CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The moment they exited the SUV, the door to the main lodge flew open and several Mercury wolves and her uncles came rushing out. Ally undoubtedly would have winced at every tight hug if Taryn hadn’t ridden with them during the journey so she could heal her.

Strangely, Shaya had a pair of shears in her hand. Frowning, Ally asked, “What are they for?”

An innocent smile took over the Alpha female’s face as she hid them behind her back. “Nothing.” Then she exchanged a knowing look with Taryn and Jaime, both of whom now radiated an amusement that tickled Ally. With an inner shrug, Ally made her way into the lodge. The Mercury and Phoenix wolves all followed.

Inside the living area, Bracken coaxed Ally to sit on the sofa while Kathy handed her a mug of some kind of mint-smelling tea. Caleb tucked a blanket around her, and Kent offered her a cookie. Taking one, she leaned into Derren and quietly asked, “Why are they fussing?”

“They’re taking care of you.”

“You don’t like that,” she sensed.

“It’s my job.” He knew he sounded petulant. After all, this was what packs did: they looked out for their own, gave comfort and touch when it was needed. But Ally was his, and he wanted to be the one who took care of her.

“Drink it,” said Kathy, pointing to the tea. “It’ll get the taste of blood out of your mouth better than any toothpaste.”

Saluting her, Ally did as advised. That was when she noticed that the seriously hot Phoenix enforcer, Dominic, was looking hard at her. “What? What are you staring at?”

He sighed languorously. “You, before I wake up from this dream.” There were groans of annoyance and a few chuckles.

Growling, Derren would have shot up from his seat and lunged at the little shit if Ally hadn’t placed a hand on his thigh to stay him. “Don’t,” Derren spat at him. “You’re not using your cheesy lines on Ally.”

Holding up his hands, laughing, Dominic said, “Seriously, I’m just messing with her.” His expression turned serious yet soft as he regarded Ally a second time. “Hell, you must be tired . . . You’ve been running through my dreams all night.”

Again, Derren went to dive at the prick, but Ally pressed her hand down harder on his thigh. That didn’t mean he’d let him get away with it. “Zander!”

Standing behind Dominic, Zander whacked the enforcer over the head.

Wincing, Dominic rounded on him with a grin. “Hey, you’ll mess up my hair. The others don’t hit me that hard.”

Casting the Phoenix enforcer an exasperated look, Nick turned to Derren. “Tell us what happened. Is Rachelle no longer an issue?”

It was actually Bracken who did most of the storytelling, praising Ally’s fighting skills and making her uncles smile proudly.

Seeming satisfied, Nick said, “That’s one more threat gone.”

Derren arched a brow at his Alpha. “I take it no one came to rescue Miranda or Kerrie?”

“No,” replied Nick. “But I can’t say I’m surprised. Like you said, Miranda wasn’t a good Alpha.”

“Tell me they’re not dead yet,” said Taryn, hands clasped in prayer. “I wanted to say my good-byes to them first.” There was a deadly undercurrent to that sentence.

“They’re alive,” Nick assured her. “Had it been your pack who caught them, I’d have wanted you to wait for me before you slit their throats—or something equally fun.”

Trey snorted a laugh. “Good. Where are they?”

“The toolshed. Jesse, Roni, and Marcus are guarding them.”

A curt nod from the Phoenix Alpha male. “Then let’s do this.”

Derren nuzzled his mate’s cheek, not wanting to leave her while she was feeling a little raw inside and still recovering from an adrenaline crash. But he was Beta; getting rid of traitors, intruders, and enemies—in effect, doing the jobs no one else wanted to do—was one of his responsibilities. Although . . . he had a feeling Roni would want the honor of killing Kerrie. “Stay here, baby. I’ll be—”

“I want to see this through.” Ally wanted to see the females punished, and she wanted to be at her mate’s side when he took on this heavy responsibility.

“Baby, you’ve had a tough enough day as it is. Sit back and relax while we deal with it.”

She shook her head. “That’s not me. I’m Beta too, remember? If nothing else, I should be there with you.”

“I think this is something everyone here should get to see,” stated Dante. “They were all targets, they all have their own share of anger toward the two females in the toolshed. They want closure as much as we do.”

Nick thought on that for a minute. He addressed the whole room as he announced, “We’ll take the captives into the woods behind the toolshed. If any of you wish to watch them be dealt with, meet us there.”

