Keeping Secret

Sucking in a deep breath, I stepped under the main arch and into the dark gloom. Even with the moon still nearly full, and with my heightened vision, it was impossible to make anything out in the blackened corridors.

Supernatural sight was a lot like night vision—there needed to be some light in order to have something to see. I could make out the edges of turns, but nothing else. Just me, the maze and the midnight shadows.

The vampire in me wanted to call out to her, to coax and tease her like a cat with a mouse. But the werewolf in me won out. She knew the proper way to hunt was to do so with silence and stealth. To wait until you were certain no mistakes would be made, and then strike.

There was no room for mistakes here.

Every turn I rounded was a new opportunity for my heart to lurch into my throat. Yet each time I found only more darkness. The hem of my dress rustled where it brushed against the thick walls of ivy, or whatever plant had been used for the hedge. The sound was quiet, but louder than I would have liked. A whisper when I was hoping for silence.

It also made it impossible for me to move with my back against the wall, as I normally would have. In order to stay as stealthy as possible I needed to walk down the center of the path, where my skirt couldn’t touch the leaves.

I stopped walking and sniffed the air.

The scent of wet grass and bushes was overwhelming. It wasn’t like the pine forests I was used to back home, but the aroma was similarly woodsy and wild. The night itself smelled cold—there was no better way to describe it. Crisp, fresh and so clean it almost hurt to breathe it, that’s how cold smells.

My bare skin responded with a shiver.

The musk of wolf was everywhere, covering everything. I shouldn’t have been surprised—this was where the pack came for each full moon. Lucas probably had them run through the maze as training for…well, who knew. But it made sense in a twisted, wolfy way. One never knew when there’d be a tough spot to get out of. Putting the pack through drills like that was something I could imagine Lucas coming up with.

Just thinking about Lucas made me sick to my stomach.

It was bad enough I had to be here, at his home. I didn’t want to be thinking about how clever it was of him to put our pack through their paces. Our pack. Was it even ours anymore? Days ago I’d thought I belonged. I’d become a wolf, I’d run among others of my kind and I’d felt like I was finally a part of the thing Lucas had been calling ours for so long.

I’d believed I deserved to be their queen. Or at the very least I’d earned my role as pack protector. Knowing I could meet the pack on their level had made me feel free. It made me feel accepted. I no longer had to hide from them on full moons. They wouldn’t question my loyalty.

And now what?

Morgan was trying to kill me because she would never believe I deserved the position more than she did. She couldn’t be the only one who thought it, even if she was the only one to act on it. And what would the pack think of Lucas’s commitment to me now? Mated or not, he had scorned me, and everyone knew it.

How had he missed the plot Morgan had hatched? Had he blinded himself to her betrayal because he had other reasons to believe he could trust her?

I stopped walking and fought to catch my breath.

Why would any man foolishly believe a woman’s lies? Why had I let Lucas trick me time and time again? Love, sure…but that wasn’t how he’d gotten things past me. No, Lucas had distracted me with passion. Pure, burning lust. It was how he’d activated the mate bond. And what had we been doing before the mate ceremony in Louisiana?

We’d been fucking.

Was that it? Was that how Morgan had made him too stupid to see what she was up to? She’d managed to have her assassins find me everywhere I should have been safe. On the highway and at Callum’s compound in the south.

I’d been an idiot not to suspect her before, but I trusted her because Lucas trusted her.

Had she been the reason he stood me up too? Surely it benefited her to have me there alone, though I can’t imagine she ever meant to get caught red-handed pulling the trigger. I knew she wanted me dead so she could have her chance with Lucas.

But maybe she’d already had a taste.

I gagged.

I didn’t want to believe it. It didn’t seem like something Lucas would be capable of. I knew I hadn’t been virginal and innocent, but he’d known about my relationship with Desmond. He’d even encouraged it, to a point. The soul-bond meant something. It transcended simple lust. He and Desmond had known since before they met me that it might create conflict, but they also knew I would be with the king in the end.

I didn’t like having a polyamorous relationship, but I never lied about it. Lucas knew I spent most every night in bed with Desmond, and Desmond knew I had my nights with Lucas. None of us were thrilled about it. It wasn’t like those happy-go-lucky ménage scenarios that cluttered up romance novels. We always knew a time would come when three would be whittled down to two.

But I’d never dreamed Lucas would find fulfillment elsewhere.

