High Priest Anderson was pale, his eyes bulging as he stared at Sin. “I… I had her dealt with.”
Dealtwith?
“And when you threw my mate into Anarchy, did you enjoy the idea of her death?” he asked.
If the silence had been heavy before, it was nothing compared to what it was now.
“Your… mate?” The High Priest’s voice was weak.
“How did you imagine it would end—in your head? Surely you didn’t plan on her dying immediately—you injected her with a heat drug, after all. That goes a little beyond punishment. Perhaps you enjoyed dreaming of what might have happened.”
“You… did what?” Luke’s eyes snagged on his father. “I thought she was sent to the Sisterhood in the countryside?—”
“Shut. Up.” Sin got to his feet, eyes pinning Luke in place. “All the food drives and the charity work, all those poor souls in need of your generosity. Was it the golden eyes—I supposeshedidn’t qualify?”
His fury was poison seeping into the air around us.
Not one alpha had loosed their aura, even if I could feel their tension.
If they believed it was because one echo of a threat would leave them with a snapped neck, they were dead on.
Amidst the haze of Sin’s energy, I could see flickers of the night she’d told us. Crescent had curled up in his arms for hours after, trembling with the memory.
“I tried.”The words haunted me.“I tried to be what they wanted. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
Well. We thought bringing too many people to the meeting might have been overkill. Karma had been instantly out, as none of us—him included—believed he’d be able to hold himself together long enough to get the answers we needed while their guard was still down.
Turns out Sin had a shorter fuse than I’d imagined, too.
“You attacked her,” Sin hissed, stepping around the desk.
“I didn’t—that’s not what happened—” He cut off, making a dive around the desk toward his father, who was getting to his feet too, eyes wide. My gaze flickered to him, half calculating what I’d need to do to stop him from escaping, half hungry to watch Sin in action.
In a flash, Sin had Luke by the neck, slamming him against the wall.
“Th-this is a place of worship,” he rasped as Sin pinned him there.
Sin leaned close, lips drawn in a snarl. “Then your God will thank us for cleansing it.”
EPILOGUE ONE
SIN
I… was building.
None of the others stuck out quite as much as me with my red eyes, but I was just fine staying close to home in the forest.
The property was massive, with some beautiful trails, and I’d started a project of building them out. Cutting back overgrowth and adding stones to level out parts that were too rough. Crescent helped me some days, and she loved to decorate the trees, which meant the small hikes had little wooden gnome watchers, and strings of decor hanging from trees—often with dozens of glittering keys Crescent had leftover from nest decorating.
I hadn’t set up a nest yet (my instincts didn’t seem to need one for myself), but had helped my packmates start decorating the interior rooms. We didn’t sleep in the bedrooms, but they’d been claimed for hobbies or lounge space.
But my favourite project was the treehouse.
I’d picked a perfect tree—in the exact place that allowed for that horrible ray of sun to violate Crescent’s sacred nest in the evening—and, with the help of the others, I began working on a treehouse.
I had lost track of the amount of time I’d spent building it, when at last it was stable enough to invite her up.
Her golden eyes were bright as her head popped up through the hatch from the ladder below. It made me warm and fuzzy to see her haul herself in and look around for the first time.