“Our people,” Shane said softly as he looked over the field at the fallen men and women he had once fought alongside. “I…I think I need that.”
Charlotte wrapped herself around Shane’s middle as Bram did the same to his side. “We did it. We really did it.”
“Now, let’s clean up the mess,” Bram added.
And they would. They would clean up not only the bodies on the ground and the burnt metal littering the forest floor, but they would also have to find a way to work through the atrocities Montag had committed.
It wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
But for now, Bram would take this small victory. He’d hold his mates, learn his new Pack, and let his wolf come to the surface through it all.
Because he’d discovered something he’d known all along.
He was wolf.
He was Pack.
And he was theirs.
AVERY
Avery set her phone down and watched the battle unfold on the screen in front of her. Her mind was a half step behind the movements, but she tried to soak it all in. She couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t understand how this could be happening.
The wolves and humans were fighting each other live on the screen, and yet no one was doing anything about it. From what the feed had shown, what looked like a military unit had come out of nowhere and attacked the shifters.
The wolves hadn’t been doing anything but existing, and yet these people wanted them dead.
She watched as a dark-haired man tried to save another man who had just taken a bullet. They yelled at one another before beginning to fight side by side. What kind of strength did these wolves have if they could still stand for one another like that?
She was in awe.
Yet beneath it all, stark fear and shame slid through her.
She continued to watch as more wolves fell but even more humans did the same. Through it all, she kept her attention on one man, though.
The man in the uniform who stayed behind it all, not willing to get his hands dirty. It shouldn’t have surprised her, and yet it did.
It devastated her.
When the older man finally began to fight, she knew this would be the end. There was no way he could win without cheating, and though he would cheat if he could, there wasn’t enough time.
Avery watched as her father died before her eyes, but she didn’t shed a tear.
She couldn’t for the man who had betrayed everything inside her and even worse, betrayed the world she’d learned to love.
The news anchors commentating kept saying over and over again that Washington had nothing to do with this and the humans fighting were breaking the law—committing treason and murder.
And yet, when her father fell, his eyes glassy and empty, she felt nothing.
What had her father done?
She put her hands on the table, her body shaking.
It wasn’t over, not completely. Her father would never work alone. There had to be someone else out there, something coming that the wolves might not suspect.
She looked around at her small apartment and the world she had created for herself when everything had fallen apart around her.
It seemed it had collapsed once again.
She was only a human, a daughter with no power, but somehow, somehow, she’d find a way to help.
It was the only thing she could do.
But Avery thought, with a sad and horrific realization, she might be too late.
Again.
Epilogue
A month later
Charlotte panted as she came down from her high, her two men on either side of her, their bodies slick with sweat and heat. She fell to the mattress, Bram behind her, Shane in front of her, the feeling of them still deep inside her making her need to come all over again.
She tried to catch her breath, but she couldn’t. Instead, she just licked her lips and did her best to keep her men close.
“We need to do that again,” Shane said sleepily, his voice raw. “I mean, dear God, we need to do that again.”
Bram laughed behind her, his hand on her hip, his fingers brushing along Shane’s. “If we do that every day, we might not have enough energy to do anything else.”
“I’m okay with that,” Charlotte said softly. “Let’s just catch our breath and then go at it again. I think there’s a position or two we haven’t tried yet.”
Shane pulled away slightly to looked down at her. “Really? Which ones?”
She swatted at him then winced at both men slowly pulled out of her. Bram ran a warm washcloth over each of them before coming back to spoon her from behind.
“We have patrol later today,” Bram said. “All three of us are Talon lieutenants now, we can’t just have sex all day and forget to protect our Alpha.”
Even as Charlotte warmed at the thought of duty and purpose, she groaned. “Fine, we’ll stick by Gideon’s side and watch the Pack and be all amazing and strong, but when we’re done, I want to try that one with my leg up in the air like we saw in that book. Okay?”