I run straight up to the bedroom closet. A strange sensation hits me when I lift those baby booties out of the bag. I don’t know if it’s connection to the future, the Fae connection, or what it is but there’s no time to think about it, so I set them down, grab the plastic sandwich bag and pull out the necklace, getting the window open. Since the screen is already out, I just hold my hand out the window. Not even three seconds later, the necklace sails toward Chariot Lake.
Time to run back, swim to the cave, and rip the head from the shoulders of the fucker that manhandled and frightened my mate. I didn’t like that he touched her. Fumed at seeing her come down those stairs being carried by him with her shirt half open, but to hear her call him ‘pervy’ and mention ‘sexual threats’?
I run like the fucking wind and when I get to the water behind Tyson’s house, I dive straight in.
***
Grey’s already got the necklace on that bitch. I missed the fun, but that’s okay. Satisfaction slides through me to see she’s bawling, talking about saving the life of her husband, who sitson the cave ledge looking like he’s at death’s door. There’s a cauldron on the floor. Crystals. Candles. A bag on its side, small vials and jars spilling out.
“Have mercy on him even if you have to punish me,” she pleads.
“Maybe Erica can take the sickness from him with her powers. He’s worthy. I promise he is!”
Dani says, “Maybe if you’d asked, we could have seen if we could help. Now, I guess we’ll never know. But honestly, you expect empathy when you poisoned a council alpha from this pack, then attempted to poison over seven hundred beings? Alphas, yes, but also regular shifters, humans, witches, pregnant women, children, babies. You’d have poisoned your own niece and great-niece. Is his life more important than all those lives?”
“It’s not,” the man says. “I’m ready to go. I’ve been ready a while. I love you, mi amore, but this was too far. And I’m too tired.”
“Eduardo,” she cries.
Standing against the wall with their hands behind their heads, fingers laced, are the two assholes who abducted us. Linc stands beside the younger one, Tyson beside the older one.
Mitch is now doing the supernatural police equivalent of reading Alta Starling her rights, telling her she’s being arrested.
Not giving a fuck, I stomp over to that fucker who looks anything but smug right now. He’s looking at me and he knows I want him dead. The younger brother is wide-eyed, shaking his head at me.
“Jase. Let’s keep our heads about us,” Mitch suggests, accurately reading the room.
I don’t respond. Instead, I shed my soaking wet clothes and shoes, then shift before I bare my teeth and enjoy watching the fucker soil himself, though I don’t like that he does that here inour sacred cave. I lunge and with my teeth I puncture his throat, shake him hard, and fling him into the water.
“Jase!” Mitch protests needlessly, because it’s already done.
I shift to two feet. “He committed a crime against my mate. You know I have every fucking right.”
I look at the brother with all my council alphas watching. Alta is gasping, horror-stricken. Her man has his head down, shaking it, tears in his eyes.
“Please, no,” the younger one says.
“What did I tell you would happen if you or your brother touched her? I keep my word. You don’t.”
“We… we haven’t. Not since you said.”
“No, but if you took us out, tell me he wasn’t going to seek her out and lay his fuckin’ hands on her.”
I know by this face that this was his brother’s plan.
“And you wouldn’t have stopped him. Despite my warning.”
“Jase, you’re done,” Mitch says firmly. “As an officer of the SCC, I’m issuing that as an official order. Anything more than the one you just dispatched will shine too bright a light.”
I look around.
Tyson, Mase, Rye, Joel, and Linc are all standing stoically, not showing how they feel. Though I can feel their solidarity. Greyson, though? He’s baring his teeth, eyes on this fucker who would have stood by and allowed a female, his baby sister, to be sexually assaulted.
“He is a mortal who knows of supernaturals,” Grey says. “And he can’t be trusted. This means he either needs to be permanently incarcerated or permanently incapacitated.”
“Incarcerated should do, Jase,” Dani calls over. She’s got her phone in her hand. “Bailey doesn’t want you to kill him. She says he’s not the same as his older brother.”
“Did you rat me out to my mate, Danica?” I ask, seething.