The more I thought about it, the more flustered I became. Maybe I was losing my mind, reading too much into it, but it was hard not to imagine Lucas as a villain given how he’d recently behaved. When this was said and done and Morgan was in the ground, Lucas would answer for his actions.

One thing was certain, though, even if he hadn’t cheated on me…

We were done.

Soul-bond or not. Mate bond. Fucking mate ceremony. None of it mattered now. I didn’t care if the wolves didn’t do divorce, or that I was the queen as far as every werewolf on the East Coast was concerned. I’d never be able to look at Lucas Rain the same way.

I’d never trust him again, and without trust a relationship wasn’t worth shit.

I’d been still so long a thin film of moisture coated my skin the same way it had the grass.

And long enough to hear rustling and a muffled female curse one wall away.

I moved as quickly and silently as I could, praying the next turn wouldn’t lead me farther from her, not when I’d come so close to finding her. And then I rounded the bend and came face to startled face with the woman I’d been hunting.

For a second we just stood still, staring stupidly at each other. I was dumbfounded by my luck, and she was cursing her lack of it.

The moment vanished and she turned to run, but not before I grabbed a fistful of her glossy black hair and shoved her forward, using the momentum of her run to drive her into the ground face first. It wasn’t as satisfying as it might have been on concrete, and the grass buffered the worst of her fall, but I heard her nose break.

It was a start.

I pulled her up and flipped her onto her back, kicking the gun from her hand and lowering myself down so I was straddling her, with her arms pinned by her sides. I held the blade of my sword flush to her neck. Her nose was bloody and already swollen, but instead of fear her eyes showed nothing but resignation.

“Make it quick,” she whispered, then looked away from me.

“You don’t deserve it to be quick.”

“No.”

“Why did you do it?” I lightened up on the blade so she could speak without me slitting her throat in the process.

“You had too much. You had Lucas, you had Desmond. The whole fucking pack adored you because you were the protector. You’d killed Marcus, and they loved you for it.” Her lashes were damp with tears. “Before you came along, Lucas paid attention to me. We joked that if his mate never showed up, he’d need a strong girl to stand with him. He was mine.”

This was something I’d never considered. I’d been so quick to think Lucas had trusted her because of sex, it never occurred to me the sex might have happened before he’d ever met me.

“But he was never meant to be yours.”

“No?” Her tears flowed freely now. “Do you know how rare it is for someone to meet their soul-bonded mate? If you’d never showed up, today might have been my wedding. It might have been my pack.”

I withdrew my sword. The blind homicidal urges I’d felt moments before had faded. I got to my feet and picked her gun off the ground. My carefully safetied SIG was wedged between my corset-bound breasts, so I had a free hand for her thirty-eight. Girl meant business. I checked the chamber and found she’d taken time to reload since leaving the hotel, because she wasn’t missing any bullets and she’d fired at least one at Columbia.

“Get up.”

Morgan froze, maybe waiting to be tricked or for me to change my mind. “I don’t…”

“Just get up.”

She clambered to her feet and cast a sideways glance down the dark corridor.

“No. No wise ideas. You make a run for it and I blow your head off, simple as that.”

In spite of my warning she still seemed to be considering her chances. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Nothing, if you don’t run.”

“But…I tried to kill you.”

Like I needed reminding. “You sure did.”

Morgan appeared confused until I smiled. There was nothing friendly about the gesture. “You tried to kill the Queen of the Eastern pack,” I continued. “And you might have succeeded in killing the king’s lieutenant.” My finger tensed on the trigger. The flash of memory reminded me what Desmond had looked like on the platform, soaking in his own blood, all to save me… It was almost enough to make me change my mind.

“You’re a betrayer,” I concluded.

“I…” She grew pale.

“Do you know how vampires deal with rogues? Those who betray their own kind?” When she shook her head, my smile grew wider and I flashed fangs at her. She took a step back, but I raised my sword. It was the only warning I needed to give. “They chain them in silver and lock them away. For centuries. No food, no fresh air. They let them slip out of memory until they are withered, disgusting husks. Shells.”

Morgan got even whiter.

“Death becomes a dream.” I looked at the gun, then back at her. “We can’t do that to you, of course. Without food you’d starve to death. Unpleasant, sure…but not nearly as punishing.” Licking my fangs, I shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. We have plenty of time.”