The shocked silence in the library was a living thing, filling in all the gaps of air and choking Rook on its fumes. He couldn’t think beyond two words that echoed around in his brain, making no real sense: me, sister, me, sister, mesister, mesistermesistermesister . . .
A harsh sob ripped from Brynn’s throat. “I didn’t know, I swear. I swear to you all, I didn’t know.”
Rook believed her, he just didn’t know how to say it.
Father found the words. “I believe you. Your entire life has changed in only a few days. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now.”
Brynn wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “My father hates the loup garou. He’s said so before, but today he drove that point home. He thinks you—we—are animals that need to be thinned out in order to be controlled. The hybrids were intended to be their method of shrinking the loup population.”
“By slaughtering us one town at a time?” Geary asked.
“No. The intention of Stonehill was to kill only a few, but to make it look as though Potomac committed the crime. They wanted to turn the runs against each other and start an internal war.”
“To keep their hands clean.” Geary snorted in disgust. “Typical.”
“The Congress did it once before.”
Rook sank deeper into his chair as she told them how the Congress manipulated the loup garou into destroying the vampires. Tempers in the room piqued. Knight looked like he was going to explode.
“So the Magi have lost control of their experiments,” Father said.
“Yes,” Brynn said. “Fiona is convinced that we, as hybrids with no human blood, are far superior to the other races. She’s also convinced that the next generation will be even more powerful. She won’t stop coming after Knight.”
Father growled. “She’ll have a hell of a fight waiting for her.”
“She did make an offer.”
“I won’t bargain with her.”
“I’d like to hear it,” Knight said. He leaned forward, shoulders hunched, elbows on his knees. He was pale, his eyes lined with dark circles, but he seemed determined. “What’s her offer?”
Brynn pulled a cell phone out of her shorts pocket. She tapped a few buttons, then put the phone down on the coffee table. Rook moved forward at the same time as the others, and they huddled around the recording.
Fiona’s face smirked at them from the small screen of the phone. A blast of background noise made his ears ache until he adjusted to it. “I know I don’t need to introduce myself to you again, Knight,” Fiona said, “so I’ll just say hey, handsome. I miss you.”
She made obnoxious kissy noises at the camera, and Knight shuddered.
“You know why I want you, and you know what I’m capable of. I’m sure you don’t want to see your precious town reduced to a pile of dead bodies, or your brothers chained up as my personal pets, so here is my offer. You give yourself to me without a fight, and I’ll spare your town. Neither I, nor my sisters, will attack your family or friends ever as long as you cooperate. Brynn has my permission to share this recording with them after you’re in my custody, so that they don’t try to find you or steal you back.
“If you agree to my terms, she knows when and where we’re to meet. Tell anyone else before that time, and she also knows the consequences. You can save six hundred and fifty lives tonight, Knight. Or you can all sleep with one eye open from now on, always wondering who will be picked off next. Your choice.” She smirked. “Daddy.”
The recording stopped.
“God DAMN it!” Knight snarled. He pushed back from the coffee table and stormed to the other side of the library. His rage filled the room, washing over all of them in the worst possible way. Rook battled to keep a lid on his own temper as Knight’s empathy struck at him from all directions, sharp needles stabbing at his control.
“This is bullshit.” Bishop radiated danger. “Fiona has to know we won’t accept her deal. She’s more insane than I—”
“It wasn’t Fiona’s idea,” Brynn said.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. Rook stared at her, cold all over, horrified by the answer he knew he was about to get. “Whose idea was it?” he asked.
“She’s a fanatic, Rook. She absolutely believes in what she’s doing. She will kill every person in this town, and in any town he flees to in order to get Knight. It’s horrible and it’s wrong, but that’s what will happen.” Her voice broke. “I couldn’t stand the idea of her—of you—so many lives have already been lost. The exchange was my idea.”
A chill wormed down his spine to settle in his guts where it simmered with anger. For the first time since they met, Rook didn’t recognize her. Even when she had accidentally poisoned him he hadn’t felt so completely betrayed. Played for a fool. Had she really gone off to bargain with his brother’s life?
“You had no right,” Father said, his voice sharp enough to slice iron.
