chapter Twenty-Nine
The Mercedes was still parked outside Arnie’s slanty shanty. Guess he hadn’t had a chance to find a willing chop shop to come drag it away. I wanted to burn his shack to the ground with him inside it. I wanted to take him in his stupid skiff and abandon him on the island with the Loups-Garous with a sign around his neck that said, Will be your butt buddy for food.
I wanted to kill him.
He had abandoned us there, and I couldn’t fathom what kind of deal he’d worked out with the ferals, but he knew Holden and I weren’t coming back alive.
But he was human, and a long time ago I’d promised myself I wouldn’t kill any humans.
It didn’t mean I couldn’t f*ck up his life like he’d tried to f*ck up mine. I went to the Mercedes and popped the trunk. Inside was a spare gas can, and in the emergency kit I found matches.
All the commotion of slamming car doors brought the ancient old man out onto his deck.
He caught a glimpse of me—hair still caked with mud, my tank top sprayed with blood from my fight with Carn—and he crossed himself.
I shook my head and brought the gas can over to his skiff. “No one upstairs is listening to your f*cking prayers, old man.” I dumped out half the gas on the wooden boat then threw a lit match on top. It went up with the gusto of a Roman candle. Old wood always burns best.
I walked over to him, and he began to tremble when I was inches away. I held the gas can up so it was in his line of sight. “Ours was the last tour you’ll ever run. If I find out you left anyone else out there—and I will find out—the next fire I light is your bed. With you in it.”
His knees buckled, and he sagged to the deck, staring at his boat and weeping.
He deserved worse, but he believed in a Christian God, so he knew he’d be getting his in the end. There was a level in Hell for liars and murderers. I hoped it involved lots of flaying.
Holden was leaning against the driver’s side, his hands on the roof and his chin resting on top of them. Eugenia watched with open-mouthed horror. She was probably reconsidering her decision to come with me, now.
“Hell hath no fury like a Secret screwed over,” Holden muttered.
I put the gas back in the trunk. “Let’s get the f*ck out of here. I never want to see a goddamn swamp again for as long as I live.”
One of my greatest skills has to be my ability to make one hell of an entrance.
The whole pack—minus two kings—was at The Den when we returned. You could have heard a pin drop when I walked through the door, mud-caked and bloody.
Hank was the first person to speak, and I was ever so happy he was.
“Looks like someone’s been out in the woods rolling around with some nig—”
I punched him so hard he crumpled like a house of playing cards.
“I’ve wanted to do that since the first moment you opened your mouth, you stupid son of a bitch.” I stepped over him and up to the bar. Jackson, who’d been across the room, was suddenly at my side and looked ready to take on the world if anyone tried to avenge Hank. No one made a move until the pack’s sole African-American member came up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder, beaming.
“Thank you.”
Giving him a tight smile, I said, “You can thank me by bringing Their Majesties here.”
He nodded, clapping me on the shoulder another few times before he went to get Callum and Lucas. I accepted the scotch offered to me by tonight’s acting bartender and told Jackson he could stand down. It didn’t escape my notice that Morgan hadn’t moved from her seat once. Not that I would have made any great effort to defend her either, mind you.
Magnolia—showing an impressive display of strength—dragged Hank back to his table and gave him a dirty dishcloth to staunch the bleeding. “Serves you right, stirring up shit,” she told him.
He kept giving me the stink eye, but I wasn’t having it. Hank didn’t scare me.
“Are you planning to hide out on the porch all night?” I hollered to my hidden mystery guest.
Eyes pivoted from me to the door. Amelia was the first to react, with a gasped, “My God.” Ben was the next, staggering to his feet and sending his chair skittering back across the hardwood as he cleared the room in a heartbeat and lifted his sister off the floor in a crushing hug.
“You’re home,” he whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“I’m home.” Eugenia buried her face in his neck, her cheeks wet with emotion as she hugged him back. “I’ve missed you so much.”
