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“Uh, uh. You don’t talk, you don’t speak.” Chanin barked, before continuing. “You see, you were a short-sighted coward then as you are now. How pitiful and afraid you must be to hurt those weaker, manipulate others, steal the innocent—”

“Fuck you, Chanin!”

“Ah, there’s the man.” Chanin stared at Farkas’s naked ass, plopped on top of the dusty table. Tilting his head to the side, he met the other man’s gaze. “How comfortable would you be if I told you your ass was perched in the bits and pieces of what was left of Valko?”

Farkas snapped his gaze down toward the table, toward the top still pebbled with blood, skin, and dirt. With haste, he leaped down and then stared around his feet at the floor.

Chanin knew he had seen more of the same.

“What the fuck... did you do to him?” Farkas’s eyes pinged around the room from the floor to the table, then to the walls, painted in bloody, muddy streaks, and lastly, he tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling where a dried starburst-like image remained decorating the steel.

“It’s better you don’t consider just how pissed off the Fae are at you right now,” Bleddyn chimed in.

Farkas turned to face Bleddyn head on, growling and crouching.

“Oh, please, make my day today.” Bleddyn stepped out of the shadows where he’d been resting against the wall. “I’d love to take such a shitty wolf problem off the Alpha’s hands.”

“Alpha?” Farkas sneered. “You’re looking at him.”

Bleddyn let out a barking laugh.

Boris joined him. “In your fucking dreams. I’d have walked my entire security detail out of Lupine territory and would have pledged our fealty to the Drahk or Ursine before I’d served a day under your leadership.”

“Fuck you, Boris.”

Still in the same position with his arms over his chest, Boris smiled at Farkas, not needing to respond to Farkas's barbs.

“The chair, Farkas, and I promise to make your death quick,” Chanin demanded as he picked up the rusty saw from the floor and tossed it to the table.

The clatter rang loud in the room.

Farkas turned toward him. “Just kill me and get it over with. Stop with the cat toy shit.”

“Offensive. I thought dog with bone. So, sit!” he barked, allowing his beast’s growl to filter through his command, that even though Farkas may have convinced those who went rogue with him that he was top dog, what Farkas couldn’t deny was his wolf’s natural instinct to yield to the true Alpha.

The man may have struggled, evident in the flexing of Farkas’s jaw as he gritted his teeth, but the wolf won out, and his cousin stomped his bare ass to the chair in the middle of the room.

Chanin moved from behind the side of the table and walked toward his cousin, not stopping until he was an arm’s length in front of him. He didn’t miss Farkas’s gaze over the minute distance with a wicked smile.

Oh, I want you to try it , Chanin thought. His wolf was itching to tear into Farkas, so if his cousin felt terrible enough to jump at him, it would all be over for the rogue leader.

“You want to know how I got them to follow me? How cunning I was to sneak into the Drahk territory and snag one of their fat goats? Or the cleverness of how easy I find it to tiptoe into the meadow and pluck me two ripe teens?” Farkas folded his hands over his filthy chest, slouched down in the metal seat and man spread his knees, executing a cocky stance.

“They're coming... and you won’t... be able to stop the carnage—” Valko’s cryptic words reverberated in Chanin’s mind as he stared into the unrepentant soulless gaze of his cousin.

“No. Brag to someone who cares. Too late, they’re all dead.” Chanin cocked a brow, a challenge to Farkas. “I want to know what you did with the blood.”

Farkas's brows rose a fraction.

He didn’t think they had that information, evidently.

“What? You thought Valko was loyal enough to you, the wannabe Alpha, and that he would carry your secret to the grave?” Chanin shook his head. “Dishonor doesn’t breed loyalty.”

Farkas swallowed, appearing more than a little nervous now as he glanced from Chanin to the other two men in the room.

“Wh-hy...should I tell you anything? You’ll kill me anyway...but I’ll win because you won’t know what’s coming.” Farkas tipped his head back and started to chuckle. “Ahhah—”

In a flash, Chanin shot a hand out and grabbed Farkas’s lower jaw.

Fingers deep in his mouth with claws extended, sinking into the firm flesh of Farkas’s tongue, through the soft tissue behind his chin guarded by his jawbone, until those same nails passed the piercing nail of Chanin’s thumb digging upwards.

Farkas's broken laughter became a hideous, gagging scream. He reached up and grabbed Chanin’s wrist with both hands, but knew that if he attempted to snatch Chanin’s hand away because of the grip, it would be easy for Chanin to rip his jaw off.

