“This never had to be your fight.”
Mace’s hand landed heavily on my shoulder. “I was born for this fight. A rebellious kid who ended up here—because fate wanted me here.”
“Noa doesn’t believe in fate,” I said. “She believes in changing it.”
Mace tipped his head back and barked out a laugh. “Then let’s gods-damn fucking change it.”
His grin was wide, his eyes bright with the challenge.
Enough that I ached.
The scrape of boots against the floor told me Mace was striding outside. I followed. A glance around the empty sparring yard revealed no movement. Torches guttered from the stakewall. Mace was heading toward the open gates, where at least the guards stood stiffly. Perhaps they read the challenge in his gait, the warrior taking the field.
“We go alone,” he said to the man who stepped up, offered his service, along with several men standing behind him. Sentinel Falls rangers. Those from Carmag stood along the stakewall, silently watching. Honoring when I did not deserve the respect. I’d let Mosbach slip through my fingers and sin without notice, too willing to blame the Alpen for rumors of missing wolves.
It was a dark shame that Mace felt as intensely as I did, although my second had always been skilled at suppressing his emotions. Pain hid behind a stiff spine and an aggressive leadership style. We’d both fought our way up from broken childhoods, and despite the minor differences in rank, he would always be my equal. My brother. I would be his. We shared experiences no one else had—other than Fallon.
Few understood the unique loneliness in leadership. Mace’s alpha tattoo was just as binding as mine. The same for Fallon. A lifetime of service. But always, the three of us together made it bearable. We were a force few wolves resisted. Amusing, Fallon said, that two assholes and a redeemer generated such an unbreakable aura of power.
But Mace had always known how to hide his emotions. How to compartmentalize, to stomach the fawning fakery without ripping throats out. One withering look from the warrior, and most men nearly twisted their necks, trying to dip a chin fast enough. Expose a throat in submission.
I’d never known anyone as strategic as Mace was in battle, the instincts he’d honed over decades. On that field, he was lethal. But he’d never had to face challenge fights, one after another, tasting the blood of those he knew until it was thick in his throat.
His enemies had always been strangers, and I envied the gift he had in that anonymity. I had hoped he’d never lose it, but that could end tonight.
The passage carried a whiff of cinnamon. The rocky walls supported more bioluminescent vines, glowing with that faint blue light and bearing red berries in clusters. Silver fireflies bobbed through the dark, reminding me of the childhood Christmases when I’d still believed in benevolent magic and a laughing fat man who rewarded good children. When my mother would bake cookies and my father would—
I jerked those memories to a halt. The passage ended, and I stepped out behind Mace, entering a silent forest tainted with the malevolence of vampires. Our quarry was still some distance, but we walked silently, careful where we put our feet, weaving around moss-covered trees and those with barren, spiky branches.
Ahead, a weak and yellowed light leaked across the snow; the light came from hooded lanterns sitting on the ground, understandable with the vampiric abhorrence of fire. We crouched. I counted two vampires waiting with that preternatural stillness. The elder stood with his back to us, but his energy screamed his identity.
Three teens lay face-down on the ground, closer to where Mace and I hid in the trees. Two males and a female, judging from the long hair and her slender build. Mosbach had chained them together with links wrapped around necks and ankles. Hands tied behind their backs. Attached to each left foot were odd, triangular padlocks—anti-vampiric burial tech from the 14th century. Supposedly, the triangle shape “locked” the vampire to the earth and made escaping the grave impossible. I wondered if the message being sent with those locks had much effect on the waiting vampires.
From what I could tell, neither vampire was interested in getting close enough to touch the locks, so perhaps there was something to the history, the tools that humans used then that we laughed at now.
I picked up no other scents after scanning the spindly pines, their branches dragging low. No vibrations from an enemy in hiding. The target was out in the open. With the three victims immobilized, the group would be difficult to move if the vampires disappeared. I doubted vampires would carry three bound, struggling teenagers, even with their special skills. The captives would instinctively fight, twist against each other. But I counted on their panic. A fight would give Mace the distraction he needed to rush them.
Because I’d be going after Mosbach.
I knew without a doubt who he was, and I flashed back to that day in Azul, when he’d challenged me in front of the pack with such arrogant confidence. I’d promised myself this day would come, when I’d let my wolf loose on Mosbach and let him take a very, very long time with the execution.
I was the judge and jury. Beside me, Mace was tense.
Mosbach’s hand gestures grew agitated, as if he argued for the price and quality of the exchange against the vampire skepticism. Then he strode toward the tethered group, yanked the first boy by the hair until he was shaking and on his knees. “How old?”
“Fif… fifteen.”
A knife blade glinted in the lantern light, bright and cold even with the thread of red. The boy howled as his cheek dripped blood. “Don’t lie,” Mosbach snarled.
“Seven. Seventeen,” the boy sobbed.
“Old enough to have your wolf.”
“Y-y-yes.”
“You disgust me. Wolf trash.” He pushed the blade against the boy’s wrist. “Maybe I cut off this hand for lying. Maybe skin you like a rabbit.”
The boy’s grimace hardened into what should be admired, if Mosbach wasn’t such a sick prick who got off on torture. The blade teased against the kid’s skin enough to bloom with blood. But the first cut went no deeper, just enough to trigger pain. Not do any lasting, incapacitating damage since the vampires wouldn’t pay for damaged goods.
