Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Agnar

He'd left his new braces in the backseat of the truck, which left his hands free to pull the knife from the holster at his waist the second he was thrust up against the wall after Rome opened the door and stepped back. Agnar's hands might not have been fully functional, but he could still press it against someone's throat in just the right spot.

The lights were all off and there was no secondary attacker to worry about. His heart pumped straight adrenaline into his blood, but it was Rome himself who pinned him up against the wall, one hand on his shoulder, the other at his throat.

"Looks like we're at impasse." Rome wasn't the kind of man to be intimidated by a little blood, even if the source of it flowed from right by his jugular. His hold relaxed slightly on Agnar's throat, enough for him to breathe again. "I want to make a deal with you."

"You could have just asked," Agnar grunted, annoyed with the late-night cloak and dagger bullshit. He was on full alert, but it had been a long day, and he didn't like his emotions toyed with. His mate and his sons were in there and Rome was pulling this? "But anything you're going to bargain with or for, the answer is no. I don't have much of a soul left, but if I did, I sure as fuck wouldn't sell it to you."

Rome was pitch black against pitch black. A shadow figure against a disquietingly dark backdrop. His lips pricked up at the corners. He even leaned a little harder into the sharp blade of the knife like he enjoyed the pain or maybe it was the gamble. "The deal is this—"

"Are you hard of hearing, or maybe it's your brain that's having trouble keeping up. I want nothing to do with you."

Rome's sharp laugh was all taunt. "You treat my sister well. She doesn't need you to make her happy, but for some inexplicable reason, she'd made it her mission to see you some version of redeemed. I want her to have the family she's always wanted, and that's more than just the kids that she adores. It's a mate who would do anything for her. Love her. Die for her. Make her laugh over stupid fucking things. I don't give a shit about my siblings other than the three closest in age to me. The rest, my parents just kept popping out. Twelve. It's absurd. They were just there. Annoying little creatures, but Briar May, Kieran, and Prairie Rose? We were the original family before there was more. I'd do anything for those three. So. You take care of my sister and I'll take care of your problem in Arizona."

Rome hadn't removed his hands and Agnar felt those cold fingers burning against his neck like cold chains. He exhaled too quickly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Alexander Phaethon. We both know I killed his son and, in a way, started all of this. Even if it's not up to me to end it, I want revenge as much as you do. I don't care about your pack lands or your stupid feuds with other wolves, why you're fighting or how you justify it, but I do want revenge. It's my right to eliminate that whole family, just as the chance to ever have one of my own was stolen from me."

"You have a daughter now."

"Yes. A daughter with no mother. A man with no mate. I might be putting on a good face, but on the inside, I've always been dead as fuck. Nonexistent. If you go, you'll be seeking something more than revenge. If I go and I'm killed, there's no one who would miss me."

"Don't be an idiot. What about your family? What about Waverly?"

Rome finally stepped back. He cleared the blade and Agnar wiped it on his black pants and stuffed it away. Rome walked over slowly and sat down on the couch. The room was set up awkwardly, with the back of the sectional facing the walkway. It was unheard of to give a predator like Agnar an unguarded position, but Rome was clearly confident in his own ability to survive.

Maybe he was convinced above all else that his sister's mate wouldn't slaughter her family in his own house.

"I have nothing left to go back to," Rome said darkly. "I've been banished from them, but they'd take Waverly. She'd have a better life raised by one of my siblings than she ever would with me. I can give her exactly what I have. Nothing. She has to know that every day I get up and fake it. I think that's a lot like what you tell my sister, but she's convinced that you're something more. Something special, actually. I think it's a wasted notion, but there's no changing her mind."

"Castor is Pollux's brother. You want to kill him too?"

"Undoubtedly." Rome chuckled. God, he was truly a heinous motherfucker. "But he happens to make my other sister, one of the ones I give a shit about, happy. They have a child. He got lucky. I'll just hate him from afar."

"He had nothing to do with what Pollux did. Nor Alexander."

Rome lifted something from the coffee table. Ice clinked against the walls of a glass. He'd poured himself a drink and waited. There had been nothing on his breath when he'd pounced on Agnar like he was a common fucking criminal and not an expected guest.

The glass was tossed back and then set down on the table. Now that Agnar's eyes were more accustomed the dark, he could make out the lines of everything. The sharp bite of whiskey seemed to permeate the room.

"Alexander raised Pollux. He turned him into what he became. Or the war did, or joining the Rangers did. I don't actually give a fuck who did it, I just want blood. I know that's what you want too, but you're going to swear an oath to me here and now that you're not going to get it. You're finished with that. Life has been kind to you. Or unkind, depending on how you look at it. I think, though, that deep down, you want all the things that were taken from you. You want a family and a mate. You want friends and community. You want a single day without bloodshed. That's why you worked so tirelessly for your doomed peace, was it not?"

"A man like you wouldn't understand."

Rome did, though. He was a man like Alexander. Evil, but in a different way. From what Agnar could tell, at least Rome Nightfall had principles.

"You're right." The shadow version of Rome got up and went to the kitchen. Only a thin half wall separated it from the small living room. Agnar didn't move, but he did hear another drink being poured out. The scrape of a glass hitting the counter and then that shadow sauntered back into the room and leaned a shoulder against the wall.

He was still bleeding where Agnar's blade bit into his throat. He could smell the sharp metal of blood over the smoky whiskey.

"You're right, and that just proves that I was wrong after all. You're nothing like me, thank whatever god who probably doesn't exist for that."

"I can't let you do this." Something in his chest throbbed dully when he thought about how much pain it would bring to Prairie Rose when she found out her brother went to Arizona and got killed. He had a flash of the devastation it would bring to her and his sons if he did the same, and for the first fucking time he finally fucking understood.

