Page 137 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

“Please,” he moaned. “Let me heal myself.”

He pulled against the chains holding his arms behind his back and choked out a wet cough, turning to spit on the ground.

“Not until we’re finished.” A lie.

I was starting to realize our mistake and what I’d need to do to fix it...

Gregory couldn’t leave Forest Grove. He could never be allowed to walk out of here. Even the smallest possibility of his retribution—of the retribution of the Arcane Council against my pack…

I shuddered.

It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

Jared walked just behind Hazel as she made her way inside, walking straight to where I stood, her milky gaze sweeping the ground.

“I need you to read him,” I explained. “Can you do that?”

Hazel ran her tongue over her teeth, considering, before she finally nodded.

I looked to Jared and then to Clay. “Unbind him.

Hold him steady.”

Jared’s face was a mask of horror as he knelt to do as I asked. I had to block out his emotions as he passed. They threatened to crush my resolve. I gravitated to Clay as he also moved to Gregory, on his opposite side. He was brooding and furious, shocked, worried, but not disgusted.

Jared unlocked the manacles and my mates each took one of Gregory’s arms while he pulled against their hold, protesting in indeterminate mutterings.

“What…” he breathed, his hands balling to fists. “What is she going to do to me?”

“Open his hand,” I ordered Clay, and he forcibly unfurled the witch’s fingers. Not wanting to wind up with more broken bones, the bastard didn’t fight him much.

I led Hazel to Gregory’s left side and guided her hands to his open palm.

“What is she doing?” Gregory demanded, baring his teeth.

I crossed my arms and waited as Grams ran her fingertips over the uncallused skin of his palm.

As her body hunched in on itself and her features twisted.

Her milky eyes lit with the glow of her wolf, and Clay ripped her away, clutching her by her wrist while he held Gregory steady with his other hand.

“What is it?” he asked in a snarl, and Hazel’s murderous stare found Gregory through her blindness.

“He has wolf blood on his hands,” she said in a low whisper. “Vampire, too.”

His eyes went wide.

“He likes the thrill of it,” Hazel continued, not knowing that each of her words was hammering a new nail in this fucker’s coffin. I was feeling less ill at the thought of ending this monster’s life by the second.

“Even though he’s acting on orders and not of his own mind.”

“Can you tell if he’s hurt Trey and Todd? Luke?”

She solemnly shook her head. “No. I can only sense his darkness. Feel the texture of it. His emotions. No specifics.”

I ground my teeth.

“Thanks, Hazel. You can go.”

“Think I’ll stay,” she said, her face pinched as she backed out of my way to stand sentinel behind me, crossing her wrinkled arms over her long nightdress.

I didn’t have it in me to argue. She could think of me what she wanted. This needed to be done.

“I’d start explaining if I were you,” I growled. “Where are my friends?”

“I d-didn’t touch them,” he argued, and I saw Clay’s grip on his arm tighten, making him grit out a little squeal.

“It’s the truth! I have done what she said, but it was orders, nothing more.

I was sent here to bring you in—for testing.

Because you’re different than the others.

Rumor has it that a vampire’s compulsion has no sway over you.

That you can see through a witch’s ward.

It’s unnatural.” His upper lip curled back.

“I’m not here to kill you or anyone else. Just to bring you in.”

“So that your superior can do what?” Clay demanded, twisting his arm. “Torture her with some fucked up testing and then kill her.”

Gregory’s lips sealed closed, and it was as much an admission of guilt as if he’d spoken.

“There can be no evidence,” he muttered so low I wasn’t certain I heard him correctly. It didn’t matter though, I’d heard enough.

“If you don’t know the whereabouts of my missing pack mates, then you are of no more use to me.”

I waited, allowing those words to soak in. Allowing the weight of my stare to convey my intention until the reek of his fear permeated the air. He opened his mouth to speak a few times before closing it again for good.

Either he truly didn’t know or he was willing to die to protect the secret. I was starting to assume the former, but there was one way I could be sure to prevent further harm to my pack: eliminate him from the equation. He said he was working for one of the Arcane Council members.

I had to assume it was a corrupt one. That no one else except that singular alchemist knew Gregory was here. And he wouldn’t go reporting his missing assassin to anyone if Gregory never returned because that would be tantamount to admitting what he was doing.

Round and round the thoughts parried and lunged in my mind. Trying to find the best—the safest— option. I had to trust that this option was the one that would lead to the least amount of harm. Otherwise...I didn’t want to think about otherwise.

Trust your gut.