Only Kathy, Caleb, Kent, and Willow stayed behind. The rest gathered behind Derren, Nick, Trey, and Dante as the captives were brought out by Jesse and Zander.

Nick groaned at the sight of the females and then glanced at his mate over his shoulder. “Shay, was that really necessary?” She simply shrugged, grinning. His gaze flicked to his sister. “You helped, didn’t you?” It was more of an accusation than an enquiry.

“I thought you hid the shears,” said Marcus, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

A muscle in Nick’s jaw ticked. “I did.”

“Not well enough,” commented Roni, smirking in supreme satisfaction.

Marcus toyed with his mate’s hair. “When you and Shaya went inside the shed, and I heard those two shrieking and cursing, I hadn’t guessed this was why. Though I probably should have.”

Jaime pouted. “I wish I’d been there. We had so much fun the time we played with the female jackal that Roni caught.”

“The girls like to give their captives a makeover,” Eli explained to Ally as he came to stand beside her.

She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing—both Kerrie and Miranda had nothing but tufts left of their hair. “Well, I can see that.”

Jesse and Zander shoved Miranda and Kerrie to their knees and stood behind them, on guard. Only Kerrie looked scared. If Ally hadn’t been able to feel Miranda’s fear scuttling across her skin like beetles, she would have thought the woman was completely indifferent to her situation.

Miranda’s scowl deepened as her attention turned to Dan. “I’m sure you’re enjoying this.”

He pursed his lips. “Since your actions placed Ally in danger . . .yeah, this has some entertainment value.”

Kerrie’s fearful gaze turned ugly and malicious as it found Roni and Marcus. The couple was standing side by side, their bodies intimately close and their stances protective. Their bond was so solid and strong, it seemed to throb between them.

Roni tilted her head as she regarded Kerrie with a blank look. “All this because he rejected you?”

“He didn’t reject me.” Kerrie smirked. “We had a lot of fun together. Didn’t we, Marcus?”

“Sure,” allowed Roni, “for, like, two minutes. It was short and casual—nothing to write home about.”

The smirk vanished from Kerrie’s face. “He would have come back to me. When he was ready to commit, when he saw that other females would never know him and care about him like I do, he would have come back.”

“Yeah, in an alternate reality.”

Kerrie’s words came out fast and furiously. “Marcus would have mated me. I would have become part of the Phoenix Pack, we would have been happy.” Her gaze turned faraway. “He was good to me. He wasn’t like the others. It didn’t matter to him that I was a Seer—he wasn’t prejudiced against my kind. It didn’t matter to him that my father was known for being a bad drunk and an even worse mate. None of it mattered to him.”

“What about your own mate?” Dante asked. “You didn’t think to wait for him?”

“He died when I was fourteen. He was seven years older than me; he’d said he wouldn’t touch me until I turned eighteen. He was an enforcer like Marcus.”

Now Ally understood. Kerrie had wanted to create the future she should have had with her mate. She’d chosen Marcus, decided he was what she needed, and had relished his acceptance of her Seer nature. She’d made plans for their future, believing it was only a matter of time before those plans became reality.

Kerrie’s eyes slid to Roni. “But then you came along.”

Bemused, Roni snorted. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of home wrecker. He’s my mate. He’s mine. He was never yours.”

But Ally could sense that, to Kerrie, Roni truly was the interloper—she’d ruined everything for Kerrie. For a second time, the female’s plans for the future had collapsed as, once again, she’d lost the wolf she’d expected to mate. Kerrie’s emotional state had no doubt been deteriorating for a long time, probably as a result of losing her true mate before they’d had the chance to claim each other. Many shifters lost their way after such a painful situation.

“You’re not good enough for him,” Kerrie sneered.

Roni snickered. “Yeah, you’re a bitter, unhinged bitch, and I’m a socially challenged tomboy. Go judge me.”

Trey looked at Kerrie curiously. “If you care for Marcus so much, why did you want him dead too?”

“He betrayed me,” she replied, but her eyes were on Marcus. “He chose her over me. And he needed to know how it felt to lose a mate, to lose everything.”

Looking murderous, Marcus growled low in his throat. “And that’s exactly why you’ll die today.”