Tears streaked her cheeks. “I know.”
“Yes, she did,” Knight said. Every head in the library turned to look at him. His rage had melted away into some odd mix of anxiety and exhaustion that made him look seven years old. He put his hands on the back of the sofa and leaned forward, eyes on Brynn. “She had every right. Brynn was protecting her family.”
“What family?” Rook asked. Brynn flinched away from him.
“Shay,” Knight said. “Shay is her half-sister. Right?”
Brynn nodded, her silent tears falling harder.
“Regardless,” his father said, “there’s no deal to be made here.”
“Shouldn’t that be my call?” Knight asked.
Father stood and turned around. “Son—”
“No, Dad. No. This is about me, and believe me, I understand what to expect if I go with Fiona.” He shook his head, limbs loose, too calm for Rook’s comfort. Rook stood up as Knight kept talking. “She’ll hold this town hostage and drive us insane with fear, never knowing who’s going to die next. She’ll pick people off and leave them in pieces as a warning until the entire run hates me for hiding behind them. I can’t live with that, not when I can save all of you. I’m just one man.”
“You’re not just one man.” Father strode around to the other side of the sofa and grabbed Knight by the shoulders. Made him face him. “You’re my son.”
Knight straightened his spine. He exuded a kind of peace Rook had never seen from Knight before, and Rook knew with heartbreaking clarity that his decision was made. “I’m very proud to be your son. You taught me so many things, including when to put others before myself. This is the right decision.”
Bishop stood up, horrified. “You’re going to go with her.”
“Yes.”
Rook sat back down hard enough to jar his teeth. This couldn’t really be happening.
“I could order you to not to go,” Father said, his voice rough. “I could lock you in a quarterly cage until this is sorted out another way.”
“You could.” He covered Father’s hands with his and squeezed. Knight’s gaze was clear, his voice strong. “But I know you won’t. You know this is the right thing to do, Alpha.”
Their father visibly shuddered, but he didn’t disagree. He released Knight and stepped back, observing his middle son for a long moment. “As a father, I want to forbid this. But as your Alpha”—he swallowed hard—“I know you’re right.”
Their gazes locked for a beat, and then Father looked away.
“You know the details?” Knight asked Brynn.
“Yes,” she said.
“When?”
“Midnight. I can only tell
you
where, though. I’ve already broken my word to Fiona by allowing everyone else to see the video.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
She blanched. “For what?”
“For bringing all of this information back to us. We know much more now than we did before, about a lot of things.”
“And everything stays in this room,” Father said. “Everything about the Magi, the hostiles, and about Knight. Any information that needs to be shared will be shared tomorrow.”
“So that’s it?” Bishop asked. “We’re just letting him do this? No alternatives or backup plans? Nothing?”
Knight turned to face him. “What do you want me to do? Wear a wire? Draw Fiona out into some kind of trap? She’s insane, Bishop. The instant she suspects something, the deal’s off and you’ll all be targets again.”
“How do you know she’ll keep her word about not attacking us? She didn’t when you traded yourself for Rook three days ago.”
Rook couldn’t see Knight’s face, but he could imagine the black look that must have been there, because Bishop backed down. Knight sacrificing himself had to be tearing Bishop up inside. He’d always felt responsible for them, ever since their mother died, and he couldn’t protect Knight this time.
“We’ll have people watching as best we can,” Father said. “If we see a chance to take out all four of the hostiles, we’ll take it. But only all four. If even one of them gets away, the deal is for nothing, because they’ll just come at us again.”
Bishop nodded. The Alpha had spoken, and the conversation was over.
A chorus of voices agreed and bodies shuffled out of the room. Rook remained rooted to his chair long after the others cleared out, too astonished by the sudden turn of events to even think about moving.
Knight had made the choice to go with Fiona, but that didn’t change the fact that Brynn brought that choice to him. Brynn had offered Rook’s brother up as a prize, something to be bartered for peace and for the protection of her newly discovered half-sister, Shay. Rook tried to see it from the outside, as an Alpha might. Tried to justify offering the freedom of one man to save hundreds of others. Intellectually, he understood the decision and the need to consider it as an option. Emotionally, he despised the notion of a trade. Despised the entire concept of the greater good, when it took his brother away from him.
