me, and then cried out when the rebar skewering him to the ground in his stomach didn’t give.

“Shit. Fuck.” His curses were a mumbled mess. His eyes looked up at me, begging. “Just … please, help me.”

Despite the severity of what was happening around me, I couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped past my lips. “ Help you?”

If I didn’t know for a fact that he was a bitch, I did now.

His face twisted. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Can you help me? Please? It fucking hurts .”

I dropped into a crouch beside him, my jaw tight. “How many times did Skye tell you something hurt?” I asked darkly, reaching for the rebar. “How many times did she need help and you fucking hurt her?”

“Shit, man,” he whimpered, his face crumpling.

Jesus, was he going to start crying?

My hands curled around the metal holding him in place. The tiny movement of my hand touching the bar made him cry out in agony.

“Where’s Linden?” I demanded, ignoring the way he started to tear up. “Was he with you?” My eyes scanned the area around him. Maybe, by some lucky twist of fate, Linden had been pulverized in the explosion.

“Gone,” Preston gasped, a tear sliding down his face. “He … I was on my way to meet him.”

Everything in me went cold.

“He wasn’t inside?”

“No. He told me to meet him in the parking lot.” His face twitched as he struggled for another painful breath. “He was outside when the bomb went off.”

Skye and Tate had been seen with a man moments before the explosion.

Skye was missing …

… and so was Linden.

With a roar, I yanked the rebar from Preston’s side and freed him.

He screamed, slapping a hand to his stomach as blood started flowing. It seeped through his fingers as he slumped back, panting.

“Thank you,” he muttered, blinking up at me. He was surprised I had helped him.

I smiled. “Anytime.”

And then I drove the rebar down through his throat. I stood up as he started to gurgle and choke, wiping my palms on my jeans as I walked away.