Page 17

“This is going to hurt,” Finn warns him before shoving Gideon’s shoulder back into its socket.

It does. It hurts like a bitch, and he’s the only one who doesn’t flinch.

Gideon learned early that making a fuss about pain only got you more of the same. Patrick Carnell had taught him that life is pain, and the sooner you accepted that it was unavoidable, the better you’d be at teaching the lesson to others.

So Gideon had learned both lessons, and he’d learned them well.

The pack is still standing in the dark in front of the gate, exactly where they’d been when Finn had thrown himself out of an Uber, smelling of fresh lilacs and looking dazed and confused. He’d clarified that the daze had been from delivering Arlo’s new daughter. She smelled like lilacs, turning her array of fathers into bumbling, giggling, and snarling Weres.

He had been thanked heartily for his service—then summarily thrown out on his ass.

Subsequently, Finn had turned up at the compound confused and expecting the worst because while he had been delivering a placenta, Nix had been ripping the heart from Dill Pickle’s chest.

Finn had caught glimpses of what Nix was seeing through their new bond, and in the process, he had fumbled the organ he was holding. As he tells it, Baz had nearly tripped in his haste to catch it—without thinking—and with his bare hands.

Gideon can’t help but smile at the mental image of the chaos. Flustered Finn is one of Gideon’s favorite things .

That and the absence of pure agony is a relief, but Gideon still feels like shit. The pulsing ache behind his eyes hasn’t let up, and the swelling must be terrible—because every time Jay catches sight of him, he flinches.

Grayson had run back to the house for warm washcloths and an ice pack since Jay insisted they all stay at the scene. After all, they still hadn’t decided what to do with Dill Pickle—or his no-longer-beating heart—lying just three feet away.

“Here, love. Let me…” Jay tilts Gideon’s chin this way and that, shaking his head. A single warm cloth won’t make a dent in what is sure to be a literal bloody mess on his face.

“I was so worried,” he whispers, careful not to be overheard by their other mates—especially Rowan, who is still standing over the body. They’ve given up trying to stop him from the occasional growl and kick.

“Yeah? You worried about lil’ ole me?” Gideon drawls, his words thick with Southern honey and sass. His accent is atrociously bad, earning an eye-roll from Jay.

But Jay doesn’t smile like Gideon intended. Instead, his face is dead serious.

“You were lying there like he’d killed you. I will never unsee him pounding on you. Never.”

Jay’s voice cracks, and Gideon’s guilt grows one more size.

Like the Grinch’s heart, soon it’ll be too big to be contained inside his chest.

Guilt.

Patrick Carnell had taught him about pain and hatred—but never about guilt. His mother had taught him that.

That love sometimes means regret.

And more often than not, it means guilt, too.

Fuck, does that hurt.

Gideon brushes his bloody knuckles down Jay’s cheek. “I’m okay, Alpha.”

Jay wraps a hand around the back of Gideon’s neck, squeezing gently. “You almost weren’t. I heard you make that crazy laugh, and it sent shivers down my spine. We will talk about you enjoying that too much when this dust settles, yeah?”

Fuck, no they will not. Not if Gideon had anything to say about it.

The list of things they do need to talk about is already too long, and that’s just from today.

At the edge of the drive, Finn finishes checking Nix over, sparing Gideon an awkward denial. “Now, can someone tell me what happened?”

“Gideon and Nix kicked one of the intruders’ asses!” Rowan exclaims from his position near the car. He punctuates the words with another nudge to Dill Pickle’s corpse.

“T’was epic,” a cuddly Luca mumbles from Leo’s lap on the edge of the driveway. He’s seeking comfort with a hand under Leo’s shirt, kneading his pec while his mouth works a nearly-black hickey into his neck.

Not for the first time, Gideon wishes he could curl up in someone’s lap and be comforted, too.

Jay runs a hand over the top of his head like he can read Gideon’s mind. “You okay, love?”

He’s so far from okay, but it’s easier to solve a problem than be one. “Yes, of course. What are we doing with Dill Pickle?” He’d like to set him on fire, but Bethany from the neighborhood watch would definitely have something to say about that.

“Well, we can’t just bury him in the backyard,” Grayson says wryly.

“No, you’re right, pretty. We have to call the police.”

It’s the worst idea Jay has ever had, and everyone’s face shows they agree. But like Jay, Gideon can’t see another way around it.