The room was far from quiet now. Newer pack members asked who the girl was, and others were just excited to have Eugenia home. She and I were the only two out of the loop on our relationship. Before Callum had told me I had siblings, I’d assumed Ben was either Callum’s own son, or my Aunt Savannah’s. Savannah, as it turned out, was out west shacked up with a prince there.
Now a huge chunk of family was back together, and everyone in the room was treating it like a damned reunion. Beer flowed as freely as water, and people were toasting Eugenia’s return when Callum and Lucas walked in a few minutes later.
Callum went to Eugenia and held her at arm’s length, getting a good look at her. His eyes glistened, but no tears fell. Kings don’t cry. They did hug, though, because Callum pulled her in for a hug so fierce it put our brother’s to shame.
Lucas couldn’t care less about Eugenia’s triumphant return to the fold. He cleared the room in a heartbeat and lifted me off the floor and up onto the bar, wrapping his arms around me as he kissed the breath right out of my lungs.
My vision swam. His fingers slid under my shirt, clawlike, trying to pull me closer to him than a human body could go. I returned his fevered kiss, then, begrudgingly, pushed him away. “Baby, we have an audience.”
He released me with a growl, telling me he didn’t give a hoot who could see us.
Callum, with one arm around Eugenia and another around Ben, beamed like a proud father. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for this.”
“About that. You and I need to have a little chat.”
A hush spread through the crowd. I guess I’d forgotten my manners in the swamp. Along with my give-a-shits. I shot back the scotch, grimacing, and grumbled, “Apologies. Your Majesty, might I request an audience?”
“Of course.”
We left the bar, Lucas insisting on coming along. I’d already impressed upon Eugenia the importance of not telling any of the wolves about Holden, and I had to hope she’d remain true to her word. The kings and I settled into Callum’s office.
“I suppose you want to finalize the details,” Callum said.
“Before we get into the agreement you and I made, there’s something way more important you need to know.”
“Secret, I doubt there’s anything more important—” Lucas began, but I silenced him with a squeeze of the knee, not wanting to interrupt him in any more obvious way in front of another king.
“There is a pack in Maurepas Swamp.”
“A what?” Callum shifted to the edge of his chair, suddenly very interested in what I had to say.
“A feral pack. At least twenty, not counting the women and children. Not that the women are wolves. They’re just incubators.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“There is a pack of f*cking Lost Boys on an island in the swamp. They are kidnapping and raping tourist women and making them give birth to their offspring, and then turning the children.”
“How do you—?”
I drew his attention to the mud and blood.
“Did they…?” Lucas asked the question, but his words dropped off before he could finish the sentence. “Are you…?”
“I don’t think their Alpha will be siring any new pups anytime soon. And I definitely didn’t make any friends. But I’m fine.”
“My God,” Callum said.
“I don’t want to tell you your business, Callum, but I think your last goal should be expanding into our territory when you have a dissenting pack not one hour from your front door.” I leaned across the table and fixed him with a hard stare. “You know how bad a dissenting pack can make you look, don’t you?”
Callum didn’t appear too impressed with me right then. He turned to regard Lucas, as if to ask if my king had put me up to this, but I think Callum knew me well enough by now to understand that no one put me up to anything against my will. “Yes,” he said at last. “I do know.”
“So do we have your word that for the time being, until your feral problem has been dealt with, you won’t be trying to move into our territory?”
He sat back and once again spoke to Lucas. “Look at what you East Coast wolves do to my nice Southern girls? She’s cutthroat.”
Lucas shrugged. “Blame Canada.”
I smiled.
“She’s going to make one hell of a queen, Rain.”
“She will if you let me marry her.”
The Southern king leaned back in his chair and chuckled in a warm, smoky way. “Like I could stop you with her involved.”
And with that, we had what we’d come for. I let out a sigh of relief.
“In fact, why stop there?” Callum added, and the sigh got caught in my throat.
“I don’t—”
“Your sister is home now, and your brother is here too. Let’s go for broke. You two will proclaim your mate-hood here. Tomorrow night, during the full-moon ceremony.”
Shit.