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She doesn’t look at me. “Don’t. I needed clarity, and you gave it. You can’t apologize for the truth.”

No one speaks for the rest of the drive, and every time I think of telling her the real truth, the knowledge which is tearing me apart, I spare her from it. Because no matter what, I’m getting her out of here, far away from the coven. Adding feelings which change nothing will do little more than hurt her. And after all my time with her, Gwyn has convinced me I am capable of compassion and kindness. I am capable of goodness for the sake of it, and I’ll use one of my first acts of it on her. I’ll protect her from Bjorn, and I’ll protect her from me.

***

Margot has been planningthis operation since the minute she knew Gwyn was going to be alright. Relatively. It’s been a week now since our last attempt to take them out, and I know it’s only given her more time to prepare. She’s had time to search satellite images and see Remy’s car show up around the last time I heard from him. It’s allowed her to research some of the tire shop’s inventory purchases to see the exact white buckets they used to hold his blood. With each new discovery, my rage has only grown.

“Their shit is way more lax than Charlie’s, but I can see some recent changes,” Margot says. We’re in the parking lot of a closed-up diner down the street from the tire shop where she’s hacking into their system. “Looks like when you blew up the fucking cabin, they tightened it up.”

“When you didwhat?” Gwyn’s eyes bulge. “You seemed to have left out some shit.”

“Technically speaking, I didn’t do that,” I argue. “It was a self-destruct situation.”

“A ‘self-destruct situation’? What in the fuck?” Gwyn’s voice pitches upward alarmingly. Margot chortles to herself as she types a shit ton of nonsense on a black screen.

“Charlie hid all electronic traces of his little group—”

“The Dragonflies!” Margot shouts.

“The Dragonflies?” Nico asks. He hasn’t spoken since we arrived, which is actually completely like him, but he’s been fucking with his hair a lot. He’s nervous.

“Yeah. They eat mosquitos,” Margot explains, rolling her eyes.

Gwyn huffs in something I can’t quite describe as amusement. “Very clever.”

“Anyway,” I say, interrupting. “Charlie tried to cover his tracks but left receipts in his truck. No way he bought $500 worth of cigarette cartons.”

“You conveniently left out the explosion part of this story before.” Gwyn picks at her shirt, and she’s pouting a bit. Is she concerned?

“It was no big deal, sweetheart. I’m fine.”

“Good for you,” she says. Crossing her arms, she looks out the window again. Clearly she’s angry with me. This isn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last, but I have to admit there’s a sting to it now.

“Alright, lovebirds. The basement only has two access points. There’s a door leading straight into it from outside. This is their primary entrance for these meetings, but when I watched last week, the camera showed they bar it. So, that’s where Nico and I will wait while Roman goes in through the tire shop,” Margot instructs.

“But isn’t the entrance to the basement through the tobacco place?” I question.

“What about me?” Gwyn asks at the same time.

“Yes, and you’re going to have to kick down an access door. I think you can handle that.” Margot’s annoyed I interrupted. “And Gwyn, you stay here until you get a thumbs up from me on this camera,” Margot says, passing the laptop to Gwyn from the backseat.

“I don’t want to wait. I—I want to be part of this. They were going to...Ugh, I don’t want to even think about it.” She shudders, and I resist reaching out to comfort her.

“You will be, just not until the end. There’s no reason to subject you to all that,” I explain.

“Fuck you,” Gwyn snaps. “Don’t treat me like glass.”

“I’m not—”

“Either way, you can’t be there at the beginning. You might get hurt, and you’ll certainly get in the way. You don’t know what you’re doing yet.” I don’t know if Nico says it to stop me from shoving my foot in my mouth even farther, or to stop me from apologizing.

“Fine.”

“Alright, now that that’s settled with less drama than I expected, everything is disarmed. I set the security cameras to business hours, so there won’t be any kind of alert when we pull in. All I have to do is turn on the cell phone jammer, but I figure we should wait until we get there for that. The doctor is in charge, so I think she’s our best bet.”

Putting Margot’s car in drive, I pull out of the parking lot. I’m turning left, so I have to look past Gwyn to check for traffic. She evades me, and I want to set shit straight with her. If I tell her how much I care for her, maybe she’ll understand why I’m keeping her out of harm’s way now, and why sending her off with Margot is the best choice. I’m just about to open my mouth when the shame hits me.

I’m finally about to avenge my brother’s death, maybe get some answers about where his body is. And yet, all I can think about is her?