Page 29

“Shit,” Gideon says to Jay as they approach the cars. “I think I left the keys in the side of the med bag.”

Rowan has once again tried to convince someone to let him drive by taking ownership of the front seat of the black sedan, and Grayson has used the door code to open the doors on the white one, just waiting for the others to get in.

“You what? Gideon. Fuck. I’ll go with you.” Jay looks back at their pack, jostling for position in the back next to Nix.

“No! That’s okay. I’ll run back. It won’t take me long.” Gideon nods toward the group of happy mates. “Besides, someone should go home and see Tsuki.”

“If you’re sure?” Jay is torn between going back with Gideon and protecting their pack.

“I’m sure. I’ll be back before you know it.” He jogs off, then turns to shout, “Do not touch that beef in the fridge, Jay.”

He hears his alpha grumble yeah, yeah before Gideon is lost in the trees.

As soon as he’s out of sight, he puts on a burst of speed, and immediately, it’s as it had been when he ran these woods as a child, with the natural predators that reside here.

This time, he has a date with fate, and he does not want to be late.

The arena is empty when he gets there, with only Gideon’s contact standing guard. There is a single guard assigned to be sure the prisoner is dead before calling the mortician in, who will then take Hayes directly to the incinerator .

Gideon couldn’t care less about what happens to him after that.

Pete is one of the people Gideon had… acquired over the years after returning to Nashville. He was a good person to know, especially now.

Pete opens the wrought-iron gate just as Gideon runs up. “Better hurry.”

Instead of hurrying, though, Gideon slows his stride, slips off his shoes, and treads as quietly as he can to where Hayes is lying— still alive— in an ever-widening pool of his putrid blood. Gideon can tell he’s still living because of the hitching of his breaths and the occasional twitch of the fingers on his only “good” hand.

Nix had done a remarkable job in injuring for pain and not for death, as if he’d studied the art of Death by a Thousand Cuts . But as Gideon catalogs the injuries, it is obvious they weren’t random at all.

What a smart kitten.

“Wh–’s there?” Hayes mutters. Blood has completely blocked his vision, and his limbs are too weak to wipe it clear.

Gideon lets the memory flood in—Nix broken and still in that ICU bed, the scent of fever and decay already thick in the air.

He remembers Jay’s decades-old grief, too.

They’re just a few of the reasons Gideon is here.

Hayes coughs, then. “He–p, me. Is someone…there?” Hayes cries. It’s probably because he’s been suffering in this field for forty-three minutes.

Good.

The memories of a frightened Nix afraid to leave the hospital, of him cowering after a terrible nightmare where he dreamed this man locked him in a closet, or of him hiding under the bed thinking he was ruined because of Hayes’s touch, make it easy for Gideon to smile a little.

As far as he’s concerned, the forty-five minutes of suffering isn’t nearly enough, and Gideon meant it when he told Nix he’d done just the right thing.

This demon’s last breath has always belonged to Gideon.

Hayes stops his crying, and his breaths come slower, with longer spaces between them. If Gideon listens closely, he can hear the black rock in Hayes’s chest stutter out its last beats .

Standing heedless of the soft, blood-soaked grass, Gideon pulls the stainless steel pendant out of his pocket and lets the sun glint off the inscribed symbols that say Jay on the back and the Hide on the front. He has to hold down his gag reflex because it’s only become more toxic since he’d pulled it out of its spelled cloth bag on the way back from the car.

Gideon crouches and lets the pendant hang over Hayes’s dying body. It swings at first, but then it stills like a dowsing rod over a well.

Soul magic, then.

Hayes jerks, his heart giving a few rapid beats before it slows.

One…two……three………four…………five.

One last beat for every year Nix spent hidden from Gideon’s pack.

He props open Hayes’s bloody mouth, his teeth already rotted away, and drops the pendant in.

It slides right down his throat.

Standing, Gideon turns away and grabs his shoes, jogging back the way he came with a nod for Pete. He stops to be sure the keys are in his pocket where he’d left them but stops when he realizes they’re missing.

“Are you looking for these?” Leo asks from the shadows before stepping out and dangling the key fob in front of him.

“Did you…”

“Every minute.”

“How did you know?” Gideon asks, accepting the bottle of water from his mate so he can rinse most of the black blood from his feet, using the grass to scrub it away before sliding his shoes on.

“I know you too damn well.”

“Are you going to…” Gideon grabs the keys and heads off toward the path to the car.

He doesn’t want them to know—Nix had chosen not to be the instrument of Hayes’s last moments, and it was the right one for him.

“Tell them? Fuck no. That’s for you.” Whether Leo means it’s for him to tell or the whole thing was for him, Gideon isn’t sure.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, and maybe it’s both.

Leo grabs his wrist, asking, “Was it…what you wanted?”

“Fuck, no. But it will have to do.”

It wasn’t the vengeance Gideon’s wolf had demanded, but watching Hayes die and being sure he couldn’t come for his pack was enough.

It would have to be enough, and at the very least, it was all over now.