“That’s crazy. Tell me we are not telling them our superhero omega went all rawr and grrr, and now we have a dead body twice his size in the driveway without its heart.” Luca states.

What he doesn’t add is that they’re due in court in two days, and there’s no way Nix is flying under anyone’s radar in prison—just like he hasn’t in real life.

There’s also still the matter of who Dill Pickle is and who sent him—although Gideon has an inkling, the idea doesn’t bring relief.

Nix whines at Luca’s words, and Grayson pulls him close, rocking him gently from side to side. He’s been so quiet otherwise that Gideon starts to worry—maybe he’s in shock.

Surely Finn would recognize it?

Or not. “I hate being in the dark,” Finn mutters to no one in particular. He means about the fight, but it could just as easily apply to everything about today.

Rowan pops up from behind the car, dusting his hands off. For the first time since they came through the gate, he joins the group, standing away from the body. “We are literally standing in the dark, Finn.”

Shifting the scent-relaxed Luca across his lap, Leo presses a kiss to his mate’s forehead. “Why don’t we see if Sentinel can help?”

It’s a fine idea—except anyone with the power to decide is in seclusion with their brand-new daughter. Gideon doesn’t want to think about babies and new life right now and shoves the thought away.

Instead, he pokes at Leo, shocked to hear it—because morally, Leo is straight as an arrow. “What? No cops? Leo! I am shooketh ,” Gideon mocks.

“Fuck you. Look, all I’m saying is this guy is a Bad Guy. Capital B, capital G. And who’s going to be looking for him? More Bad Guys, that’s who.”

“I say let them come,” Rowan growls, cracking his neck, fists clenched.

“No.”

It’s the first thing Nix has said out loud since calling Gideon mine , and his dark tone brooks no argument. “No more bad people in, on, or near my den. No. Think of something else.”

“Alright, baby boy. I’ll tell them it was me. We can scrub the camera footage to be sure, and—” Jay already has his phone in hand, scrolling for a number.

It’s Gideon’s turn to say, “No.”

There is no way he’s letting his alpha take the heat. Being a pack leader and a celebrity in the middle of starting up their new label is already bringing them more than enough attention.

“I’ll do it. I’m fucking bloody already.” Besides, unlike Gideon, Jay looks like he stepped off the cover of GQ , not straight out of True Crime .

“No one is taking the blame but me. I did it. Me,” Nix starts, but the pack is having none of it.

The abrupt commotion startles Tsuki enough to bark…and bark…and bark.

“Angel, even Tsuki thinks that idea sucks. You can’t go to jail. You smell like candy and look like you fell from heaven. They won’t allow you scent blockers, and Were prisons are no fucking joke,” Grayson pleads.

Grayson couldn’t really know anything about the viciousness of the Were prison system or its inhabitants. None of them could. Even Gideon hadn’t spent time incarcerated—but he had friends in low places.

He was raised by the king of the lowest .

He’d also grown up listening to well-trained criminals talk about life inside. Prison is the last place someone as pure as Nix should ever be. He’s already seen more evil up close than he ever should have.

“Kitten, you are not taking the blame for anything. You protected your family and your home,” Gideon says firmly. “Besides, Hayes is in a holding cell in city lockup. He was transferred in for the trial today. That’s the last place you’re going.”

Burnt vanilla scorches through the tight circle of mates before Nix sucks it all back up like a vacuum.

Gideon hates that he’s the cause, but he can’t go easy on this. He hasn’t put his foot down in any real way, but Nix will not spend one millisecond behind bars.

Not one.

“How, pray tell, would you know that?” Jay asks, one eyebrow raised, arms crossed. The action pulls his black button-up taut, showcasing his magnificent shoulders and arms.

Sigh.

Well, shit. Gideon hadn’t meant to let that cat out of the proverbial bag.

“I keep tabs on him.” Gideon keeps it simple. Vague.

“You keep tabs ?” Finn asks, unhelpfully. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Fuck. Fine.

“I get reports from acquaintances on occasion.” Once a day—unless Hayes is being moved—then it’s more. “Just so I know what’s what. I don’t want us to be surprised.”

But they were.

They were fucking taken off guard, and now his entire family was at risk. Goddess-dammit.

Gideon remembers, with a sinking stomach, that Dill Pickle had said he couldn’t kill Gideon —not that he wouldn’t have killed anyone else. That he was here to take Nix with him when he was done.

Nix curls in on himself. “Why do you do that? Do you think he’s going to escape?”