Ally’s head began to badly pound as Kerrie’s emotional state repeatedly swung from enraged to bitter to confused to pained to disoriented. The female was, in a word, lost. In which case, Ally had to wonder if they were looking at this from the wrong angle.

Turning her attention to the female kneeling beside Kerrie—a female who was filled with greed, ruthlessness, and naked ambition—Ally said, “It wasn’t Kerrie’s idea to take out the hits, was it? She’s eager to see Roni and Marcus dead, no doubt about that. She’s been obsessing over it for some time now. But that girl ain’t thinking clearly enough to have been able to arrange hits, hire people to kidnap families, and cover her tracks while doing it all. Not without a little help and advice, anyway.”

Derren arched his brows. “That’s a very good point.”

Sure she was right, Ally continued speaking to Miranda. “You’re an opportunist. You saw your cousin’s pain, her need for vengeance, and you saw a way to use that for your own personal gain. I think you gave her the idea to take out the hits. I think you pointed her in all the right directions—always careful not to dirty your own hands. That way, if Kerrie failed, the blame wouldn’t fall on you. But if Kerrie succeeded, you got yourself more land and power.”

Kerrie looked at her cousin. “Miranda?” The female didn’t respond—she was too busy glaring at Ally.

Taryn sighed at Kerrie. “Basically, you thought you were the mastermind behind all this, but that wasn’t the case. Your cousin exploited your deteriorating emotional state for her own gain. At least you can be satisfied that it didn’t work out well for her.”

Kerrie shook her head. “No. Miranda wouldn’t do that. She owed me.”

“Owed you how?” asked Nick.

“She wouldn’t have had the position of lone Alpha if it hadn’t been for me. I had a vision, I told her the Alpha male would die.”

Nick’s gaze slid to Miranda. “And you ensured that you were in the perfect position to take over when he died, didn’t you?”

Miranda sniffed haughtily, but her fear was no longer hidden. It was in her eyes, her scent, and her body language. “My pack will come to free me.”

Nick’s smile had a cruel edge to it. “You know that won’t happen. You’re a malicious, traitorous, self-serving bitch—they’ll be glad to be rid of you.”

“They’ll—”

Nick declared, “I’ve heard enough. Let’s get this over with.”

Going to her brother’s side, Roni said, “Nick, you promised. You agreed she was mine.”

Holding up a hand, Taryn stepped forward. “I get you want your revenge, Roni—this bitch could have cost you both your mate and your pack. But I could have lost the same. My pack needs vengeance too. We could both have the honor,” proposed Taryn with a shrug. “I’ll make her suffer on behalf of my entire pack. And you could do it too because, well, you’ll explode inside if you don’t.” After a long moment, Roni nodded her agreement.

At that point, Kerrie looked ready to piss her pants. Ally would have felt sorry for her if it weren’t for the danger the Mercury and Phoenix Packs had been subjected to because of this female. Many of the wolves had endured serious injuries thanks to the cougars and the grenade—including Derren, who had also been shot. That wasn’t something Ally could ever forgive.

Nick’s claws sliced out, making the female kneeling in front of him jerk. “Fine. Roni and Taryn can have Kerrie. But Miranda here is mine.”

Jaime sighed in disappointment. “You guys get all the fun.”

“This is what Betas are for,” Derren reminded his Alpha. “I can take care of this.”

“Yes, you can . . . but I need this.” Nick’s anger with the female was almost palpable. “My mate would be long dead if it wasn’t for Ally’s vision about the grenade, Derren. I wouldn’t have survived the loss of her, which means Willow would have grown up without her parents.” As Shaya’s hand rubbed his back soothingly, Nick’s shoulders relaxed a little.

Derren nodded. “If you’re sure.” He went to Ally’s side and draped an arm around her shoulders.

Trey stepped aside, making it clear he had no interest in contesting Nick’s desire to deal with Miranda. “Make it hurt.”

Squatting in front of Kerrie, Taryn spoke in a level yet menacing tone. “Because of you, a bomb might have taken out most of my pack—including my mate and son—and destroyed my home. My best friend would be dead, thanks to a fucking rifle grenade. And that’s not counting the other attacks on both my territory and this one. All things considered, you don’t deserve to breathe.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” proclaimed Roni. Abruptly, she used her claws to slice cleanly through Kerrie’s jugular. A heartbeat later, Taryn swiped out her own claws, mercilessly gutting her victim.