“There isn’t any way I can trust your word,” I spoke in a low rumble, lengthening up through my spine as I sized up the blade clipped to the waistband of Clay’s dark denim jeans. “But there is one way I can make sure that if you are responsible, you can hurt no one else.”

“Y-you said you’d let me go,” he croaked, his face twisting just as much as he tried to twist in Clay and Jared’s grip.

I shook my head solemnly. Giving him a moment to make peace with my choice. To say a prayer if he wished. He did neither of those things though as I numbly knelt in front of him, drenching my knees in the cool damp of his blood in the dirt.

“Allie, we can’t…” Jared pleaded, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he looked between the witch and me. His heart beat hard against his ribcage; I could hear it from here. Like a caged beast smashing against iron bars.

“Let me do it,” Clay offered, cutting me a hard stare from the corner of his eye while Gregory devolved into racking sobs and the smell of urine prickled my nose.

“Clay,” Jared snapped. I looked at the blade on Clay’s waistband, a question in my stare. His jaw tightened, but he nodded, giving me permission.

Jared’s wolf crashed to the surface, urged almost to bursting free from his heightened emotion.” We aren’t seriously going to—”

In one swift movement, I leaned forward, freed the knife from Clay’s waist. The solemn click of the blade flicking open came only an instant before I dragged the honed edge against the witch’s throat.

Hot blood spurted and spilled down his neck, and his eyes went wide with shock as he fought for air, burbling and croaking his last as his body convulsed and then began to sag.

Jared dropped his arm as though stung and skidded backward, looking green.

Clay gently leaned the dead witch against the ground and closed his still-staring eyes, pressing down with his thumb and index finger on the witch’s eyelids.

I stared mutely at the evidence of the lengths I would go to in order to protect my pack and felt…

Nothing.

For once, the awful flutter of anxiety in my chest had eased. The shaking was gone, and I felt an unfamiliar stillness in my bones that I hadn’t for some time now. The gore made me a bit queasy, but that was the only bit of discomfort I felt.

My brows drew together as a darkness crept into my thoughts, whispering how I must be a monster to feel this calm, this at peace, with the body of a man I’d just killed not even cold yet at my feet.

I eliminated the threat. I’m not sorry.

I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken aloud until Jared lurched to his feet and left the moon chamber, chucking the manacle keys to the dirt before he vanished.

Light hands landed on my shoulders, and I breathed in Hazel’s baked goods scent, letting it chase away the shadows with dreams of gooey chocolate and warm brown sugar.

“You did what you needed to,” she told me, and for some strange reason, it was those words that undid me.

A stinging pain raked up my throat and burned in my eyes. My stomach twisted.

Hazel patted my shoulders, and her long silver hair tickled my cheeks when she leaned in. “Go rest now. Let me and my grandson clean up here.”

Clay grunted as he rose to his feet and pulled me up with him, tugging me into his chest and out of Hazel’s grasp. My tears wet his shirt as I inhaled his familiar scent, letting it wash over me and take away the sting.

“It was the right choice,” he reassured me, whispering against my hair. “The only choice.”

He pushed me back to hold me at arm’s length, jutting his chin out to gesture to where Jared had just left through the door. “He knows that, too. Just give him some time to realize it.”

I nodded even though I didn’t fully believe that. “I should help. We’ll bury him on pack land. Somewhere no one else will come snooping. The second ring maybe? Out by the caves?”

Clay squeezed my arms before letting go. “Go be with your girls. They’re waiting for you inside. We’ll clean this up and then I’ll stay with you tonight.”

It went without saying that Jared would spend the night elsewhere.

Whether at the quarry or the old cabin in the woods was anyone’s guess.

I really hoped he was smart enough to go to the cabin and not the quarry though.

He’d be alone there and the nearest patrol route was a mile and a half out.

At least the cabin was warded. Only members of our pack could find it, and only because my ability to see through witch’s wards now extended to them.

I sighed and gave in, the prospect of a nice cold whiskey enough to get my legs moving even though an emptiness was forming in my chest, hollowing out my bones.

With each mile I felt Jared move away from camp, from me, a hole formed in my soul, and I had to wonder if I was any better than the previous pack alpha.

A knot formed between Clay’s brows, and he shook me, getting my attention again. “Hey. What’s going on in there?” he demanded, bright blue eyes flicking between my gray ones.

“It’s nothing,” I replied, swallowing past the lump in my throat as I slipped out of his grasp. “Get back soon?”

“I will.”

“And take at least two others with you. If he was telling the truth, then the threat is still out there. We may not be safe. Not yet.”