Rome's eyes lit up, dark and feral and glowing like his wolf's. He understood too, but he wasn't going to lighten up and stop pressing on the sore spots. He was like Agnar in that they both understood that weakness wasn't something they could abide.

"Jealous? I can send you whatever body part you'd like. You could hang it on the wall."

"You're a sick fuck. You stay the fuck away from my mate."

"Oh. So you do care about her." Rome's low, taunting laugh rattled through Agnar's bones. It felt like a knife straight to the ribs. "Good. Yes. Your oath, then, here and now." He snapped his fingers like Agnar was a trained fucking puppy and not a dangerous animal. "Let's have it. I'm waiting. Let me be clear. Revenge is sweet, but it's also hollow. Finishing Alexander won't undo what's already been done. It won't give you back what was stolen from you and your pack. It won't bring back all that you've lost. But you haven't lost everything. You still have a chance to have everything I can never go back to. If not happiness, then at least community. Somewhere to raise your sons. You can have the peace you always wanted even if it's not the kind of peace you ever imagined. You have a woman you can learn to love. She's patient. She'll teach you how. You can grow old with her. You might even have grandchildren if you're lucky. Possibly great-grandchildren. One day, there might even be a surgeon of our kind who can give you back full use of your hands, but until then, you'll even have the wolf back with those braces. Give me your oath and go pack up your mate and your sons. Take them back home. There is nothing for you here, and there is nothing for you in Arizona."

There was a distinct possibility that the pain in his chest, growing steadily and morphing into something that felt like a growth, was a heart attack.

"Because I'm a bad man." Those predatory eyes swept over him, glowing brighter at the prospect of doing very bad things, like Rome relished the opportunity. "Bad men tend to prosper. It's the good ones that get the short end of everything."

That was probably translation for I'm trying to save you from yourself, asshole, because I love my sister and those poor kids don't deserve to watch your foolish ass throw away the greatest gift it never even fully realized it had.

"Tell her you want to go back to your home and then surrender to her," Rome said smoothly, but it was all antagonizing. More taunting. This man enjoyed being a bully, but that was just on the surface. Agnar was more than skilled enough at reading beneath that. "Give yourself over as a proper mate. It'll be the truth. From this day forward, you'll only think of her and your family. Your new pack. You were adopted into one once. Taken. You can learn how to be a part of another again. This one, I promise you, is far better. This is a good life. Stop being stubborn and just fucking claim it."

"Stubborn. Says the man who attacked me the second I walked in the door and tried to extract my oath under duress."

One lift of that black-clad shoulder. Rome sucked his teeth like he was chiding Agnar for being childish and stupid. "That's because I knew you wouldn't give it any other way. You wouldn't listen unless I appealed to the beast inside you. Men like us, this is how we have a conversation. With pain and anxiety and usually with fists and weapons. I didn't want to actually hurt you. Prairie Rose would never forgive me, and I don't have endless hours to stand here listening to her lectures. It's really quite boring and I would literally rather be doing anything else."

Red-hot anger washed over Agnar and then it felt like he was freezing as his skin broke out in a sticky sweat. "Just leave it alone."

"I could lie and tell you that I will, but we both know I won't." He stepped to the side and flicked the light on in the kitchen. It bathed his sharp features in a sinister gold. Though he was tall and muscular, the light and the shadows painted his face like it was skeletal. The living dead.

Rome prowled across the room like a caged wolf stalking its small space. His eyes were dead now. Anyone a man like this advanced on would immediately lose their breath and their courage, but Agnar wasn't just anyone. He stood his ground without difficulty.

"Fine. Give it to me now, under no duress," Rome snapped. He got right up in Agnar's face, whiskey breath washing over him. "Give it to me of your own free will and honor the promise you made when you mated my sister. Things change. Lives change. The years change us all. You need to stay because you belong with her and the boys. Fate brought you together and gave you each other. You don't get to throw that away for anything. What you promised Prairie Rose, I don't care if you meant it then. Mean it now. Now is when it counts."

Rome's hand shot out and wrapped around Agnar's throat again. He pressed hard, cutting off his oxygen. "Give. Me. Your. Oath."

Agnar threw him off with a sweep of his hand. Everything in him, all his training and all his rage and all his smashed-up pride, demanded that he do real damage to this fucker who dared to command and touch him. Instead, he shook his head and walked off.

"We're leaving," he said shortly, a command, not a question. There was no room for negotiation. He wanted to tell her what her brother planned, but he couldn't do that. There was no stopping Rome, and Agnar knew that he'd succeed. Maybe he needed to take Alexander's life to give him his own back, just as much as he was promising that going to Arizona would spare Agnar.

"Why?" Prairie Rose mumbled sleepily, but she came awake at the expression on his face. Her hands shot out and cupped his upper arms, her fingers digging in. "Why, Agnar, what's happened?"

The words were right there. Words that would stop everything before it happened. Was it his place? Was it his right? Was it even his vengeance any longer? What was happening to him that even if the answer was yes to all of those questions, he kept silent like his thirst for vengeance and blood had been slaked.

"Nothing. I just want to try out the braces. I don't want to wait. The wolf doesn't want to wait. Will you come with me? You and the boys? I'd like to take us home."

Us. As in, all of them. Not just her and the boys, but himself too.

Her smile broke his heart. Shattered it clean, and not just what he thought he had left of it, but what was there, whole and beating furiously. A whole heart. The fucking thing regrew every time it was maimed, butchered, wounded, broken, obliterated.

"Alright. Let's go home."