Miranda gasped in horror as her cousin painfully died right before her eyes. When she tried to speak, Nick cut her off.

“If you’re thinking of pleading for mercy, don’t bother. Your life means nothing to me. My mate and my daughter? They’re everything to me. This is for them.” He shoved his claws deep into Miranda’s chest, shaping the heart they could all hear pumping fast with fear. Then he twisted his hand sharply and closed his open fist slightly, slashing through the organ.

It seemed to take forever for Miranda’s body to finally give out, but in reality her death had been swift. It hadn’t been pleasant for Ally to watch, but the executions had been necessary. Kerrie—and Miranda as an accomplice—would have been responsible for many, many deaths had Kerrie’s plot worked. They knew what they were risking, knew what the punishment would be. It was how the shifter world worked.

Figuring she’d seen enough death for one day, Ally turned to Derren. “I need a shower. And clothes.” She was still wearing nothing but his coat.

Derren pressed a kiss to her nose. “Yes, you do. Come on.”

She tipped her chin toward the enforcers, who were preparing to move the dead bodies. “The guys might want some help with that.”

“I know, but you need me right now.”

She opened her mouth to deny it—dominant females dealt with things themselves, and it was what Ally had always done. But she didn’t have to go it alone anymore. “Yeah, I do.” Her admittance made his eyes gleam with approval.

Back at their lodge, Derren held her close as they stood under the hot spray. “You okay?” he asked gently.

“Rachelle deserved what she got, I know that. But I still wish it hadn’t had to end that way.” She never would have admitted that softness to anyone else, but she trusted Derren with every secret and every vulnerability that existed inside her.

“You had no choice.”

“I’m used to saving people. It’s all I’ve ever done. Killing was a first.”

“It might not be the last,” he warned her, gently massaging shampoo through her hair. “Being Beta female means you’ll be part of any battles that occur, baby.”

Sensing his worry that today’s events had affected her acceptance of the role, she kissed his chin. “I’m not going to ask for us to step down.” She smiled, gently prodding his chest with her finger. “You like being Beta.”

“No, I don’t.”

Her smile widened at his petulant tone. “Yes, you do. Admit it, the position suits you. And let’s face it, you couldn’t handle anyone else having a Beta level of authority over you. Even Nick doesn’t have your total compliance.”

“He doesn’t want people to follow him blindly.”

“Admit it,” she repeated.

He sighed. “Fine. I like being Beta.” Tipping her head back under the water, he rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. “I’m proud of you.”

Meeting his gaze again, she cocked her head. “Why?”

“Because you did what you had to do. It sounds simple, but not everyone does it. It’s not bad that you didn’t find it easy. Killing someone shouldn’t be easy.” But it was easier for some—including him—thanothers. Derren wasn’t sorry she’d killed Rachelle. Nor did he feel that the female had deserved to be spared. Hell, if he could have, he’d have dealt with Rachelle himself—both to get vengeance and to spare Ally the pain of doing it herself.

He loved that Ally had the capacity to feel some regret, loved the softness to her that most didn’t see. “Are you relieved that the truth is finally out? The Collingwood wolves all know what really happened now. They know who the real liar was. Know how badly they fucked up.”

“Yes. I feel . . . lighter. It shouldn’t have bothered me that they all thought a load of crap about me. I’m not part of their pack anymore, and I don’t want to be. But all the same, I wanted my name clear.”

“I get it.”

“I want your name clear too.” She hated the stains he wrongfully carried on his name.

“Maybe one day it’ll happen, but I doubt it. It’s enough that you believe I’m innocent of the accusations. That you’ve never doubted me. Not even once.” He kissed her gently but hungrily. When she reached for his cock—which was hard, of course, since she was naked—he closed his hand around her wrist. “Later. As soon as we’re done here, I’m going to get you out of the shower, dry you off, get you dressed into your sweats, brush your hair, and then lay with you.”

“Uh . . . why?” His plan didn’t sound even half as good as what she had in mind.

“Because you’re mine, and it’s my job to take care of you.”

Looking into that implacable gaze, she knew he wouldn’t back down. While she was disappointed that there would be no sex, she also felt cherished that he would treat her this way. “Fine. But I expect multiple orgasms later.”

He smiled. “I love a woman who knows what she wants.”