“Never. I keep track, so I know he’s fucking miserable.”

Gideon loved hearing how the piece of shit took a shiv to the abdomen on the first day in the yard—just for being an asshole. Or that once he’d returned to the general population, someone had pissed on him in the yard.

While none of it had been Gideon’s idea or his doing, exactly, there may or may not have been a few cases of cigarettes delivered anonymously in thanks.

Jay coughs, rubbing a hand over his face because Jay knows him all too well. “Fuck, Gideon.”

“And is he?” Nix asks, sitting up straighter.

Gideon tilts his head, deciding how graphic he should be.

He meets Nix’s gaze and nods. “He was very happy to be moved into solitary at city lock-up.”

Hopefully, Nix can feel just how much Gideon has worked behind the scenes to make sure Hayes has had not one moment of peace—and won’t until he’s dead in the ground.

“Good.” Nix nods and turns in Grayson’s arms, finally relaxing a bit.

It hasn’t solved their problem here and now, but for whatever reason, Nix is content knowing Gideon has his back.

“Hey,” Rowan says.

Gideon hates it when his beloved baby alpha starts any conversation like that.

“Does anyone else smell that? I mean, Dill Pickle now smells like poopy-pants, but it’s something else? Like—”

Jay and Gideon walk toward Rowan, noses up.

They follow the putrid odor to the back of the car—

—and stop dead in their tracks.

“Oh, fuck,” Jay says again, and this time, it’s not his fault their leader sounds uncertain.

He grabs a damp cloth from Grayson, using the clean side to open the passenger-side door and pop the trunk release on the older car.

The scent of death is overwhelming, and both Grayson and Leo move their armful of cuddly mates away.

Their regular pizza delivery boy is curled up in the trunk. Someone might think he was asleep—if it weren’t for the odd angle of his neck.

Poor kid. His only mistake was being on shift to deliver pizza to the Rhodes’s. He’d been a hilarious beta, full of jokes and always appreciative of the big tip.

That boy had a family. People who loved him. Someone waiting for him to come home tonight. People who will miss him. A future he’s lost.

And for what? Just to get to Nix?

His stomach twists, rage curling in his ribs like a fist. The kid had never even had a chance.

“What are you looking at?” Nix’s voice cuts through the tense quiet, the fall breeze carrying the scent of death his way. “Is it a bad pizza? Let me see.”

Grayson scrambles to hold him back, but Nix slips free—yet even before he gets close enough to see, the realization hits.

The putrid stench of decay barely masks the crisp scent of peppermint, young and bright and so heartbreakingly familiar. His breath catches.

He shakes his head, eyes wide with denial. “No. No. Please. Tell me that’s not a p—person. Oh, god.”

His sweet kitten, the one with the purest soul, is begging him to make it right.

“I’m so sorry.” He won’t add lying to his list of regrets today.

“No, no, no,” Nix cries as Grayson pulls him into his arms.

As always, his soulmate can’t be still when their bond is burning. “Hey, what’s going on?” Luca murmurs. “Ew. Gross. Is that you, Rowan? What did you eat?”

Leo shushes him, whispering in his ear. When Luca looks to his soulmate for confirmation, Gideon only nods.

“Oh, baby. You’re okay. It’s okay,” Luca croons, scrambling off Leo’s lap to join Grayson in holding Nix together.

Finn checks the young man’s vitals to be absolutely sure, even though there’s no escaping it. Gideon only hoped he hadn’t been frightened—that, instead, it had been instantaneous.

“Could this get any worse?” Rowan mutters, glancing toward the far end of the street.

Gideon barely has time to roll his eyes before headlights appear on the road. Big ones. A truck.

Jay must think it’s trouble, too, because he shuts the trunk with slow, deliberate care—like he’s closing a coffin.

“Everyone behind the gate—side door closed. Gideon and I will handle it. Go. Out of sight, please.”

Leo helps Grayson urge Nix and Luca through the side door, and neither complains. Whoever this is, they’re slowing as they approach, and Gideon agrees the others should be out of the way. Just in case this is Dill Pickle’s backup.

The large, black, nondescript S.W.A.T.-style truck rolls to a stop in front of the driveway. A lone woman, dressed head-to-toe in black, steps out—honey-blonde ponytail swinging.

Gideon wishes the gate’s infrared camera was still live. He’d love to know who else is inside.

