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CHAPTER TWELVE

STONE

“Is this Dirt?” Zuri whispered, tugging on my sleeve once I paid for her clothes.

A low chuckle left my mouth. “No, this isn’t my piece-of-shit brother. This is Carve.”

“Carve,” she repeated, her face contorted into one of horror. She dropped her gaze to my palm that had split open from seizing the knife, watching as the wound healed almost instantly. “What kind of town is this? These names are ridiculous.”

I chuckled again and leaned closer to her. “Don’t tell him that.”

She tensed and widened her eyes, inching closer to me.

After taking her hand, I led her to Maxine, Sina, and Carve. She was hesitant about meeting other people, but I still pulled her along because she needed to get over her fears one way or another.

“Stone,” Carve said, nodding.

“Who’s this?” Sina asked, smiling at Zuri.

“This is my mate, Zuri.”

Zuri gulped and peered over at them. “H-hi.”

“Hi!” Maxine waved from Sina’s side. “Wanna grab coffee with us?”

“Um, I think we were?—”

“Go,” I said to her, ushering her along. “I need to talk to Carve alone.”

Staring at me through huge help me eyes, Zuri sighed softly and followed the girls across the street to a small coffee shop named Chaos. I cleared my throat and walked with Carve out the doors.

“Haven’t seen you in a few days,” Carve said.

“Could say the same about you.”

“What’d you ask me to meet you here for?”

“Advice,” I said.

He let out a lifeless laugh. “Since when do you need advice?”

“Since you’re the only person who has done what I want to do.”

“Done what?”

“Rule the world.”

“You want me to tell you how? Fuck no. Besides, you have a mate now.”

“And?”

“And you should forget about your dreams, about revenge. It will lead you nowhere.”

“Do you think any pack—especially my brother’s—really deserves to live?

” I asked, my hand tightening into a fist while I gazed past Carve and toward Zuri, who stood tensely next to Maxine and Sina across the street.

“Zuri’s ex-pack abused her—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Goddess only knows what my shit-faced brother will do once he finds out I have found my mate. I need to do?—”

“You don’t understand,” he growled. “If you have done what I have done, killed who I have killed, lusted for power and women, validation, vengeance, then you would not attempt to slaughter your brother. That’s a terrible path to walk down alone.”

“I’m not alone. I have Zuri.”

“And I had Olenna once.”

I pressed my lips together and averted my gaze. “The rumors are lies. I don’t lust for power or women. I lust after wrapping my hands around my brother’s throat and feeling the way his blood pumps through his body while he takes his last breath.”

“Do you think I was so terribly motivated when I began my journey?” he asked. “Because I had innocent motives that were corrupted over time by reality. Not dreams or people. Reality, Stone. If you don’t take this shit seriously, you’ll see for yourself.”

I didn’t take advice from anyone, but I respected Carve. He had lived a thousand lives, fought ten thousand battles, and lost his fated mate hundreds of times over and over again. Now, she lived in hatred of him.

Utter hatred.

“Olenna lives in Durnbone, you know,” I said.

“Don’t bring her up,” he said through gritted teeth. “I know she does. I’ve seen her.”

“Don’t you want her back?”

“Of course I do. My eyes fucking burn every night while I watch her flirt with other men, lie with them in her bedroom,” Carve snapped, hand tightening around his knives.

“She is supposed to be with me, and I’m slowly losing control again around her.

I fear that there will be no going back. No turning back time. This time …”

“You’ll have her for good,” I finished.

He relaxed his grip on his knives and nodded in agreement, but we both knew that she wouldn’t come to him willingly. He would have to wreak havoc, need to do shit so horrific that she couldn’t ignore.

“We will be together until our very last breaths,” he said, softer than I’d ever heard.

“So,” I said, curling my lips into a smirk, “you’re going to help me.”

Carve drew his fingers across his blades, a spark inside him that he hadn’t ignited for decades suddenly burning. Since King Xorgor had ascended the demon throne, Carve had been aching for another war. I could see it in his fucking eyes.

He tried to be smarter and wiser, but he had been cursed to fight.

“We’re terrible friends,” Carve said, which meant he had my back. No matter what.

“The fucking worst.”