But despite his hatred of Knight’s decision, Rook knew it was the best move. Father was right to allow it. Rook also knew, in his heart, that he couldn’t have made that call. Maybe Bishop could have, but not Rook. He could never make the sort of difficult decision an Alpha often had to make for the safety of the run—not if it meant hurting someone he cared about.
And that, he realized, was okay with him. His future was not as Cornerstone’s Alpha.
Brynn, though . . . intentionally or not, she’d hurt him. The look on her face when she admitted the truth about Fiona’s bargain still haunted him. She’d been terrified to tell them she’d offered up Knight, and not because she feared a violent response. She had to have known what the bargain would mean to Rook—that it would devastate him—and she’d still acted in the best interest of the run, even though doing so might mean losing Rook’s affections. She’d made an Alpha’s decision.
The Little Magus Who Could
.
He couldn’t accept what she’d done, but he did respect the risk she’d taken and the strength she continued to show, even as her own world crumbled down around her.
Rook looked at the clock on the wall—almost noon. By this time tomorrow, both of their worlds would be a very different place. He had to forgive Brynn. He also had to find a way to say good-bye to his brother. The new chords of his life had to mix seamlessly into an old favorite song, and he only had twelve hours in which to do it.
***
Brynn had excused herself to the safety of her temporary bedroom with the intention of curling into a ball and sobbing herself into exhaustion. Once she was alone, however, her tears dried up and left a cold, hollow feeling in her chest. She couldn’t erase the memory of Rook’s face—the way he’d looked after she confessed to planting the trade idea in Fiona’s mind. He looked utterly betrayed, as though she’d gone out of her way to stab him in the back and twist the knife as deeply as it would go.
Her intentions had been the opposite. She’d wanted to save Rook and his run, save them so he had a chance to be their Alpha one day. The anger in his eyes when he looked at her destroyed any hope of him loving her the way she’d started to love him. He would always blame her for Knight leaving. They could never go back to where they were half an hour ago, when he still trusted her. Still smiled at her.
At midnight, she would deliver his brother to her sister, and their lives would be forever broken. She couldn’t stay here in Cornerstone, not if Rook blamed her. She fully expected McQueen to ask her to leave in the morning, once her task was complete. She would ensure the safety of the Cornerstone run, and then walk away.
Except she had nowhere to go. Not fully loup and not fully Magi, she no longer belonged in either world. And she would never betray the McQueen’s by joining Fiona. She truly was alone.
She didn’t even have her rental car anymore. It was still parked on the street a block from her father’s house. The absurdity of it made her laugh, then laugh some more. Soon she couldn’t seem to stop laughing as a tsunami of emotions swirled up and out through tears and guffaws. She fell onto her back, clutching her aching stomach, until the laughter turned into soft choking sounds.
“Keep it together, Brynn,” she said to the ceiling. “Just for a few more hours.”
Brynn was protecting her family
, Knight had said. Intellectually, Brynn understood what he meant. The knowledge had floated in the back of her mind for hours, an amorphous shape she hadn’t yet acknowledged for what it was. Shay Butler was her sister; they shared a biological mother. They both also shared a biological mother with the vampire hybrids who’d caused so much damage and heartache, and who’d nearly killed Shay.
I should go visit her.
But to say what? They had nothing in common beyond genetics. Brynn’s father was responsible for the death of Shay’s father, as well as the slaughter of her hometown. Those were not exactly sisterly bonding topics. No, Shay did not need her, and Brynn would not heap her own guilt upon the poor, broken woman.
The stairs creaked. She strained to listen, but couldn’t identify the footsteps shuffling across the wood floor toward her door.
The knock made her sit up. She brushed sweaty strands of hair off her forehead. “Come in.”
The door swung open and Rook stepped inside. He shut it, then leaned heavily against the door, the very picture of physical and emotional exhaustion. His hands dangled loosely by his sides. Only his eyes remained sharp and clear and fixed on her. She didn’t move, positive that any action would provoke him into whatever he’d come to her room to do—such as kick her out of his father’s house.