Their healing ability couldn’t regrow a tongue and jaw.

“When we started this, Farkas, I told you, you could die quick...or I can make it so fuckin’ painful.” Chanin stooped close to his cousin’s face and stared into his glassy, pain-filled eyes. “Which will it be? Hm, little pussycat?”

Rising, Chanin retracted his claws and yanked his arm out of Farkas’s hold.

“Phuck...phuck...phuck!” Farkas cupped his mouth and jaw as he grumbled and whined as a mixture of blood and saliva streamed around his hands. His wolf tongue extended between his hands and fingers, licking around his face, attempting to reach the wounds and heal.

The same combination coated Chanin’s hand.

He held his hand to the side away from his body and flicked his fingers out toward the ground, not worried that the gesture didn’t get rid of much, it was more to send a clear message to Farkas that he was prepared to add his broken body to Valko’s remnants.

“Where’s the blood you took from the Fae teens?”

Shaking his hands and lowering them in fists on top of his thighs, blood still smeared at the corners of his mouth and chin, Farkas said, “Fuck it. You all can’t stop what’s coming anyway.” Farkas exhaled. “I handed it off to the human government.”

Fuck! All hopes that even though Farkas had taken the blood, he couldn’t hand it off, still held it hidden somewhere, were dashed. “You traitorous bastard. When?”

Farkas's shoulders slumped. It seemed he had an ounce of shame remaining, most likely his wolf because Pack meant everything to their beasts, to cast his gaze to the floor.

“Before you all came to rescue them. I drew the blood as soon as we had them out of the Fae territory. I instructed my men to take the teen girls to the hideout while I delivered.”

A growl pierced the room.

Farkas first glanced up at him, then beyond him.

Boris.

Chanin knew the Pack security leader was pissed that Farkas had managed not only to evade his team but hand off stolen blood. He couldn’t worry about the rage of the security wolf right now. He still needed answers.

His mind rolling, Chanin folded his arms over his chest and paced in the open space between Boris and Farkas. “How did you make the original arrangement? Contact the humans?”

Farkas glanced at him from the corner of his eye but quickly returned his glare to Boris.

Chanin knew Boris was mad, but he knew the shifter wouldn’t make a move without his Alpha’s authority.

“After you announced to the Pack that you and the other territory leaders had allied with the human government to provide us with human women for mates in exchange for serum.” Farkas glanced over his shoulder at Bleddyn who remained silent, but deadly, in the shadows.

“When the Beta got his female, I knew the agreement held.”

His cousin's jealousy toward Amira, being Bleddyn’s, came through powerfully.

Farkas leaned back in his chair, fixing his gaze on Chanin. “But I hate fuckin’ lotteries. With all the Preternaturals in the mix and the humans only dropping one at a time... Naw. I figured fuck those odds.”

Chanin shoved a hand through his hair. It pissed off all the council when the medical truck showed up with only one sick human.

The council’s mistake had been not forcing the humans to reveal how many marked ones they would bring out at a time.

Since the government tracked down their radio frequency and pleaded with them for help because of the widespread diseases and mass deaths, the preternatural council foolishly assumed that the ill, marked ones would be led to them in droves, ants marching to a plate of honey.

When they called the human government about their tactics, they said no number had been discussed. Underhanded bastards .

They’d instead let their poor die, rather than give them to the shifters. Afraid of our numbers outgrowing theirs.

“How did you get in contact with the humans?” Chanin knew satellite radios were limited. Most handhelds issued had a range only enough for the territory.

“Valko and I followed you a few times to the meeting and spied the medical transport leaving.” He shrugged.

“We tracked them. We waited until they were far away from the meeting grounds, intercepted them, and sent the crew back with a message that I could get them the missing serum. Fae. But their government had to agree to thirteen females, within breeding age. With the next transport they agreed on thirteen.”

Chanin stopped his slow pacing and met Farkas’s gaze. “But you never got them? What were your delivery arrangements?”

Were there sick women loose in the territories now?

“I couldn’t fucking make them yet, because I needed a new hideout.” Farkas shot a glare at Boris

“Hmm,” Boris grunted.

Farkas slammed his fists on his knees, showing anger and frustration. “I’d finally found a place you all would never look, then those damn fuckin’ Ursine...”

Thank the Great Spirit . Farkas had been caught, and hopefully, that situation will end. The last thing they needed was Farkas having a harem, breeding with thirteen women, and attempting to build a territory inhabited by Farkas’s traitorous, selfish spawn.