“Evening! You must be Jay. I’m Cat from Sentinel. Logan told you we were coming?”

She’s holding a tablet, her no-nonsense attitude a perfect match for her employer.

“Of course,” Jay says with a nod. “He said you would have a password for me?”

“Frankenstein. ”

She has to be wondering why they’re all standing out by the gate with a car emblazoned with a glowing pizza sign on top. She hasn’t clocked the car or the body yet—or at least, Gideon thinks she hasn’t. If Logan’s security team is as good as claimed, she should have noticed by now.

“We’re here for your install, but maybe there’s something else we can do for you instead.” She holds Jay’s gaze, unreadable. “I can get Logan on the phone, confirm you can trust us—if you agree.”

Just once, something should go their way tonight. But he’s not about to tempt the Fates by saying so out loud.

Jay is stone-faced, his mind running through the possibilities.

This is one of those moments that reminds Gideon exactly why he is not destined to rule a pack—why he was meant to be here, at Jay’s side. Maybe he’s been destined to be here, in every life, through all of time.

Because Jay was born to make the hard decisions.

In the end, Jay nods, and Cat dials Logan on her tablet.

It rings twice before she disconnects. Redialing, it rings three times—another disconnect. The final time, it rings once, and then Logan’s face fills the screen.

“Go,” the alpha says.

“Code Black,” Cat responds.

Logan’s breath catches. “Friendly?”

“No, sir.” She glances at Jay, who shakes his head. She’d rightly assumed there would be a lot more chaos if it had been a member of the Rhodes pack.

Logan exhales, relieved. “Good. Approved. Level seven sweep.”

“Seven-sweep?” Cat asks incredulously but nods.

“Yes, seven. Is Gideon there?”

Gideon holds his hand out for the tablet.

“I’ll just assess.” She whistles, and three women pour out of the truck, moving in perfect sync to secure the perimeter. They must have been monitoring the conversation from inside.

Logan’s eyes narrow with concern. “Everyone okay? You look like shit.”

Are they okay? Who can say? They’re sitting ducks at the moment .

“For now. And respectfully, fuck you.”

Logan raises a brow but eventually nods. “They won’t finish the install tonight if they’re going Level Seven. But I’ll put four guards at your place in the meantime. I’ll text you their dossiers so you can verify them when they arrive. That work for you?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Gideon says, just as Jay pops up behind so he can look over his shoulder.

“Logan. What’s a Level Seven?” Jay asks.

Logan smirks. “Better you don’t know, Jay. Talk soon.” And he’s gone.

Gideon hadn’t congratulated him on his daughter—it didn’t seem right to talk about life in the middle of a conversation about death.

Jay exhales sharply. “Did you know they did that?”

They both watch as the operatives pull out bags and start on the car, wiping surfaces with matte black cloths. A dark-haired agent with a fluffy dog tattoo under her ear wields an almost silent vacuum the size of a shoebox.

“Fuck no,” Gideon sighs.

“Hey, Gideon?” she calls.

He meets Cat at the front of the vehicle, passing the same dark-haired agent—now stripping the PIZZA sign from the roof and tossing it into the back of the truck. Another pops the hood, filing off the VIN. A third follows her nose, pops the trunk, takes one look, then shuts it again.

“Two,” she says simply.

The word lands like a weight in his chest. The boy. Still curled in the dark, still just a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A sharp shard of regret presses behind Gideon’s ribs. He swears to himself that the boy’s family will know the truth.

When he and Jay reach Cat, she raises an eyebrow and points at Dill Pickle’s boots. The laces have been tied together.

That explains why Rowan had been so intent on “guarding” the body.

“Rowan!” Jay yells. The troublemaker can’t be far—he never is during moments like this.

“What!” Rowan jogs up, arms crossed, a smug smile in place. He’s very handsome and very pleased with himself.

Cat blinks, her cheeks flushing, and Gideon can’t blame her. Rowan is nuclear-level hot in his tank top and knee-length shorts. He couldn’t blame her—but he would, if she didn’t quit ogling his man.

He lifts an eyebrow.

She meets his eyes and looks away.

Jay sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ro, why are his bootlaces tied together?”

It’s as if he’s afraid to ask—Gideon would be.

“Well, he might turn into a zombie,” Rowan says with a shrug, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Jay stares before finally asking the question: “And the bootlaces will prevent that?”

Rowan scoffs. “Fuck no, but it sure will be funnier.”